I wouldn’t characterize the Christians in this thread as fundy-tards, but for their benefit, I think a review of the video is in order…
*SARAH: And he [Jesus] told me how he was really bummed by all these–
JESUS: --people who use my name for intolerance and oppression.*
Note that the message of the video is not aimed at Christianity or Jesus in general, but directly at “people who use my name for intolerance and oppression”. Later, she explains, for those unfamiliar with the concept of a free and open society, separation of church and state, and that “Using religion to dictate legislation is un-American. But it’s happening.”
It’s not about whatever Muslim fundies are doing elsewhere in the world. It’s about what Christian fundies are doing in your own country. If you’re going to object to anything, I’d think it would be the lunatics abusing your God for their twisted purposes, rather than someone bringing attention to their idiocy.
And if you had mentioned “$3 Margarita Pitchers for Taco Tuesday” I would have left that out too because it would have been just as irrelevant.
Dirt-poor disenfranchised Mississippians who happen to be Christians don’t get to claim that they are disenfranchised because of their religion. And I don’t have to care about their feelings just because they are poor. People don’t have the right to not be offended.
Making fun of a powerless individual is mean even if that powerless individual happens to be a Christian. Humor that takes aim at the Christian power structure in this country is entirely different.
And I don’t get this certainty that all comedians are just wishing they could make fun of Muslims but they don’t because they’re afraid they’ll get their head chopped off. Why do you think all these comedians are resisting some deeply help desire to make fun of Muslims?
I do stand-up comedy. I do not do any jokes about pygmy hippos. Know why? Because pygmy hippos have no fucking relevance to my everyday life NOR the everyday lives of my audience. Same reason I don’t do jokes about Muslims: because they have no relevance to my life. While I’m questioning what topics I want to address, Muslims never come to mind. What comes to mind are issues, experiences, and topics that actually have meaning for me. I’m not avoiding any elephant in the room: there is no elephant.
Rationalize it all you want. It all comes down to “It’s not faaaiiiirrr! Why are you making fun of meeeeeee? Why don’t you make fun of that guy!?!?!?”
I seem to be getting a lot of use out of this clip lately, but the point of it is that the reason most comedians don’t mock Mohammed is because the vast majority of Americans (and British) don’t know anything about Mohammed and thus have no context for the jokes (although that doesn’t stop some people from using Mohammed to do social commentary in comic form), whereas even atheists and Muslims in Western countries know a lot about Jesus and Christianity due to its pervasive influence in all parts of the culture. What is better and more widely known about Islam is modern Islamic extremism and terrorist rhetoric and behavior, which is lampooned without fear by quite a lot of people, running the gamut from Achmed the Dead Terrorist to the excellent Four Lions. There are comedians who will make jokes about anything, no matter how sacred, if only it will get a laugh. Mohammed jokes don’t have a big audience.
None of which is really that relevant to what appears to be Sarah Silverman’s point, which is that some of the self-appointed guardians of Christ’s message tend to ignore the bits of that message they don’t like. The rest is just her being goofy in a mildly edgy fashion.
I grew up hearing people say that they had to/couldn’t eat/wear/do/read/study various things, because they were Jewish/Muslim/Hindu/Catholic/Baptist/whatever. I always wondered what they were afraid of. Almost all religions seem to have arbitrary ethics, where it’s not about results or even intent, it’s about some words in some old book (the Friends/Quakers are a notable exception, though some of them aren’t technically religious, just identifiers with the philosophy. That’s true for some others, I suppose.) So, what’s the reason for all the prohibitions/proscriptions/commandments, if not to avoid angering a deity? People are always talking about an interventionist deity blessing or smiting people with regards to health, weather, accidents, employment, foul shots…
I’d imagine most people follow religious rules with an eye on the afterlife rather than a fear of immediate retribution. Even if you’re the type to believe that God is punishing gays with hurricanes, that’s still a far stretch from “I drew a picture and wasn’t immediately turned to ash by a lightning bolt therefore God is fake!”
This is neither here nor there about the existence of the divine, just that the “draw a picture of Mohammed” means of testing seems designed completely around stroking their own ego and little else.
This has probably been studied, and I’m curious about it. Don’t Protestants say that one’s fate in the afterlife has nothing to do with actions, and everything to do with “accepting Christ”- in other words, avoiding the punishment for thoughtcrime? Don’t Jews not have a hell? I’m surprised I don’t seem to recall the Islamic stance.
As for drawing Mohammed (and other kinds of blasphemy, a victimless crime), it would seem to have more to do with demonstrating that arbitrary religious strictures need not (and will not) apply to the rest of society that finds them ludicrous, and not worthy of respect. Religion is fair game, since it’s a choice, and one that has consequences. I would add that the desire to piss off society’s most uptight, retrograde elements is pretty powerful.
The actual comment I was responding to was (bolding mine):
A lack of immediate “divine wrath” proves nothing so, if that was their intent, it was a rather misguided one. If we’re moving the goalposts to just “We’re just doing it because we think your rules are dumb, so there” then I suppose they managed to accomplish saying that they thought the rule was dumb.
