# So much for the idea that only Muslims threaten violence over images they don't like **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 11, 2008, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931 "2008-04-11T19:14:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/1 "2008-04-11T19:14:37Z")
[Furor Over Last Supper Orgy Drawing](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/11/international/i104156D51.DTL&tsp=1) Some Christians have threatened to come to Vienna and blow up museums after a museum there shows an artwork depicting Jesus and the disciples having an orgy on the table where the Last Supper was served. So much for the idea that only Muslims threaten to do such things… ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/2 "2008-04-11T19:41:30Z")
Uh huh. Well, I don’t know who spread that idea myself. Kooks in every crowd and all that. I should point out that in the case of fatwas, they often go way beyond mere threats. But you knew that. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/3 "2008-04-11T19:49:10Z")
Where in the article does it say that people were threatening violence? And what is the debate? ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/4 "2008-04-11T19:49:10Z")
Response that “a real Christian” wouldn’t do this and therefore those doing the threatening aren’t real christians in 5…4…3… -Joe ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/5 "2008-04-11T19:50:52Z")
[QUOTE=Anne Neville] **only Muslims** threaten to do such things… [/QUOTE] Gee, it would be nice to change the position of one word: Suppose we could honestly say “muslims **only** threaten to do such things” The world might be a more peaceful place. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/6 "2008-04-11T19:53:54Z")
[QUOTE=Anne Neville] an artwork depicting Jesus and the disciples having an orgy on the table where the Last Supper was served. [/QUOTE] Hey, I have that movie on my hard drive! Okay, yeah, I threw that out for a laugh, but I actually do…of course, if the average Christian saw all the stuff I have on my hard drive, that movie would be the least of their shocks, I’m sure… ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/7 "2008-04-11T19:57:02Z")
[QUOTE=Anne Neville] [Furor Over Last Supper Orgy Drawing](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/11/international/i104156D51.DTL&tsp=1) Some Christians have threatened to come to Vienna and blow up museums after a museum there shows an artwork depicting Jesus and the disciples having an orgy on the table where the Last Supper was served. So much for the idea that only Muslims threaten to do such things… [/QUOTE] Oh, well, maybe bootlicking liberals will finally start giving Christians as much respect as they give Muslims. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/8 "2008-04-11T20:04:26Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Where in the article does it say that people were threatening violence? [/QUOTE] > [@](#): > > “I’ve even seen Web postings from extremists who have threatened to come to Vienna and blow up its museums with Molotov cocktails,” exhibition curator Michael Kaufmann said Friday. No mention whether those who threatened violence claimed to be Christians. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/9 "2008-04-11T20:10:36Z")
A big boo and a hiss to Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn for knuckling under and removing the Last Supper orgy picture. Kudos to Jyllands-Posten and other papers for reprinting the Muhammad cartoons when new threats regarding them came out. [QUOTE=John Mace] Where in the article does it say that people were threatening violence? [/QUOTE] Fifth paragraph: > [@](#): > > “I’ve even seen Web postings from extremists who have threatened to come to Vienna and blow up its museums with Molotov cocktails,” exhibition curator Michael Kaufmann said Friday. > [@chappachula](#): > > Gee, it would be nice to change the position of one word: > Suppose we could honestly say “muslims only threaten to do such things” > > The world might be a more peaceful place. It would. I’d love it if nobody ever physically attacked anybody over any artwork, no matter how offensive to their religion. I’d prefer it if nobody ever threatened violence over any artwork even if it is offensive to their religion, but no actual violence would be a huge step in the right direction. ---
**Author:** ![Renob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8c91f0/32.png) [@Renob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renob)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/10 "2008-04-11T20:11:39Z")
I believe you can begin to draw moral equivalency once there are large demonstrations across a variety of Christian nations (or nations with a majority of Christians in them), Christian preachers condemning the artist to death, and calls by Christian leaders to outlaw such pictures. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/11 "2008-04-11T20:14:44Z")
Have to (shocking, to me) agree with **Mr. Moto** on this one. The question isn’t whether or not Christians and Muslims can find some art that ridicules their beliefs insulting, or that some subset of these will threaten or even respond with violence. The question is, what is the scope of such a reaction, and is it tempered with a legitimate regard for free speech issues? I don’t have much of a look into overseas Muslim culture other than what a managed media tells me, but I’d say the Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons was of a different character than the debate being described in the article. Muslim voices seemed uniformly negative–at least I didn’t hear any Muslim representatives defending the cartoons–and there seemed to be a genuine bewilderment that anyone would publish such cartoons for any reason other than to commit sacrilege against the Prophet. Moreover, it seemed Muslim leaders like Ahmadinejad in Iran used the cartoon to score political points with their subjects, who have been fed a steady diet of Western demonization. Not to sasy that doesn’t go on in the West (cf. Rudy Giuliani’s public denunciation in 1999 of a New York artist’s depiction of the Virgin Mary using dung), but it doesn’t seem to be as widespread or calculated as in Muslim nations. I realize this post may come off as insulting to followers of Islam, and for that I apologize. But there is clearly a stronger link/influence between Islam and government in the Muslim world than between Christianity and government in the West (that doesn’t mean there is none, just that the Western one is less pronounced; I doubt, for example, you’ll find anything truly equivalent to the Islamic fatwa in modern Christian practice). I’ll also say that certain Western values that are key to a sound democracy are not as core to the Muslim experience (at least as practiced in the Middle East), and one of those values is free speech. Again, that’s not intended as an insult, just an opinion based on the facts as I have them. And it’s not to say democracies in the West (and even rare Muslim democracies like Turkey) don’t struggle with the same issues. But there’s an order-of-magnitude difference in the two reactions to the Austrian artwork and the Danish cartoons. