You think that is bad? I am also like you and I also do some cartooning. (animator in training)
Fear our power you lesser mortals!
On a more serious note, I did notice that many reasonable Muslims do think this was stupid IIRC the reports. Unfortunately, extremists are taking over the dialog and just as freedom ends when the rights of others are affected, Muslims all over should understand that even people in the west that oppose the strong arm tactics of our leaders in the ME, will not mind much if force is applied to an specific threat like this one.
What I meant is that Muslims have (because it’s forbidden) no depiction of their guy. We (western religion) have a blue-eyed long-haired caucasian fellow drawn from the biblical statement that God created man in His own image (ignore that that presumption kinda leaves black folks, et. al. in a bad spot). However, God is alleged to be all powerful, which includes the ability to represent him or herself in a waterfall, a flower, a cheese sammitch, or an underpass salt-stain. I was attributing an equal measure of divine ability to their holy man, which means that he could look like anything at any time if that was his desire, hence getting fired up over human-referenced depictions of a deity is short-sighted.
It doesn’t work that way, though. To a lot of Christians, Jesus = God. But Muhammad isn’t God to Muslims, he’s God’s last prophet. That’s why they have that ban on depicting him in the first place: supposedly Muhammad felt it would lead to idolatry, and he didn’t want to be worshipped.
FGM: appalling. (In case you were suffering from a bout of ignorance, FGM is a north African obscenity, carried out by both Muslim and Christian societies.)
These cartoons were printed in the Netherlands almost six months ago. People took them to the Middle East recently to stir shit up, and Mission Accomplished as far as that goes. The people who wanted to start this uproar and the religious and political leaders who are encouraging it, as jjim says, are certainly very contemptible.
So-I can see why he wouldn’t want his followers depicting him, given the desire to avoid idolatry, but why does it make a shit of difference what non-followers do? Particularly when the depiction wasn’t favorable.
I hope so. But as I implied in this post, purely on a pragmatic basis, alienating said moderates by blanket condemnation of every single member of that religion is the wrong fucking thing to do. We need them to do it, so let’s help them. Fuck it, I’d donate money to help set up a moderate Islamic mouthpiece (and pay for their armed security).
Yeah, I said the same thing in GD. I wish I had more context for these drawings (I don’t know what any of the Dutch text says), but it may not be a question of violating the commandment as the fact that depicting Muhammad as a terrorist is undeniably insulting. The fact that it’s in violating of a “don’t draw him” commandment is probably just makes it worse - and it also means they’re not used to seeing such things.
And if they can pull that off, then the Christians can get to work on wackos like Phelps, Robertson, and the fundie nuts who like to shoot abortion doctors and blow up their clinics.
Because that’s how fundamentalists - of any stripe - operate. As far as they’re concerned, it’s not just they who are subject to the laws of God/Allah/Yaweh/Rama/Buddha/Whatever, it’s the entire bloody world. Hence the wish to strike gay marriage off the books in various western countries, and the desire to burn embassies of countries that have had the temerity to allow newspapers therein to print “blasphemous” photographs.
Absolutely, but it is apparently a hadith - and of course if you reject the hadiths, you have also to reject the Talmud, Apocrypha, all that post facto stuff that people who believe shit are wont to believe in.
Eh… Metacom gets very, erm… emotional, when religion is the topic under discussion. Whatever you do, don’t suggest that there’s no more of a reason to believe religious doctrines or dogmas than there is to believe myths, he’ll pitch a hissy fit and then run away.
I thought Metacom’s post was pretty funny. Come on man, you can’t seriously reach back 800 years for a comparison. “Cantaloupe”… that had me in stitches.
Somtimes, though, you can. Although, of course, the caveat of ‘not recently’ was suggesting, in my reading, that it was an historical example and not a current one used for 1:1 comparison.
The fact, though, that the Muslim leaders who are deliberately orchestrating this farce are, in terms of ideology, back in the Dark Ages, is not lost on me.
I wasn’t comparing anything, other than man’s inhumanity, etc. It was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but apparently Christianity is in the no-fun zone. The merest suggestion that perhaps those who follow Jesus aren’t as holy as they would like others to believe sends people like that into frothing fits, which of course just makes my point.
