Cartoon unwisdom

I fail to see how the Danish cartoons are in any way “deplorable”. The most offensive of the lot are the burkha-flanked Mohammed and the infamous bomb-turban Mohammed. These are perfectly valid criticisms of Islam. While there are Muslims in the West and other parts of the world who have live in perfect harmony with other religions and secular laws, it is an undeniable fact that Islam is responsible for the repression of millions of women and the deaths of thousands of people.

In Western culture there has arisen a tendency to give special treatment to religious sentimentalities. All across the left-side of the blogosphere, and in the more religiously-inclined corners of the right-wing, the right of the cartoons to be published has been upheld while the Jyllands-Posten has been criticized for having the audacity to publish them.

This is nearly as harmful a line of thinking as the idea that they should not have been allowed to publish them at all. We should not tiptoe around reality to avoid offending those who still believe that an invisible man in the sky will be angry if someone teases him. The West cannot afford to give in to the idea that religion is immune from criticism, that it is a sacred cow who’s tenets and central edifices are untouchable.

No fault for these riots ought to be laid at the feet of the Danish editors.

Robert Wright is interesting on the cartoons row, calling to its paralells in the US even where there is no legal protection against criticism of religion:

What isn’t a big difference is the Muslim demand for self-censorship by major media outlets. That kind of self-censorship is not just an American tradition, but a tradition that has helped make America one of the most harmonious multiethnic and multireligious societies in the history of the world.

Read the whole thing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/17/opinion/17Wright.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

While the issue you raise about a possible standard is worth exploring, as far as I am concerned, when Muslimsin so many countries throughout the Middle East feel free to display in media, cartoons, articles etc anti-Jewish sentiments worthy of the Nazis, I am little concerned about their senisibilities being upset. Let them protest hatred from within their own ranks before they turn to ask others not to mock them. that issue is for me also a double standard. And what is good for the goose is good for the gooser

Perhaps a relevant story from today’s NYTimes:

Right-wing British historian David Irving pleaded guilty Monday to charges of denying the Holocaust and conceded that he was wrong to say there were no Nazi gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Irving, handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, arrived in court carrying a copy of one of his most controversial books — ”Hitler’s War,” which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

”I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz,” Irving told the court.

It’s hard to convey how jarring these paragraphs are from the perspective of an American lawyer.

Muslims don’t have enough money to get away with frivolous lawsuits?
Ah yes, because Muslims are all victims in need, and they could not possibly manage to make any money.

Muslims don’t have enough money to get away with frivolous lawsuits?

Rather they don’t have an organization yet – no ADL, no RainbowPush, no Christian coalition. They are newcomers here in the west, give ’em a hundred or so years to start.

But Chris, you have just shifted the whole purpose of your post.

Now ” it is about the fact that the European Court interprets freedom of expression is such a way as to permit states to legislate very broad protections for religious sensibilities. The claim that Muslim demands for such protection are an unprecedented attack on a status quo of free expression is therefore unfounded.”

In the post itself you write “But it does not help the case for freedom of speech if Muslims can truthfully say that there is a double standard and that the sensibilities of Christians are regarded as a valid legal reason for restraining freedom of expression whereas theirs are not.”

These are very different issues. The initial one is the matter of a double-standard for Muslimes/Christians. Now it is whether Muslims are out-of-line to demand protections.

Which is it?

I think the British blasphemy law is out of date and, as you say, confers protection on one religion but not others. Even given that Christianity is the state religion of Britain, I think this is an idea whose time is past.

The solution, though, is not to extend blasphemy-style protections to minority religions, but to abolish all such laws, while leaving the current incitement laws in place to protect minorities from more egregious attacks. There’s no place for a blasphemy law in 21st Century Britain. Anyway, it’s almost never used – Visions of Ecstasy was a very unusual case. I suspect that if it were to be resubmitted now it would be passed.

I think J Thomas is wrong when he says, “it does not fit majority opinion in the west which is that it’s fine to be very very rude to muslims but it’s unacceptable to be rude to christians or jews.” I don’t see any evidence that this is true at all. There’s a freedom of speech trial going on in Austria at the moment – you may have noticed it in the news.

Nor do I buy this line:

“Muslims don’t have enough money to get away with frivolous lawsuits, so they do death threats instead.”

This is an enormous generalisation. My best friend’s a Muslim, and he’s absolutely loaded. And we know that the guy who dressed as a suicide bomber in the London demo wasn’t short of cash; he’s a drug dealer, for goodness’ sake.