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/12 "2008-04-11T20:17:56Z")
> [@](#): > > “The protests came primarily out of fundamentalist Christian circles in the USA and Germany,” [museum director Boehler] said, referring to various Web sites. It’s them furriners agin! ---
**Author:** ![Wee\_Bairn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90db22/32.png) [@Wee\_Bairn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wee_Bairn)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/13 "2008-04-11T20:26:03Z")
Is there a link to the drawing anywhere? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/14 "2008-04-11T20:38:31Z")
[QUOTE=Anne Neville] Fifth paragraph: [/QUOTE] Second had reports about “web postings” by “extremists”. Puhleez. Anyone trying to equate this incident with the Mohammed cartoons is going to have do better than that. Besides, who ever said that Muslims were the only group to threaten violence over images they don’t like. This strawman OP belongs in the Pit, not GD. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/15 "2008-04-11T20:46:24Z")
In Christianity, raising a fuss or worse over offensive images is a [very ancient tradition.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconoclasm) ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/16 "2008-04-11T21:50:38Z")
[QUOTE=Renob] I believe you can begin to draw moral equivalency once there are large demonstrations across a variety of Christian nations (or nations with a majority of Christians in them), Christian preachers condemning the artist to death, and calls by Christian leaders to outlaw such pictures. [/QUOTE] Exactly. The big difference from what I got out of the article is that the primary source of the outrage over the piece of art is _where_ it was displayed, not that it was displayed at all. And the article mentions that there were NO protests at either venue where the artwork was displayed. Let’s play devil’s advocate and imagine, given the uproar over Muhammed with a bomb drawn on his head in a cartoon in a publication, that the very same depiction of Muhammed were displayed in a mosque in the Middle East. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2008, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/17 "2008-04-12T03:45:08Z")
I find it funny that this thread is trying to die. I don’t want it to, given it’s free speech implications. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2008, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/18 "2008-04-12T03:48:51Z")
[QUOTE=Merijeek] Response that “a real Christian” wouldn’t do this and therefore those doing the threatening aren’t real christians in 5…4…3… [/QUOTE] Counter-response that “a real Christian” **would** do this and therefore those not doing the threatening aren’t real christians in 5…4…3… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2008, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/19 "2008-04-12T04:02:32Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] In Christianity, raising a fuss or worse over offensive images is a [very ancient tradition.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconoclasm) [/QUOTE] No one has ever tried to hide Christianity’s past but this is the 21st century. The differences are substantial to say the least. I think what makes this event unusual is the venue. Christians are pretty used to being rideculed but if I read the article correctly it is a musem that is owned/operated by a Christian church. That makes it pretty obnoxious. If that was my parish I’d be grabbing a pitchfork and marchin right along with the town-folk. Somebody got some splainin to do. If it was just a nude chocolate Jesus at a hotel it would get a letter. But this is pretty in-your-face and deserving of code-pink liberal moon-babie behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2008, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931/20 "2008-04-12T08:40:30Z")
[QUOTE=Magiver] Somebody got some splainin to do. [/QUOTE] Did you overlook the following in the article? I thought it was explained rather concisely: > [@](#): > > “There is a long dialogue between art and the church,” Boehler **[director of the cathedral museum]** added. “For the church, the quality is decisive — not the piety of the artwork.” > … > “We were really sensitive” in choosing which works to show, he **[Kaufmann, the exhibition curator]** said, “and for me, the etching is fantastic.” > > Even **[Cardinal]** Schoenborn paid homage to Hrdlicka as “one of Austria’s most important living artists.” > … > Kaufmann concedes the whole point of the exhibition backfired badly. > > “Their intention was to show that the church is wide open,” he said. “Alfred (Hrdlicka) is more Christian than many people who go to church each Sunday.” Bolding added by me for clarity as to who said what. Note that second-to-last sentence in particular. Also note that, while I think people who spew vitriol about artwork they find offensive are dumb (or have misplaced priorities at best), I think that the OP’s equivalence is incorrect – threats of violence (by a small group of blog posters) are not the same as actual violence. When Austria’s embassy in another country is firebombed because of the art, then we can revisit this. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-much-for-the-idea-that-only-muslims-threaten-violence-over-images-they-dont-like/444931.md?page=2)