How many people here have seen the comics making fun of islam.
Muslims are just way sensitive to this stuff.
I have seen far more offensive cartoons making fun of christians and jews get little or no reaction at all.
like The Terminator and Jesus From the best of MAD TV. I don’t recall any large christian riots with hundreds or thousands of people marching around shouting “Death to Mad TV!”
othersJesus Saves
Last House Party Jesus Christ Action Figure
None of these, started riots.
It would appear that the middle east would profit from mandated viewing of South Park on a daily basis–I especially recommend the episodes dealing with the pugilistic misadventures of
Jesus El Salvador Christ vs. Satan
not for nuttin’, but remember how that unpleasantness in Sarajevo got out of hand, and , no, I’m not talking about late 20th century Sarajevo, but circa 1914
Great beefs from little slights flow.(ok, snuffing an archduke is a moderately severe slight, but still…).
NPR is the news according to ArcherDanielsMidland and Joan Kroc.
They are pusillanimous sellouts.
The hippy news is to be found on pacifica.
I think I am getting a mancrush on alaricthegoth, likes south park, makes cogent points with historical context and then sends me scurrying to m-w for “pusillanimous”, nice (I will be using that to describe project managers from now on).
Anyway I talked to a couple people to make sure I wasn’t crazy and unfortunately, I am in fact crazy, but my point about the cartoon is not. I even got sign off from my wife, and really, she never agrees with me on anything, mostly because she hates me. Basically there are multiple issues/questions here that seem to be getting munged together. I am going to try and break them down, and offer my opinions on each piece, feel free to point out holes in plot.
Are European Muslims receiving equal protection under Dutch/French/etc. law? I am not an lawyer, but I think that it is probable that they are not.
Should anyone anywhere ever print pictures of Mohammed? Basically the answer is yes, although if the purpose is to specifically antagonize then maybe not. (I am going to eat bacon no matter what you say, but I don’t go into a mosque with a BLT).
Should news organizations (especially American ones) print any of the pictures, particularly ones that are straight depictions of Mohammed, without any bombs in turbans, now that this is a legit news story (as opposed to printing them just to antagonize/marginalize out of the blue). MAYBE they should, but in the context of condemnation IF (and this is a big IF) it does appear that they are examples of Muslims NOT receiving equal protection. I don’t agree that they should be printed as a show of “support” for the original printers. Maybe this is nitpicky, but most people I talked to (even the ones who did not agree with my conclusion) agreed that this is a major point. (also this is basically the OP)
Do oppressive Muslim regimes, anti-Semitic Muslim publications, or violent protest/rioting by Muslims (possibly orchestrated for political expediency) have anything to do with the above questions? I would say no. I would also say that to propose that Muslims in Amsterdam have to suck it because of Muslims in Tashkent doesn’t sound like fighting ignorance. In addition, just because someone else sucks, doesn’t mean we should give ourselves a pass for sucking.
Lastly, and possibly not an important point, but one that has been bugging me.
5. Is there a difference between non-Christians making fun of Christians in Europe and America and non-Jews, non-Muslims, non-whatevers making fun of those religious minorities in Europe and America? Legally, maybe not (IANAL), but in reality there is. e.g. - If Matt Stone wasn’t Jewish the Jew Scouts episode would have been a lot less hilarious. Christianity dominates in those regions of the world so using examples of making fun of Christians is a little disingenuous.
altho my intuitive reaction to this formulation is that it is probalby accurate, I quibble a bit with the inclusion of the qualifier “global” (which I take to carve out a subcategory of terrorist who’s provenance ,or motives, or both, emplicate some international component.
Given that even including 9/11, the latest stats seem to show that most terrorismi is domestic,(albeit with an undefined soupcon of anti-americanism one might ask the poster if corrrection for geopolitically counfounding factors (the high number of muslims on an abolute basis, the character of most muslim nations as successor states of now defunct empires where inter-communal beefs are still in the raw stage, etc.) ought not be indicated, and, if applied, to what result?
mancrush on alaricthegoth
You are new to the board…I am delighted to inform you that we have available several high prestige single digit membership numbers in the ATG Fan Club…Hmm. let me see.