This whole controversy has been stoked up by some radical Danish imams, certain Arab governments and (on the other side) some uncompromising right-wing European media outlets. By all means let’s have a bit more mutual respect. Perhaps Muslim governments could jail editors for running anti-Semitic cartoons. Hamas could stop teaching schoolchildren that Jews used gentile childrens’ blood to make pastries. Arab countries could give Christians the legal right to practise their religion without let or hindrance. Now that would be progress.

Until then, I fail to see how someone who so clearly does not have any interest in either my opinion or my value system can reasonably expect me to rip them up and rebuild them so as to conform to theirs.

Excellent post Chris. Maybe something good can come out of this for the UK. And while the riots are childish, anit-productive, and crazy, the charges of hypocracy are well founded (at least in the UK). So Islam must be afforded the same level of protection as other religions, which means that the laws either protect all religions equally, or not protect them at all.

What happened to the much praised disemvowelment? Bring the disemvowelment back, will ya.

This site may be of interest in the current debate

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html

As might this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom

And this one

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/61063/

As has been pointed out, the press is censored in the UK all the time.

In the days after the initial blow-up of the cartoon row, I read a number of letters in UK newspapers from irate Christians saying that the newspapers had no problem publishing offensive cartoons of the Christian God, or Christ, but that they were clearly rather scared of publishing the Danish cartoon. There does seem to be some sort of double-standard, in that light satire, as it were, of Christianity is fine (both legally and in practise) in, say, the UK, but that equivalent satire of Islam (in this case) is not. I’ve read arguments saying that this is what it should be, as we are an essentially Christian culture, and hence we have more right to satirise our own culture.

Yes, sure, we still have absurd blasphamy laws, which seem to be vaguely applied (and often applied in the form of self-censorship). I’m all in favour of getting rid of them (rather than adding new laws to bring all faiths into line). Yes, an awful lot of rubbish has been written about how we have an absolute right to free speech, when that just isn’t true. I wasn’t aware that films were still banned in this country because they are offensive to Christians, so thanks for the post Chris.

However, surely it’s fair to point out that the Danish cartoons *were* very tame in comparison to the level of abuse Christianity gets (and, for that matter, that which Judaism gets in the middle east). It’s this double-standard which has annoyed me.

What does turning the other cheek really mean?

Look, folks. Some things are taboo for some people. As long as your freedom to breathe, eat, fornicate and solve differential equations are not interfered with, it makes sense to indulge, if not respect, those taboos. A classic case of sensiblity and not one of sensitivity.

That’s totally ridiculous. The taboos of other cultures or religions often conceal very real and very destructive tendencies. It is wrong to use those taboos as a shield or a smokescreen to protect those tendencies from criticism.

Pirate captain, your idea is admirably consistent. However, it does not fit majority opinion in the west which is that it’s fine to be very very rude to muslims but it’s unacceptable to be rude to christians or jews.

Well, yes. No one likes it when their own beliefs get ridiculed. I know there’s a double standard. I don’t agree with it, but I know it’s there.

“But the post is not about that, it is about the fact that the European Court interprets freedom of expression is such a way as to permit states to legislate very broad protections for religious sensibilities. The claim that Muslim demands for such protection are an unprecedented attack on a status quo of free expression is therefore unfounded.”

Well as others have pointed out your post originally claims it was about “But it does not help the case for freedom of speech if Muslims can truthfully say that there is a double standard and that the sensibilities of Christians are regarded as a valid legal reason for restraining freedom of expression whereas theirs are not.”

But in either formulation you are wrong. I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist, I think the British anti-blasphemy law is stupid and I think anti-Holocaust-denier laws are counterproductive. That said, the difference of scale in amount of respect protected by the blasphemy law and that demanded by many Muslims in the wake of the cartoon dispute is radically different. I wouldn’t be shocked if a movie about Ayatollah Khomeini’s wife (interestingly I can’t find any easy parallel with a nun in Islam) which had her entertaining sexual fantasies about Mohammed and then fucking an image of him at the end of the movie might very well be illegal blasphemy under the law you cite. If Muslims wanted that level of protection, I wouldn’t engage in more than the mere grumbling I do against anti-blasphemy laws in general.

