Who here thinks that the Mohammed cartoons...

[daedalus_dude]

...would have caused the same reaction if the United States and "The West" hadn't been waging two wars of aggression against predominantly islamic countries at the same time?

I don't buy the idea that the reaction came as it did simply because "Muslims are pretty thin skinned when it comes to their religion" or
because "they envy our lifestyle and feel inferiour".

I think it was caricatures, in combination with the slaughters is what caused the reaction and drew people to compare the cartoons to anti-jewish caricartures of the third reich.

I am a secularist and generally fond of people who make fun of religion.

However, when one is actively engaged in a war against a particular religion (and despite what people say, I do believe that during the Bush years the USA and the NATO were at war against Islam, since Bush has called the wars "crusade" on several accounts) then cartoons making fun of that religion become war propaganda. If one is engaged in the spreading of war propaganda, one should not be surprised if "the enemy" responds against this with acts of war.

[bridgit]

1. some religions...just aren't funny and that's the end of it period

[Fumesucker]

2. There are a great many things that aren't funny when you are caught up in them..

That are hilarious when you look at them from a different perspective.

I find religion to be a prime example of this fact, unfunny in the extreme in one way, side-splittingly, roll on the floor funny in another way.

[bridgit]

8. Oh no there's a whimsical side to it: Vincent van Gogh...

Theo van Gogh - http://www.blogofdeath.com/archives/001211.html


So that in this modern world of ours artifacted with dusty, half-broken sextants scrawled with scratchy Farsi at best bounding neath a silvery cresent moon aboard the Philistine ship mutinty from stern to bow where we await...

Islam's dirty laundry
http://www.blackapologetics.com/blacknorafrican.html

[armyowalgreens]

3. Life is about perspective. Our entire existence is a comedy...

At some points, it seems more serious than usual. But when we really come to terms with the absurdity of our reality, it really sheds some light on the hilarity of our rituals.

[Scurrilous]

4. In comedy, timing is everything..

...and it was a bad time to trot out those cartoons.

[winter999]

27. These were more of a 'political cartoon' type. Timing was dead-on.

[Heidi]

5. How funny do you suppose our largely Christian nation would find it

if it were occupied by a non-Christian force that found it hilarious to lampoon Christianity? There are situations where faith is all some folks have left; for an occupier to heap salt on a gaping wound is ill-advised at best, especially if you helped inflict the wound. :hi:

[winter999]

28. Christianity is lampooned, mocked, insulted in just about

every city in every country where freedom of speech is exercised. Just one example: google "piss christ"

[Heidi]

30. Context is everything, though, isn't it? Serrano's piece wasn't war propaganda.

As far as I know, Andres Serrano has never been an occupying force in the US or anywhere else, for that matter. But if he had been, would you have been surprised in Christian Americans (and the US is largely a Christian nation, regardless of what our founding fathers may have intended) had responded with acts of war? The OP isn't saying that Christians aren't mocked, or that freedom of expression should be abridged, or that a violent response to political propaganda is necessarily appropriate. The OP is saying that if we mock the folks we're waging war against, we shouldn't be surprised if they respond violently.

However, when one is actively engaged in a war against a particular religion (and despite what people say, I do believe that during the Bush years the USA and the NATO were at war against Islam, since Bush has called the wars "crusade" on several accounts) then cartoons making fun of that religion become war propaganda. If one is engaged in the spreading of war propaganda, one should not be surprised if "the enemy" responds against this with acts of war.

[Duende azul]

6. You may have a point here, the toons becoming war propaganda.

If they were intended to be that - who knows.


btw. who urecd this? A thoughtful post, worth discussing.

[armyowalgreens]

7. I unrec'd it because I think the OP is wrong...

I am about to elaborate in my post.

[JCMach1]

9. You guys seem to have forgotten how people reacted to 'Piss Christ'

http://www.uniurb.it/Filosofia/bibliografie/Bataille_GiuliaFrattini/images/Serrano%20Andres,%20Piss%20Christ%201987.jpg

The piece caused a scandal when it was exhibited in 1989, with detractors, including United States Senators Al D'Amato and Jesse Helms, outraged that Serrano received $15,000 for the work, part of it from the taxpayer-funded National Endowment for the Arts. Supporters argued the Piss Christ is an issue of artistic freedom and freedom of speech. Others alleged that the government funding of Piss Christ violated separation of church and state.<2><3>

Sister Wendy Beckett, an art critic and Catholic nun, stated in a television interview with Bill Moyers that she regarded the work as not blasphemous but a statement on "what we have done to Christ" - that is, the way contemporary society has come to regard Christ and the values he represents.<4>

During a retrospective of Serrano's work at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1997, the then Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, George Pell, sought an injunction from the Supreme Court of Victoria to restrain the National Gallery of Victoria from publicly displaying Piss Christ, which was not granted. Some days later, one patron attempted to remove the work from the gallery wall, and two teenagers later attacked it with a hammer.<5> The director of the NGV cancelled the show, allegedly out of concern for a Rembrandt exhibition that was also on display at the time.<6>... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ

I am sure DUers can think of other equivalents!