Why yes, I think we can fit you out with card #3 (not that 1 & 2 are actually already taken, but I have my image to consider…)
alaricthegoth, i don’t think anyone else is reading this, the thread has been killed by either A) undeniable logic or B) undeniably boorish longwinded halfwitted (or is that long witted and half winded?) diatribes…
in fairness, there are multiple competing ghreads–let us assume that in our case, the cream has risen to the top, so to speak.
Well, I’ve been a long time lurker, time to unlurk … as a cartoonist who has drawn his own 12 cartoons of the Prophet (PBUH), I have a personal stake in this question. Some nut-job half way around the world now wants to cut off my hand.
The issue here is not “should we be nice to our neighbours, and not offend them”? Of course we should.
The issue here, as the quote above clearly shows, is “should we allow our neighbours to threaten and intimidate us”? This is the real issue.
As a cartoonist with a hand in the balance, it was frightening to draw the cartoons, they carry a life sentence, and I thought about it hard. But I can’t let religious wackos in another country define what I can draw. That’s not on.
I could only wish the papers like the Boston Phoenix would grasp the nettle and print the cartoons, I wish everyone would see the Danish cartoons and my cartoons and laugh (unlike a number of the Danish cartoons, mine are funny … or maybe you just have to be Danish) until the last embittered mullah was laughed into silence.
Because what is at stake here is a curious freedom, our freedom to laugh. We have the right to laugh at all religions, all religious figures and symbols, all politicians, and all totalitarian dictators. We are entitled to laugh at all presidents and generals, priests and mullahs,and all dads and moms and kids. We can laugh at at cows and catastrophes, Bibles and Korans, and eventually, at the bottom of it all, we are laughing at ourselves, and it keeps us sane. We have an inalienable right to laugh at anything.
Now it’s bad enough that our right to laugh at what we want to laugh at is under attack. Unfortunately, the news from the Cartoon War is much worse that. It’s not just any attack, its under religious attack. Make no mistake. Think about it. This is an attempt to force people to obey the laws of someone else’s religion, by means of violence and threats.
And as a cartoonist, I say that what we should do is to resist this extortion by laughter.
What we should not do, on the other hand, is to engage in things like the Iranian newspaper contest for Holocaust cartoons. Why not? After all, if we have the right to laugh at anything, how does their contest differ from laughing at gods and prophets, at cows and presidents, at moms and moonshine?
The difference is simple. The Iranians are laughing at other people’s personal tragedy. In my universe, that’s just not on.
As a cartoonist myself, I defend the Iranians’ right to draw cartoons about, and to laugh at, anything in this crazy, wide world.
But I would not laugh with them about the Holocaust. I feel that it is despicable to make fun of other people’s tragic pain and sorrow in that manner. Laughing at the Prophet, or at Jesus, or Buddha, or Thor, is fundamentally and radically different from making fun of a mother who has lost her child, or laughing at a daughter who has lost her parents. It is a shameful thing to laugh at sorrowful tragedy, whether it is a person’s tragedy, or a people’s tragedy.
So I would say … in addition to prosecuting people caught threatening someone or committing violence about this issue, and in addition to throwing their sorry buns into jail for a long time for religious extortion … in addition to that, I say, we should keep reprinting the old cartoons, and writing new ones, keep laughing, and keep it light.
They can never stop us from laughing, and eventually, the Muslim world will get the message that, while they are welcome to follow their peculiar religious pathways and restrictions, we don’t have to. We are a free people, we even laugh at ourselves.
Keep laughing, …
w.
intention - w -, Can I have your baby?
intention, I agree with everything you’ve written here. Excellent post.
Um … yeah, sure, but I have to warn you, she’s 14 now, and kinda headstrong …