Many Muslims seem to want much more. “Dogma” didn’t get banned due to blasphemy. Would you seriously contend that Muslims would be ok with a movie lampooning their beliefs as much as Dogma? Would they have been ok with Alanis Morissette as Allah? Would they have been ok with misnaming the angel of death after the Norse trickster-god Loki? Thrilled about one of the main characters being a female worker at an abortion clinic? Ok with Jay and Silent Bob as prophets? Happy about Chris Roc as a prophet? (Yes in the movie he was the 13th apostle but I’m talking about a parallel movie making fun of Islam). Would they have been ok with the cheesy “Buddy Christ” in Muslim form? “Dogma” is more blasphemous than any of the Danish cartoons, on an extended scale of 130 minutes. And frankly it isn’t nearly the worst openly-accepted-by-critics-and-not-banned-in-the-West blasphemy you’ll find against Christianity if you look. “Piss Christ” and the shit-covered Mary are both worse. Both provoked outrage–as intended by their respective artists. Neither provoked riots or murder–as have the much milder cartoons. Would Muslims be ok with allowing an exhibition of “Piss Koran”? Or to avoid the iconography issue would they peacefully protest a shit covered minature mosque and restrict their demands to a witholding of government funds in paying for the exhibition? A shit covered Ayatollah Khomeini?

Unless your answers to those questions are “yes” it would appear that Muslims are in fact asking for a special level of treatment and not in fact merely appealing to the level of care held for Christian sensibilities.

And just to be super-clear in tying it to your post, when you say “It is therefore simply not true to say that in Europe freedom of expression trumps the sensibilities of believers. What is true is that some believers, of some denominations, get legal protection from being offended, and others don’t.” the differential level of protection appears to make your statement false. You fail to distinguish between different levels of possible “legal protection from being offended”.

By treating all possible levels of “being offended” as equal, you make it impossible to analyze the contention that Muslims are asking for special treatment.

Right could I point out something that is known by almost everyone who writes for this blog, and which is screamingly, blatantly, obvious to anyone who knows anything about movies, art or books?

‘Dogma’ is not, and was not intended to be, a blasphemous film. .

Director Kevin Smith is a believing Catholic, goes to Church (almost) every Sunday, and, presumably does not get refused Communion from his local Priest. Because it’s not blasphemous, and, to repeat, was not intended to be (it intended to be politically liberal and to promote the liberal wing of Catholicism, but even under Pope John Paul 2nd, that don’t equal blasphemy).

Second point: Chris Ofili’s picture is not, and was not intended to be blasphemous. .

Here’s what the artist says: ‘It’s definitely not mocking of the Last Supper….(about another picture)…I was brought up thinking about religion to a degree, and went to Catholic schools and college and went to church….’. As the Guardian rightly points out: ‘His painting of The Holy Virgin Mary was taken as a deliberate insult, when, on the contrary, it was a serious attempt to come to terms with the polarities of existence and the nature of the beliefs with which Ofili grew up.’

Andres Serrano’s ‘Piss Christ’ is rather different I admit. But Serrano still describes himself as an ‘artist struggling with his Catholic upbringing but still trying to reaffirm his faith’. I imagine if, asked straight out, he was asked if he was trying to be blasphemous he would say ‘no’.

In any case, all these were comments on Christianity as an entity, or on Jesus, or on God. But the Danish cartoons were different. The Mohammed with a bomb in his turban wasn’t an attack on Mohammed (and few people took it as that). It was an attack on Muslims. It said that they were all terrorists (if that’s not what it meant, I don’t know what it means).

In other words, it was far closer to those Protestant radicals who claimed that Catholics were all terrorists, and that they ‘bred like rabbits’ and were uncivilised and dirty (which was why they turned to terrorism, naturally, cos they were all terrorists) in the 1970s.

There weren’t too many liberals then standing up for the Reverend Ian Paisley and his principled stand in favour of Western Civilisation against the rampaging Catholic hoardes. And when Catholics rioted to protest against this sort of rhetoric, there were few people to suggest that this showed that there was something wrong with Christianity.

Or for that matter that all Christians were bloodthirsty terrorists.

And let’s get real about something for a second. When people talk about EUrabia, or Dhimmitude, or the threat to Western Civilisation, it ain’t Richard Thompson they have in mind. It ain’t Peter Sanders. In other words, it ain’t white Muslims they fear.

They are talking about Arabs, and only Arabs.

…it said to me that to some people, Islam and violence are intimately linked

Exactly. And if you replace Islam with Christianity or Jeudaism – this kind of statement will be effectively banned in the west. These ‘some people’ are called bigots and low-life; they are outside of the mainstream, decent people won’t shake their hands.

