comments in others' blogs

[scarfman]

athelind is only one of the people on my flist to speak out against Everyone Draw Mohammed Day, but his entry was the one to draw response from me.

This. What I wish I'd said about it.

I put Mohammed in a cartoon once, in the days before Arthur, King of Time and Space (though still a cartoon with Merlin and Arthur in it). It was some years before the hulabaloo over the Danish cartoons, and I remember being confounded at not finding any images of Mohammed at Google.

My initial reaction to the hulabaloo over the Danish cartoons was to feel left out for never having generated any controversy - but then I realized their motivation was very, very different: i.e., to generate controversy.

Later when, as I often do with older gags, I reused the gag for Arthur, King of Time and Space, this time I did it without actually picturing Mohammed, because my intention had never been to show disrespect for Islam or any of its beliefs - but rather, ironically, to poke at the many, many people on both sides who prefer to look at the differences between us instead of the similarities.

Comments

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

The problem here is that the radical Islamists who threaten death to all who make pictures of Mohammed demand respect for their religion, but have absolutely no respect for anyone else's religion.

Believe that Mohammed was a fast-talking trader who changed Allah's commandments just when it was useful for those commandments to be changed? Then you must die.

Believe that Mohammed's call for his wives to take the veil and avoid makeup does not apply to other women? Then you must die.

Believe that there is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet, but that there must be tolerance and respect for dissenting religious views? Then you must die.

Believe anything that you want, but you were born to Jewish parents? Then you must die.

Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

This much is bad enough, but when you have people here in the United States surrendering to the death threats of this tiny minority of Muslims, and quashing depictions of Mohammed- even when the context is a lesson on the toleration and universality of religious views- then, quite frankly, controversy NEEDS to be generated.

I thought seriously about participating, and the main reason I haven't drawn a Mohammed is that it would require clearing a massive pile of books, papers, etc. off my scanner. No religion deserves special treatment; no person has the right to not be offended; and no dogma deserves to be unchallenged.

So, the world is saved from one more crappy picture of Mohammed solely by my own laziness.

[acmespaceship.livejournal.com]

Here is an excellent essay and I delight in the boxing gloves solution: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/20/my-take-everyone-chalk-mohammed/?hpt=C1

However, I disagree with the author and also with you my friend. Draw Mohammed Day is not about showing disrespect for the beliefs of others. It is about standing up for the right of artists to draw, write and otherwise express their ideas without fear of censorship or death threats. If your religion can't take critical examination by outsiders, it's not a real religion; it's just tyranny.

[scarfman]

It is about standing up for the right of artists to draw, write and otherwise express their ideas without fear of censorship or death threats.

Okay, but I already do that. By example. Daily. For six years solid as of tomorrow*. I don't need to do something extra to accomplish that, including calculated offense to an entire demographic just because it has a minority who reacts to offense with inappropriate threats and violence.

* And that's just counting my primary website.

[meagenimage.livejournal.com]

So, if you got angry death threats from some readers for your "torture is wrong" strip, would you back off and delete the strip, and refuse to make such a statement in the future? Would you consider "torture is wrong" as a message too controversial to take up in your strip again? If subsequently several cartoonists decided, in a show of solidarity, to put up strips of their entire casts saying "torture is wrong", would you decry this as nothing more than a "calculated offense to an entire demographic just because it has a minority who reacts to offense with inappropriate threats and violence"?

[scarfman]

No, I'd never take those cartoons down (I haven't even taken my original cartoon with Mohammed down!*), and I wouldn't decry anyone else doing the same thing, and if there were a Draw Your Cast Standing Up Against Torture Day I'd participate. Maybe that's something that really ought to happen.

But your analogy fails unless you can genuinely show me a non-extremist of any faith who is or would be offended at my anti-torture statement on the grounds that anti-torture statements show disrespect to the holy figures of their religion. Because that is the factor in the present issue that deters me, and that has deterred me since (and only since) I discovered it. Get such a person to comment here and I'll consider their arguments. Otherwise your example lacks critical relevance to this issue.

* I've removed it from the site it was originally posted**, as I do with all cartoons whose gags I've reused at AKOTAS. But it's still preserved in the LJ post I made while I was still ignorant of the nature of the objections.

** Actually, it's still on the same server it originally was. It's just no longer linked. ***

*** Edit 5/26/10 I'm wrong, it's not at the original server any more. It seems I removed it from the original server sometime after I reused the gag, when I was removing reused gags to free up space there; then I reuploaded it to the directory at Arthur, King of Time and Space for hosting images, in order to keep it appearing in the LJ entry. So, um, I've lost track - does that support or disprove your thesis? Or mine?

[scarfman]

A death threat alone isn't a sufficient argument to stop doing something. But, I'm not convinced it's alone sufficient reason to start doing that thing either.