[Raspberry]

11. Were there death threats?

Did anyone have to apologize and grovel the way editors did over the cartoons?

[bridgit]

15. Far worse than that, there were threats to cut off funding for the arts...

:(

[bridgit]

13. Chocolate Christ

It is the folly of man from whichever side of the street he choses to walk on that he believes his leaders, clergy and especially his religious leaders, are not able to be dissolved like a pillar salt in a summer rain before his very eyes...I suppose we may need to just bow before such displays of resolute innocence and that includes Mohammed...imo of course

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wfamPW3Eaw

[Freddie Stubbs]

16. How many people died in the riots subsequent to the 'Piss Christ' exhibit?

:shrug:

[ProgressiveProfessor]

36. Poppycock...no one rioted and no one died over Piss Christ

[JCMach1]

38. The end of funding was pretty damn close to death

in some respects...

Many people have died in abortion clinic attacks where people have spoken out against the religious 'dogma' on the issue.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

39. I never thought that ending funding for the arts was the equivalent to a riot

While I consider the anti's violence a form of terrorism, its not in the same league as rioting over cartoons.

[JCMach1]

40. I see it as the same in the sense that both are acts designed

to silence free speech...

The means (of course) are different.

[armyowalgreens]

10. Islam puts great emphasis on aniconism...

More so than pretty much any other religion I can think of. Each religion tends to pick out parts from their respective scripture to strictly follow.

One of those, in Islam, is the avoidance of graphic representations of holy figures.

I'm not surprised at all that there was such a backlash because of the cartoons. Especially considering the fact that the cartoons were intended as mockery. Those two issues combine to create great offense in the muslim world.

If you notice, Christianity actually enjoys visually portraying figures like Jesus Christ. Each religion has a different set of pressure points.

[cali]

12. oh I think it's quite likely. after all, look at the fatwa against

Rushdie. That happened originally in 1989.

[Raspberry]

14. Salman Rushdie

wrote _The Satanic Verses_ many years before Iraq II and Afghanistan. I believe it was even written before Iraq I. He had to spend decades in hiding because of a fatwah issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini. (I don't have time to google this a.m. so I'm not real sure about the dates, etc.)

No, the uproar over the cartoons had less to do with our illegal wars than it did about the radical religionists.

[daedalus_dude]

17. Ok. But that was a singular person being denied freedom of speech by a government.

This happens regularly in authoritarian countries, not only in islamic ones. And for a number of reasons.

BUT, did the publication of the satanic verses in other countries cause thousands to hit the streets in anger at that time?

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

18. Yes, there were

Plus, they bombed bookstores in the UK and in California.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/01/world/2-bookstores-in-berkeley-are-firebombed-rushdie-tie-is-explored.html

HTH.

[cali]

21. uh, yes. and it was all about religion and supposed blasphemy/defamation

it's a very close parallel to the cartoon brouhaha.

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. Its wasn't freedom of speech in one country; it was a call for his murder anywhere in the world

And other people, like a translator, were murdered over 'The Satanic Verses':

What the mixed responses pointed to was that, right from the start, The Satanic Verses affair was less a theological dispute than an opportunity to exert political leverage. The background to the controversy was the struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran to be the standard bearer of global Islam. The Saudis had spent a great deal of money exporting the fundamentalist or Salafi version of Sunni Islam, while Shiite Iran, still smarting from a calamitous war and humiliating armistice with Iraq, was keen to reassert its credentials as the vanguard of the Islamic revolution. Both the Saudis and Iranians saw a new constituency, ripe for exploitation, in the small British protest groups that initially responded to The Satanic Verses with book-burning demonstrations. But in fact the protesters who took to the streets in Bradford and other mill towns were themselves the offspring of other far-off theocratic politics in the subcontinent.
...
The years following the fatwa were also a damaging and sometimes lethal period for many of those associated with The Satanic Verses, few of whom had any protection. In April 1989 Collets, the left-wing bookshop, and Dillons were firebombed for stocking the Rushdie novel. A month later there were explosions in High Wycombe and London's King's Road. There was a bomb in the Liberty department store which housed a Penguin Bookshop (Penguin was the publisher of The Satanic Verses) and at the York Penguin bookshop. Unexploded devices were also discovered at the Nottingham, Guildford and Peterborough branches of the store.

In August the same year Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh accidentally blew himself up in a Paddington hotel room while priming a bomb intended to kill Rushdie. Meanwhile Rushdie's marriage to the American author Marianne Wiggins did not long survive the pressures of life in hiding. Rushdie was at a low ebb and writing very little. Amis wrote: "I often tell him that if the Rushdie Affair were, for instance, the Amis Affair, then I would, by now, be a tearful and tranquillised 300-pounder, with no eyelashes or nostril hairs, and covered in blotches and burns from various misadventures with the syringe and the crackpipe."