I take it you are not a Catholic, and yet you seem to know what is blasphemous better than a practicing and believing Catholic. Moreover, a quick Google search demonstrates that Archbishop of Westminster (last time I checked, also a Christian) also denied that Dogma was not blasphemous. Again, I don’t know the standard of your degree in theology, and perhaps you would want to argue the toss with him, but I still think I’ll take his word about Christian doctrine over yours. The fact is that Dogma did not have ‘Danish cartoon’ style protests because it WASN’T blasphemous. (And neither was ‘The Last Temptation of Christ.’ Or ‘Life of Brian’).

In any case, this misses the point. The point about the Danish ‘Mohammed Cartoon’ was that it more or less openly stated that all Moslems are terrorists. This in a country where almost all Moslems are Arabs, and where (like most European countries) Arabs face institutional racist discrimination, as you well know.

Here’s some more context. Andrew Sullivan, a ‘liberal’ Conservative, who publishes widely in the Western Press, recently published an email, apparently approvingly, calling for the genocide of all Moslems in Europe (‘throw all of them into the sea’). Very recently the Serbs in Europe (not too far away from Denmark) actually started to do just that with the tacit (or in the case of the UK, explicit) approval of most of Europe. Mass murder of Muslims (by Christians) took place while the Danes (and the rest of Europe) sat about and picked their noses and flicked the snot at the screen.

Many popular blogs are rife with calls for the genocide of Muslims. Indeed, some, like LGF, largely consist of such calls.

Now, do you think that cartoons that imply that Muslims are ‘the enemy within’, that they can never integrate because they are ‘all terrorists’…do you think these cartoons will help this situation?

So, I think, your point is that offensive artwork (for want of a better term) which is produced in good faith is okay? That is, it’s all in the eye of the beholder?

Actually he was saying the opposite of “it’s all in the eye of the beholder.” He was saying that the intention of the artist counts for something as well.

Hogan,

Yes, sorry, badly stated. However, the Danish cartoons were, so claim the newspaper, to make a point about self-censorship to do with a children’s book. Now, are we really saying that not only does the artist’s stated motivations count, but their hidden motivations as well? As what point does all this disappear into some silly ivory-towered argument?

The reaction to those cartoons has been utterly, absurdly beyond proportion, and calls that the law should somehow be changed (or just self-censorship applied) are way out of line. Does anyone seriously doubt this?

I think the point Sebastian and I are trying to make is that while censorship most certainly does exist in, for example, the UK, the level of censorship being called for by Muslims (and, apparently, being listened to) is not comparable to that applied to Christianity. And that’s a double standard.

I am getting rather tired of people seemingly living under the misconception that Denmark is a part of Britain, the U.S, France or other nations. I realize that Chris only seems to think that Denmark is part of Britain, but I’ve noticed that lots of other people think that Denmark is part of either their respective nations, or nations that they want to pick on in a particular context.

Oh yes, WWJD? Just this day break at break fast the brothers around the dining table voted that, yes indeed, our God has a great sense of humor. Then Bro. Juniper passed around this cartoon and thought it not only funny, but for we of the ‘turn the other cheek’ belief, thought the absurd images in the cartoon most provoking of reflection as to what our beliefs really mean.

http://homepage.mac.com/dougabel/images/WWJDT-Shirt.gif

Bro. Bartleby, btw, how do you guys interpret Matthew 10:34-36?

By treating all possible levels of “being offended” as equal, you make it impossible to analyze the contention that Muslims are asking for special treatment.

I think you’re getting closer, but you aren’t there yet.

The question is what standards are appropriate. I believe (though I don’t have links to solid data) that if we were to treat christians, jews, and scientologists with the same respect that muslims demand for themselves, that they would not be offended by that at all.

They aren’t demanding special treatment. They’re asking for what they consider adequate treatment.

I think it might be useful to get some sense of their point of view. Maybe not *very* useful, maybe there’s no way to get reconciled and we’ll have to just stage a very long war until the oil is gone and the coal is gone and one side or the other is all dead. But….

Imagine that we are in contact with some human civilization that has superior technology to us. Call it Beta Colony. They put up a bunch of TV satellites and give us thousands of new channels, 20% of which are child porn. We complain but they don’t understand our complaints. They say that child sex, done right, is healthy and psychologically beneficial, that children who do it don’t grow up with sexual repression or fanaticism.

