Did Johnny Hart — the beloved creator of “B.C.” and one of the most widely read cartoonists on Earth — sneak a vulgar defamation of Islam into the comics pages last week?

The question was raised this week by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based civil rights group, in an e-mail to its membership.

Hart and his syndicate say no — that a simple, straightforward joke is being misconstrued. Still, the 73-year-old cartoonist’s history of evangelizing his Christian beliefs through his comic cavemen have raised doubts.

The cartoon, which appeared Nov. 10 in more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide, shows a caveman entering an outhouse at night, and then saying, from inside, “Is it just me, or does it stink in here?”

The first public questioning of this cartoon arose in a washingtonpost.com chat Tuesday, when a reader noted that the cartoon seemed to make no sense, except metaphorically. The reader noted that the cartoon contained six crescent moons — three in the sky, and three on the outhouse door — and wondered whether this might have been a veiled slur on the world’s 1 billion practicing Muslims.

The CAIR e-mail mentioned the moons, and also noted that Hart had drawn a prominent sound effect — “SLAM” — between two frames to accompany the closing of the outhouse door. The SLAM was stacked vertically, in the shape of an I, and could be seen to signify “Islam.” The cartoon appeared on the 15th day of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.

In the past, Hart has gotten into trouble for religious-themed strips — most notably on one recent Easter Sunday when his strip showed the seven candles of a Jewish menorah being extinguished, one by one, with each image accompanied by one of Jesus Christ’s last utterances. As the last flame disappeared, and the words “It is finished” appeared, the menorah became a cross.

Many Jewish readers were outraged, claiming Hart was making the argument that Christianity had extinguished Judaism as a “better” religion. Hart denied it, protesting that the cartoon was intended to honor both religions.

Asked about the outhouse strip this week, Hart denied that it was about Islam at all. He said that interpretation stunned him.

This B.C. comic, which ran in more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide Nov. 10, including the Lawrence Journal-World, has been called a slur against Islam. The cartoonist, Johnny Hart, says the outhouse joke has been misconstrued.

“My goodness. That’s incredible. That’s unbelievable!”

He said it was just a “silly” bathroom joke, wrapped around the cliche “Is it just me, or …?”

“This comic was in no way intended to be a message against Islam — subliminal or otherwise,” he said. “It would be contradictory to my own faith as a Christian to insult other people’s beliefs.

“If you should have any further silly notions about malicious intent from this quarter,” he said, “you can save yourself a phone call.”