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October 14, 2005
Cartoons have Muslims threatening newspaper
Topics: Understanding Islam
Death threats have forced daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten to hire security guards to protect its employees, after printing twelve cartoons featuring the prophet Muhammad.
The newspaper has been accused of deliberately provoking and insulting Muslims by publishing cartoons of Muslim's founder, after urging cartoonists to send in drawings of the prophet, following an author's complained that nobody dared to illustrate his book on Muhammad. The author claimed that illustrators feared that extremist Muslims would find it sacrilegious to break the Islamic ban on depicting Muhammad.
Twelve illustrators responded to the newspaper's call for images, and sent in cartoons of Muhammad, all of which were published in the newspaper earlier this month.
Making fun of the image of the founder of a religion - definitely not art and inappropriate. Worthy of death threats - most definitely not and common only to one religion (sic) - Islam.
As to the above image, it certainly does depict an image of Islamists and their founder that stands for what we've both experienced and are now learning about Islam. And as to "experiencing" and learning about Islam, I believe that readers can agree that the world has already experienced and already learned far more about its depravity than we ever wanted or need to know.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe - "Seven held in Dutch anti-terror raids sweep." The arrests are related to the murder of Theo van Gogh, in which a Muslim already carried out a death threat and has subsequently announced that he felt no remorse for his crime.
As for HOLLYWOOD'S REACTION to van Gogh's murder: Roger Simon wrote at the time that there was zero interest from tinseltown and noted wryly that the trial that got most coverage at that time was Roman Polanski vs. Vanity Fair. Read his whole post.
Posted by Richard at October 14, 2005 2:27 PM
Making fun of the image of the founder of a religion - definitely not art and inappropriate.
L. Ron Hubbard? Wiccans?
People mock religions all the time. Or is it only "some" religions that qualify for a "scoff free zone"?
Posted by: Purple Avenger at October 14, 2005 4:25 PM
Purple Avenger does have a point, and I agree that no one particular religion should be "excluded" from being made fun of, while another or others should be subject to humor or ridicule. In today's secular society, humor is humor, and yes, everything is fair game, at least within the bounds of good taste. Cartoons such as we see here are certainly within the bounds of good taste, and given that the followers of Islam have allowed it to be so closely associated with violence, hate, death, and intolerance, it's difficult to give it a free pass on sterotyping and ridicule.
I have to admit that when I made the comment that "Making fun of the image of the founder of a religion - definitely not art and inappropriate," I was thinking more of something more in line with the New York art exhibit that displayed "Piss Christ" - definately not a cartoon and certainly over the line of decency and good taste.
Of course, we didn't hear anything about nor were there any death threats coming from Christians when that was presented.
But of course, when it comes to Islam and the reaction of Muslims to such occurances, that's the kind of thing that we've all learned to expect!
As for the cartoon of Muhammad, I think it's humorous, appropriate, and in good taste. And, for what we know about his history and the Islamists views of his teachings, complete with jihad and sharia - damned accurate.
Posted by: Richard at October 14, 2005 11:02 PM
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