They have absolutely no respect for any of our religions. But that’s fair, they have absolutely no respect for their own. Their main god is Frodo, who gets repeatedly raped as a child by bad gods. When Frodo grows up he defeats the bad old gods and rapes them back. Then he rapes their children and grandchildren. Betans laugh at him, he doesn’t realise he’s only part of the cycle of revenge. Then the blinding light descends on him, and he realises he can break the cycle! He brings the defeated gods together and he has them take turns, each of them rapes him while he rapes another of them. The worshippers laugh at him.

So when they show Jesus and Mohammed alternately capturing and raping each other, it is no more disrespect than they show their own gods.

By our own standards, they should not be doing child porn and they particularly should not be showing it to us. But they show each other child porn all the time, why should we get special treatment?

It’s a problem that they could kill us all easily.

And it’s a problem that they brought in 15 million Betans that claim to be the Ten Lost Tribes and settled them in israel. They say that the israelis are not practicing correctly and they don’t recognise the israeli government, instead setting up a new one of their own.

Do they owe us anything at all beyond what they feel like giving us? When terrans go to Beta Colony and get jobs as computer programmers and sysadmins and similar menial work, and they continually laugh at us and taunt us with our sexual repression and general sexual clumsiness, do we deserve anything else?

This approach doesn’t solve anything. I hope it shows up the inadequacy of the usual responses. Saying we treat everybody the same is not enough.

The Golden Rule would work if we could bring ourselves to follow it. We should treat muslims the way we’d like Beta Colony to treat us. But it doesn’t fit our emotional needs, we want an implacable deadly enemy that will last us until the new chinese army comes online. So we treat muslims like we’re their deadly implacable enemy and there’s a strong chance they’ll respond in kind.

Oh, and Christopher M, could he instead start talking about the buttocks that are all over the painting?

Personally, I don’t see buttocks as sacreligious. Under certain circumstances, I very much enjoy buttocks.

People who don’t enjoy buttocks, for that matter, are likely prudes who don’t understand the point of the artist’s intent!

Wait, he’s arguing that buttocks should be in Mohammed cartoons?

Now that’s just offensive. Why would you want to offend so many people? Are you some kind of orifice found between buttocks?

For some reason Sebastian thinks it relevant to say that Muslims want more protection than that.

A sizeable number of Muslims even in the UK have called for a ban on any pictorial representation of Mohammed. That is more protection than the followers of any other supernatural-based ideology get.

Wait a minute, Chris. “the same level of protection against being offended”.

If you show Moses eating a ham, that might be roughly as bad as showing Arjuna eating beef. But worshippers of cthulhu find it perfectly acceptable for Him to eat pork or beef either one.

How do we quantify levels of offense, and give different people the same protection?

It sounds good in theory but I don’t have a clue how to measure it.

I always read the Matthew bit figuratively. It ties in with brother being set against brother and taking up the cross. But, Bro. Bartleby, what about Luke 22:36? They seem real swords Jesus wanted his disciples to arm themselves with. It’s one of those bits that’s never made sense, like the fig tree.

When you know your blasphemer is a little bug in a big world it just doesn’t make you want to spend a night in jail.

What are you trying to argue here? Even if I knew my blasphemer was a big bug in a little world I still wouldn’t want to spend a night in jail. I’ve visited jails. Horrible places.

what they did deserve was a resounding chorus of “those cartoons are a shameful crock of shit and they disgust us as much as they do you”

Personally I thought they were quite good. And not at all disgusting.

Being an atheist, I am also pretty neutral about depictions of Christianity in the abstract. In the specific, it depends on whether I find the given depiction funny, thought-provoking or beautiful.

I would prefer for people to go to jail rather than be attacked in deserted alleys by random people as “a different chris” proposes.

Christopher M, the “Christian Response” to The Virgin Mary (please understand that the Christians protesting were not representative of Christianity, by the way) was to say that they didn’t want their tax dollars funding a museum that had this painting in it.

In response, they received a lecture about how closed minded, retarded, bigoted, hypocritical, lowbrow, ignorant of art, etc, they were.

Personally, I agree that many (if not most) of the Christians (please understand that the Christians were not representative of Christianity,) were closed minded, retarded, bigoted, hypocritical, lowbrow, ignorant of art, and etc. (Hey, buttocks are usually involved in the high points of my day, on a merely good day, they’re my own, on a *REALLY* good day, they involve my wife’s!)

But I still think that the Christians in question had every right to be all of those things when they went to the government to petition for a redress of grievances.

