The Mohamed Cartoon

[Fenrir]

Iam sure that most of you have heard of the contraversy in France over this drawing of Mohamed I want to see the picture but I am having a hard time all I can find is this.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Gallery/Mo_Cartoons.jpg

and that doesn't seem that offensive

[vrikasatma]

Not just heard about it...seen 'em, drawn an opinion, blogged several times on the subject and continue to follow its progress on a daily basis.

My take in a nutshell: the Muslims are over-reacting, the violence has lapped whatever sin they might have committed via idolatry (hey! I'd pick idolatry over monolatry any day! I'm offended! ) However, I grant them the mitigating factor that most of the people protesting haven't seen the cartoons and therefore haven't formed an opinion for themselves, they've just had to take their leaders at their word that the West has insulted Islam. Leaders, it should go noted, who as a rule espouse the use of torture, censorship and suicide as tools to the attaining and maintenance of power. But it's not much of a mitigating factor.

Side note: I respect and commend the clerics who took a stand and waded into the crowds to stop the violence, physically and personally. IMO, they should get the 72 virgins, not the guys with the SMGs and grenades because they did more to defend Islam than anyone else has in recent memory. Good on 'em.

[Jarden]

In the Muslim community it's like a sin to depict Mohamed. Thats what started it. Now they just want to burn things. So yes, I believe they are blowing it way out of Proportion.

[Fenrir]

If iam not mistaken this is what started the war between France and Germany in the late 1800's

[vrikasatma]

It's also a sin to drink alcohol but Omar Khayyam, Persian poet, wrote about it. He's the one who came up with the quote, "A book of verse, a jug of wine, and Thou." Why didn't they censor that?

Why didn't they go off the deep end when <i>Road Warrior</i> came out and one of the characters referred to Humongous as "The Ayatollah of Rock 'n Rollah"? Rock 'n roll is banned in Iran, as I understand it (it was DEFINITELY banned under the Taliban in Afghanistan, in fact all music was banned), so that's disrespectful and blasphemous. Why didn't they burn down the Australian embassy over that?

How come they get to not only diss every other religion on the face of the planet but can force conversion at gunpoint, often literally, and can't stand it if someone calls them on their s***? (Sorry mods, I'm calling a spade a spade)

We hear it all the time, "This is an insult to Islam!" and the beatings and burnings and beheadings commence. One of the things that totally got Osama's goat and started him planning attacks on the United States was the film "Baraka." They showed footage of the Prophet's tomb in Mecca and the Crystal Shrine in Baghdad; and Osama went off the deep end because non-Islamic eyes were viewing sacred loci. They were going to blow up people during the height of the pilgrimage season in Mecca — their own people, for God's sake! — because of that. And non-Islamic eyes are reading the Koran as we speak. I talked to a cabbie who's studied it as a work of world literature, he didn't convert. Heck, I've read some of it, there are imams out there whose forehead veins would turn purple at the thought of a woman reading *anything*. Guess nobody bothered to tell them that with understanding comes respect...

[Fenrir]

I know quite a few Muslims and they aren't that bad it's the extremists who are horrible just like the inquisition

[vrikasatma]

I didn't mean all Muslims — I don't know many but I do know it's always the extremist factions that make everyone look bad. Apologies if this was misconstrued as a blanket statement.

[Note to self: assume going in that people are going to assume you're making a blanket statement and wright wordfields with this in mind...]

Unfortunately, as is true in any case, it only takes one or two jerks with a you-suck attitude and a taste for blood to totally upend a situation and turn it ugly...

[Scott Gardener]

Fundamentalism isn't interested in rational thinking, fairness, or equality. They want to see the entire world converted or destroyed. So, they do not see it as hypocracy to blow up statues of Buddha, brutalize and enslave women, or do all those things in the name of Allah that blatently defy the Koran and the teachings of the majority of Muslim clerics. You can't reason with these people.

They are where Christianity was in the 1500s, right around the time that hundreds of thousands of people were tied to sticks and set on fire for crimes of witchcraft and lycanthropy. And, unlike me, the overwhelming majority of those killed were neither Wiccan nor therianthropic. They simply made convenient scapegoats.

You could not convince the Spanish Inquisition that brutal torture and execution was against the teachings of Jesus. Likewise, the Fundamentalist factions that have infested Islam today are beyond logic and reason.

