Well the crucifix/Jesus thing was stolen from Paganism anyways -- apparantly, and it wouldn't be surprising.I still have to watch the documentary on that. It might be on tonight actually.
Well I don't think you could officially say that crufixion stories and such about Jesus (pbuh) were taken from various pagan crufixion stories, but I personally believe that to be the case as well.
That's a perversion of the religion. Nowhere in their religious texts does it say ANYTHING about murdering over depictions of Mohammed...in fact, there's no mention of any kind of violence for it. Islam is a religion of peace...but, just like Christianity (which is supposed to also be a religion of peace), humanity has perverted it over the centuries to suit their own agendas.
This is true, however I still think it's generally best not to depict any prophets so people don't twist it into a form of idoltry, like some Christians have with Jesus (pbuh).
There was some guy who drew some comic with Mohammed in it and some of the hard-core Muslims went apeshit. Also, Osama has recently said something to the effect that he will punish Western society for that heinous act of depicting him in a comic. I don't recall his exact words. I've never even seen the comic. Perhaps they were pissed off because it wasn't even as funny as Marmaduke?
It's a matter of respect. I don't care if non-Muslims choose to depict Mohammad (pbuh) and they have every right to do so, but people shoulder consider how Muslims will feel about the issue. In the case of the famous Danish cartoons, it wasn't so much about the prophet being depicted as it was with depicting him in a very negative way and that's just an ignorant thing to do, regardless of who's being depicted. And of course I don't think it was the Islamic thing to do when some Muslims burned buildings and what not after those drawings were published.