Personally, I think we’d all be better off if we spent a little more time explaining how closed minded, retarded, bigoted, hypocritical, lowbrow, ignorant of art, and etc the muslims protesting the cartoons are inbetween our breaths explaining that Americans do that too and, by the way, the Muslims protesting aren’t representative of Islam.

It also might be nice if the Muslims in Iran weren’t telling the newspapers in Denmark what they can and can’t print. But, I suppose, that’s another thread entirely.

People, (including Christians in the US) are not upset at the Muslim protests. They are upset at the violent nature of the protests. Anyone who thinks it is only the protests and not the violence needs to pay more attention.

The Piss Christ exhibit was offensive to Christians. What is offensive is and always has been in the eye of the beholder. Who really cares what the artist intentions where? In fact the exhibit was so offensive the National Endowment of the Arts is under constant threat of loosing all federal funding.

When Christians protested the piss Christ, they where told to suck it up because its art. When Muslim cartoon protests include violence, the conversation switches to the “irresponsibility” of the newspaper, claims that Muslims seek equal consideration, or demands for special treatment of a minority group.

The US is not Europe. There are no legal protections against offending a religion.

Abb1 – It is legal in the US to make disparaging remarks of an entire race or religion. For some unfortunate reason there are still publishers who specialize in this kind of writing.

Well I think I made it fairly clear that I believe (a) that everyone ought to get the same level of protection against being offended and (b) that the EHCR was wrong to give Christians the degree of protection that the British blasphemy law gives them in respect of Visions of Ecstasy.

For some reason Sebastian thinks it relevant to say that Muslims want more protection than that. If that’s true then it is obvious from (a) and (b) that I would oppose granting them such protection.

This is very odd. Someone wrote the following words in a post and I would have sworn it was Chris:

But it does not help the case for freedom of speech if Muslims can truthfully say that there is a double standard and that the sensibilities of Christians are regarded as a valid legal reason for restraining freedom of expression whereas theirs are not.

…

It is therefore simply not true to say that in Europe freedom of expression trumps the sensibilities of believers. What is true is that some believers, of some denominations, get legal protection from being offended, and others don’t.

This is followed by a quick allusion to “Visions of Ecstasy”. I presume that you mean that as support for your statement that Muslims can truthfully point to a double standard. You actually doesn’t make it at all clear that you thinks blasphemy laws are at all bad, just that you somehow think Muslims are right to believe that they are on the short end of an alleged blasphemy law double standard. I point out that

A) The cartoons are much milder than Visions of Ecstasy (and I offer what a close parallel movie might look like if it blasphemed Islam). That parallel is much worse than the cartoons in question;

B) I opine, rightly or wrongly, that such a parallel movie could be banned under the laws;

C) The laws you mention clearly aren’t all that strong because they don’t touch on the other Christian blasphemies mentioned;

D) I mention that the many Muslims are demanding a ban on far more than what would be banned under the blasphemy statute;

E) This tends to be strong evidence against the contention that Muslims are being subjected to a double standard on the issue of blasphemy protection.

I’m rather surprised to find that it is somehow off topic to write about the specifics of a double standard you claim exists.

Chris, how do we know that the cartoons would not violate the UK’s blasphemy law? Have the cartoons been published in the UK? And found by some responsible authority not to be in violation of the blasphemy law? Or is it rather that no litigation has been initiated?

J Thomas, I suspect that if the Muslims weren’t burning shit but instead keeping it to boycotts, there would only be grumbling from the LGF crowd.

This seems to be a discussion of whether or not we should pay the Dane-geld.

“OF COURSE WE SHOULDN’T PAY THE DANE-GELD!!!”
“Why are you so friggin violent and yelly (all caps? really!) over just a few simple requests?”
“You shouldn’t pay the Dane-Geld, you’ll never get rid of the Dane.”
“So you’re willing to go to war over this? You’re willing to kill people over this? Have you signed up for the Army yet?”
“It’s not about the trifling amount they’re asking for.”
“If we just do what they ask, we will finally have Peace In Our Time and we can go home and sleep soundly in our beds!”
“Nice Godwin reference.”
“Groups of people who want to kill all of the Jews put me in a Godwin mood.”

And so on.