That said, if depicting Mohammed is considered as offensive to mainstream Islam as is doing a cartoon parodying the holocaust, then the illustration probably was out of line. But, I think of it more in parallel with Sinead O'Connor's burning an image of the Pope on Saturday Night Live. It's emotionally charged and may offend some, but it should not be censored just because some people don't like it.

But, right now, my feeling is, if you can burn our flags, we can draw your prophets.

[Terastas]

I'm going to be lazy and just quote what I wrote on another forum.

So because a couple of cartoonists decided to be smartasses, that's a call to attack and set fire to anything from the nation of origin.

They act like this and they expect Europe and America to take their religion seriously. What kills me even more is that all they've really done is proven the cartoon their offended over (the one with the turban in the shape of a bomb) to be highly accurate -- one little thing like an editorial is enough to make them explode.

lol, WWMD? What would Mohammed do? ;)

You all have to understand though, over there it's a different world, a totally different mind set. They actually take their religion seriously and are mad when someone defaces or insults the thing they care most about. In America we're so used to people insulting everyone and defacing everything ever considered sacred and it getting top ratings on TV that we don't understand a society that respects the figures important to them and get mad when others violate their religion.

That hardly gives them the right to kill people. Burr quoted it best; why is it alright to kill non-Muslims unprovoked but a sin against the world to draw something funny.

I don't have a whole lot of respect for organized religion either, but this incident just ate away the last few respect points I had for Islam. I'm tempted to explain why Islam is the unofficial most FUBAR religion in the world, but for the sake of decency and to demonstrate the trait I wish these people apparently don't even have a word in their language for (that, of course, is TOLERANCE), I shall refrain.

Your taboo, not mine

Actually the title says it all. It's considered blasphemy for a MUSLIM to depict Mohammed. Not everyone.

Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten that the Danish are not traditionally Muslim. They also seem to have forgotten that Denmark and America are not only two separate countries but two completely different continents.

I'm starting to think they don't really care about religion and just want an excuse to kill somebody. You didn't hear many Americans chanting "Death to Afghanistan! Death to Iraq! Death to Iran!" after a bunch of Muslim idiots crashed planes into the WTC towers and killed thousands, and yet here they are chanting "Death to the Danish! Death to Americans!" over a cartoon.

The cartoon depicted Muslims as violent and intolerant, and they think this is supposed to help?

Mohamad and his anal concern for ceremonial presentation over enlightenment can kiss my a**.

[vrikasatma]

Had to share...just dug this up on the E-Playa...



So ironic it's almost sickening...The same post had a (possibly Photoshopped) photo of a protestor carrying a sign that says, "Behead anyone who says Islam is violent!"

[Fenrir]

But it is based on a violent belief that anyone who doesn't bend to their mob should die, thank god not many hold that belief anymore. I mean if the whole religeon followed it there would be constant war until one side or the other was wiped out

[vrikasatma]

The problem is, there is constant war in that part of the world. Even if the governments don't officially declare war on paper, the radical fringe do it just fine on their own.

Ironically, it's the extreme of dark democracy in action...one person with the right connections and knowhow can severely impact the lives and effect the deaths of hundreds simply by strapping a belt on with some wires and baggies full of fertilizer and getting on a bus.

BOOM! Instant act of war, cooking up in the basement.

To contrast and please forgive the thread drift...I'm going to a candlelight rally in front of the federal courthouse downtown. We're protesting the secret wiretapping scandal. Hundreds of people will be there. I've gone to several other candlelight vigils and they're peaceful affairs. Rather startling that this is so, considering you have a couple hundred people standing in front of a courthouse with fire in their hands. In places like Lebanon, Karachi, Mosul, Samarkand, even Varanasi, this is recipe for hell on earth. Why is it different in Eugene, Oregon?

Which is the more mature, stable and honourable society? We can gather in mass numbers, hold fire in our hands, and nobody dies. Get a bunch of Muslims together with the same parameters and there is an excellent to salient chance that someone's either going to die or be crippled for life and likely lose their home/business, too.

[Terastas]

To contrast and please forgive the thread drift...I'm going to a candlelight rally in front of the federal courthouse downtown. We're protesting the secret wiretapping scandal. Hundreds of people will be there. I've gone to several other candlelight vigils and they're peaceful affairs. Rather startling that this is so, considering you have a couple hundred people standing in front of a courthouse with fire in their hands. In places like Lebanon, Karachi, Mosul, Samarkand, even Varanasi, this is recipe for hell on earth. Why is it different in Eugene, Oregon?

Show them how it's done Vrik.

[vrikasatma]

Yeah, me and about 160 some-odd others