Rushdie sought another way out. On Christmas Eve 1990 he issued a statement bearing witness that "there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his last prophet". Claiming to have renewed his faith in Islam, he said he did not agree with any character in The Satanic Verses who "casts aspersions... upon the authenticity of the holy Qur'an, or who rejects the divinity of Allah". He also said he would not release a paperback of the book. That evening he was so disgusted with himself that he was physically sick. The playwright Arnold Wesker, a Rushdie supporter, said: "The religious terrorists have won." Hitchens recalls: "I told Salman that it didn't make any difference to my support for him but that I didn't think it would 'work' and that I didn't think it was dignified. I think he felt much better after he re-apostasised: it was a sort of Gethsemane - if you will forgive the expression - after which he was determined to see the whole thing through." Years later Rushdie would publicly say it was the biggest mistake of his life, a "deranged" moment when he had hit rock bottom. In the event, it made no difference. Though Khomeini was now dead, the Iranian clergy confirmed that Rushdie still had to be killed. The following year Hitoshi Igarashi, Rushdie's Japanese translator, was stabbed to death and Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator, seriously injured in another knife attack. In 1993 William Nygaard, the publisher in Norway, was shot and injured, and Aziz Nesin, the Turkish translator, was the target of the Silvas massacre in Turkey that left 37 dead in an arson attack on a hotel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/11/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses

[DailyGrind51]

19. Denmark didn't wage any wars of aggression, but were targetted for cartoons.

[KDLarsen]

33. We were in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time

So sadly, I suppose in the twisted minds of fundamentalists, we were waging a war on Islam.

[Zywiec]

20. Dutch filmmaker critical of Islam killed

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — A filmmaker who was the great-grandnephew of the painter Vincent van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street Tuesday after receiving death threats over a movie he made criticizing the treatment of women under Islam.

<snip>

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-11-02-filmmaker-killed_x.htm

[SeriousEbony]

22. Cue Satanic Verses and other triggers of the sick

A major education effort needs started to remove the people teaching this ignorance from society.

[cali]

23. "remove these people from society". What people, what society and just how the fuck do

you propose "removing" them?

[winter999]

29. I'll take a stab at this!

In the 3rd world Islamic regions, mullah hold the power of knowledge and teach the masses how to hate. They teach through religion, culture and emotion. The way to "take them out" is to introduce an academic environment where the people can learn fact and reason, open debate and research. Notice that schools are regularly bombed. (hell, there was some Sudanese mullah schmuck that spreading that rain doesn't come from evaporation and condensation, but that Allah makes it. no lie).

With real education, the mullah's loose power. Once again, we see this as Power in the hands of the Few, keeping the Common Man controlled.

This is a real world case where "The Truth Shall Set You Free".

[SeriousEbony]

31. Remove as in stop them from teaching this crap to every generation

I do not know how to stop them, I just know if we prevent them from teaching this death and hate
we will have a brighter future.

[TexasObserver]

24. Like the GOP, most religions cannot see themselves for what they are.

People pick a religion that reflects their prejudices, and those prejudices are often vile, hate filled creeds which attempt to control all manner of human behaviors in the name of some entity they claim is God.

The idea that the religious are owed anything by those who don't agree with their beliefs is bizarre. They choose to embrace their hocus pocus, and if others want to ridicule their beliefs, they should accept that when they believe in fairy tales, some sane persons will laugh at them.

If they don't want to see cartoons that offend them, they can pluck their eyes out (like Jesus recommended). Or, just exercise a little personal restraint and not look at things that offend them.

[Soylent Brice]

25. K&U

and this is probably my 2nd or 3rd unrec, ever.

this post displays a huge lack of understanding of cultures different than your own. no one disagrees that there was an obvious over-reaction, but what you're proposing is silly.

if you're in search of propaganda just pull up every youtube clip of fox news you can find leading up to the Iraq war.

in other words, i think you're reaching. and this is coming from someone who keeps a tinfoil hat in my back pocket.

[Raspberry]

35. For some people,

everything bad has to be "our" fault, somehow. The OP has been proven wrong repeatedly in this thread, yet keeps coming up with reasons to say the disproof is the exception. *sigh*

Kind of like abused wives who think they're responsible for their own abuse.

[dorkulon]

26. Bullshit.

The Danes didn't attack anyone, and idiots killed people and burned buildings over cartoons. They put a price on the heads of cartoonists. Sorry, but that's not okay. It's not something to ponder. The people who did those things are moronic scum. And no, that's not Muslims in general, as I'm sure nearly all of them were also shaking their heads in disbelief.

[KDLarsen]

34. For what it's worth..

The whole debacle surrounding the cartoons didn't really take off, until a group of Danish radical muslims went on a tour of the Islamic arab countries and started agitating for it. They had a dossier made up, including stuff that wasn't even related to the cartoons nor muslims, which they claimed showed how the Danes were waging a war on Islam, and how the Muslims needed to stand up and fight for their religion.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

37. You are wrong...muslims insist on enforcing their views on others and it must be stopped

My preferred way is to mock them at every opportunity. Consider opening pork BBQ restaurants and liquor stores next to mosques, post copies of the cartoons and caricatures where you can, and generally point out how just how backwards islam and the sharia is in the modern world.

[Ani Yun Wiya]

41. And where is it

that you picked up such an intelligent viewpoint ?
(You used no sarcasm thingy, so I didn't either.)

edit to add question mark.