#40– People in desperate, millennial poverty are often intolerant and ill-liberal. #72, #76—I think it is more than the cartoons, although I’d particularly like to hear from more Muslims on these issues. To many Muslim Arabs, religion is their last unstolen asset. They sit on the equivalent of Fort Knox in real wealth, yet most haven’t much to show for it. They are continually being pushed around by those who want their oil. To destroy and rob the Jews of Europe, the Germans first had to make Jews seem less than human… Muslims have been shot dead in their sacred places, politically split up to make it easier to steal from them, invaded, relentlessly disrespected, and now they may have reached a breaking point.

cubist: They picked the wrong breaking point. Fuck ’em.

I take that back. What I object to is that whatever they actually say (or do) in the Muslim world, Western commentators always show up to say what they _really_ mean, and what they really mean is invariably the issues that the Westerners would think are important. Isn’t it possible that Muslims are perfectly capable of saying what they mean? Maybe the reason they’re not protesting over Palestine, or the Iraq war, or the prospect of war with Iran, and they are protesting the cartoons, is that as strongly as they may feel about the other issues, maybe they genuinely feel _more_ strongly about insulting Muhammad?

Chris, Brendan,

Sorry, but you *have not* addressed Sebastian’s (and other’s) main point. As I read it, Sebastian is claiming that:

a) Muslim’s are calling for laws which would make the publishing of these cartoons (or, indeed, any pictorial representation of Mohammed);

b) You give an example of a very offensive film (to Christians) which was banned some years ago (although, yes, has yet to be unbanned).
c) Sebastian brings up lots of milder examples of offensive films etc. to Christians which are *not* banned. He asks to see the equivalent examples of films (etc.) mildly mocking Muslims, but fails to find them.

As far as I can see, it is *only* nutters like the BNP, commentators at LGF etc. who are saying truly awful things about Muslims. Mainstream culture gets away with an awful lot more mocking of Christianity, and yet Muslims still call for legal protection. From what one might ask?

In what way is Sebsastian misread what you are saying? Except perhaps in the original point of this post (which was good in bring to our attention on-going censorship of Christianly-blasphamous statements, at least in the UK, but seemed to have little other point I think).

The point isn’t simply that American interrogators allegedly flushed a Koran down a toilet, or that Danish cartoonists lampooned the messenger of god. Our contemporary reality is an American army occupying an Arab country, arbitrarily killing or imprisoning its citizens.

Mohammed as a bomb with turban is as unexceptionable a cartoon figure as anything that routinely appears in the western press. This isn’t the really the affront they’re protesting.

Sure, we can print almost whatever we want, but it might not be the best idea to invade whoever we want next time, if there is one.

We do have a law against blasphemy in Denmark, and some Danish Muslims tried to bring the case to law. However, it was thrown out in Decemeber because the local prosecutor deemed it unlikely to be upheld. The law dates from the 1930s and only once has it led to conviction. That was in 1938 and concerned a case of blasphemy against the Jewish faith.

The wording of the law:

“Anyone who publicly mocks or derides the doctrines of faith or worship of any in this country legally residing religious community is to be punished by penalty or prison for up to 4 months”.

Last time a case was heard was in 1971 when some TV producers were acquitted for having broadcast an allegedly blasphemic song directed at the Christian God (in clearly recognisable Lutheran guise).

The current Mohammad case is not over yet, as the group of plaintiffs have appealed and it is being mulled over as we speak. The case may yet get a hearing, but legal experts here are skeptical as to whether it will be upheld.

The plaintiffs of course may then opt for the European Court.

fjm asserts that the UK’s blasphemy law has been repealed. This is untrue, it remains in force.

Sort of – it is in the box marked ‘unrepealed but unprosecutable’, with the laws relating to shooting welshmen in Nottingham, treason, and, probably, the official secrets act.

The issue (which I have to admit I was surprised by when I found out in the wake of the cartoons affair) is that as an official body, the film classification board feels unable to break that law, and so some films (mostly in the category ‘nun porn’) are uncertifiable and so not easily obtainable.

soru

What an interesting way of phrasing that, grammatically speaking!

I was alluding to the series of films (Texas Chainsaw, Exocist etc.) which were re-released in the late 90s. I’ve now idea, but has there actually been an active campaign to get this film a license (as it wasn’t really “banned”: it was refused a license, so perhaps no-one has tried to get it “unbanned”, as it were).

Well at least you correctly point out that these films are more moderate than the Danish cartoons

I absolutely did not mean to imply that, as I absolutely do not believe it. The Danish cartoons were, if anything, moderate compared to the sort of cartoon which you’ll find in the comments page of every national newspaper in the UK. One the day this story broke, all the newspapers were following the Bush state of the union address, and had GWB, as a chimp, injecting oil like it was herion. Pretty damn offensive to the effective head of state of the most powerful country in the world, and yet utterly unremarkable for a poltical cartoon. Have you seen what Steve Bell tends to draw?

I think this point really gets to the heart of our disagreement: I just don’t think it’s enough for muslims to say “That’s offensive to us”, whereas you seem to maintain that the cartoons where actually objectively racist, nevermind offensive to people of a certain belief system. I’m not sure we’re going to find much common ground…

Andrew Sullivan approvingly quoted a call to genocide and he’s about as mainstream as you can get. Moreover, when the Serbs actually attempted to start a Moslem Holocaust the West (especially the then British Conservative Government) attempted to help them.

Hmm, I’m not sure I would call Sullican mainstream (I certainly personally don’t like most of his views). If he seriously was calling for genocide, he stopped being mainstream at that precise moment, and became a nutter. “Moslem Holocaust the West”??? Anyone with a better view of history of the Serbian war care to help me out here: this sounds like rubbish, frankly.

“Moslem Holocaust the West”??? Anyone with a better view of history of the Serbian war care to help me out here: this sounds like rubbish, frankly.

That wasn’t exactly accurate. They didn’t want to kill all the muslims. They only wanted to kill all the muslims who would not or could not leave their land.

They killed muslims to persuade the others to leave. They raped muslim women to persuade the others to leave. (It tended to be blonde blue-eyed muslims, this wasn’t a place that had a whole lot of brown people in it.)

But they didn’t make an effort to kill muslims who found another nation that would take them.

This may have been true of other holocausts too, though. I guess maybe you need somebody who’s expert on comparative holocaust.

What should the US government do? What should US citizens do?

Observe and learn.

I rather suspect that sooner or later, any knowledge gained in that way will come in handy, to make, justify or oppose some decision or other.

soru

Did you miss comment 62?

I can’t believe you people are still talking about whether or not newspapers should have published the cartoons.

Haven’t you heard? Bush’s Supreme Court just granted Cert to a case that might result in Roe.v.Wade being overturned!

THEOCRACY COULD WELL BE DESCENDING UPON AMERICA! (And I don’t mean the good kind where we respect Muslim views on not printing pictures of the Prophet (pbuh))

I can’t believe you people are still talking about whether or not newspapers should have published the cartoons.

I can. Talking about what other people ought to do is a lot like talking about the weather.

Haven’t you heard? Bush’s Supreme Court just granted Cert to a case that might result in Roe.v.Wade being overturned!

Why am I not surprised.

Not all problems need to be rectified by laws and this is one of these. Public ostracism is all that’s needed here.

“American unwritten PC code is very good. Everyone can make fun of their own culture/religion but can’t mock the others. That seems very smart, fair and practical.”
abb1, post 38
“It is rather odd to blaspheme in a religion not your own.” Roger, post 54

A pretty weird attitude. Where does that leave me, an atheist in a secularized society?
Why should religious people have an immunity from criticism and ridicule that no-one holding rational ideas has? Is this some kind of diminished capacity thing? The poor dears can’t help themselves so let’s humour them?
Does this apply to fundamentalist Mormons and Aryan Nations Christians or is it PC to mock religious minorities as long as they are white and western (and unashamedly unenlightened)?
Can I mock protestant fundies if some of my ancestors were members of the same church?
If I change religion a few times, am I allowed to mock them all or just the latest one or two?
Does this apply to religious people criticizing other religions (some can be pretty uncomplimentary about the other, false faiths)?
Do heretic sects of a religious group qualify for immunity from criticism by the orthodox,
or if the orthodox are sufficiently upset, does this mean that the heretics are guilty of offending them?
Does this apply only to world-views incorporating some supernatural entity, or can I claim this right too?
I’m looking for guidelines here, people.

I think I’ll keep on mocking, if and when I’m inspired. Now of course there’s mockery and mockery, and a time and place for everything. Pick your fights.
And CB’s position in the original post is good.

Remember when those Secular Humanists destroyed an Olive Garden when the Pope said something that offended them?

To be sure, those Secular Humanists weren’t representative of Secular Humanism and Christians do the exact same thing.

It should be pointed out that those Russian Nihilists were not representative of Russian Nihilism.

They weren’t representative of Russian Nihilism either. Russian Nihilism is a Nihilism of Peace.

You can’t judge it on a handful of bombthrowers.

Well, if you want to be a closed-minded bigot, you can.