Wednesday

 

I never would have accidentally found myself searching a Danish newspaper for cartoons about Muhammed unless radical Muslims had pointed them out to me by acting like lunatics. And I gotta ask, if Jews can handle this...

 

 

why can't Muslims handle this...

 

 

They say we've got to respect their religion. Bullshit. I have as much respect for Islam as I do for Christianity, Rush Limbaugh, the KKK, the Flat Earth Society, the Nazi Party, and everyone in the White House. Respect has got to be earned.

 

Anybody who says I have to respect the belief that the earth is flat is nuts. Same with anyone who says I have to respect Islam. What I respect is their right to believe any damn foolish thing as long as they respect my right to believe any damn foolish thing. Everybody's got the right to believe any damn foolish thing, and to say whatever they want about the damn foolish things that others believe. Cartoons are art. They are infinitely superior weapons than those purchased by the Department of Defense. Work is what you do for others. Art is what you do for yourself. It's a means of emotional expression. We all need it, and thank God there are people who express themselves with cartoons instead of bombs.

 

 

Or even cartoons of bombs. This is the one that set them off. Does nothing for me. Even if I thought all Muslims were suicidal, its too obvious, has no humor, and it doesn't reverberate like this one...

 

 

which makes the interesting point that if Muhammed can't be shown in any way, shape, or form, how are we supposed to recognize him? As a matter of fact, the claim can be made that NONE of these cartoons portray the real Muhammed since nobody knows what he looked like.

 

    "The issue has been framed by the traditional media as 'Free Expression/Speech' in contrast with 'Sensitivity to Religion.' Do newspapers in democratic societies have the right to publish offensive images? Well that's something definitely worth debating, but it's overlooking an important step.

    "12 cartoons were published in the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, which you can see here. Some were very bland, others seem to be unquestionably offensive. Yet these cartoons were published on September 30, 2005. What the traditional media has failed to explain is why the protests are occurring now...

    "What CNN and the other traditional media failed to tell you is that the thousand gallons of fuel added to the fire of outrage came from none other than our old pals Saudi Arabia.

    "While it was a minor side story in the western press, the most important of Muslim religious festivals recently took place in Saudi Arabia - called the Hajj. Every able-bodied Muslim is obligated to make a pilgrimage once in their lifetime to Mecca, which is in modern-day Saudi Arabia. This pilgrimage can be done at any time of the year but most pilgrims arrive during the Muslim month known as Dhu al-Hijjah, which follows a lunar calendar that does not exactly match the western Gregorian calendar.

    "The most recent Hajj occurred during the first half of January 2006, precisely when the 'outrage' over the Danish cartoons began in earnest. There were a number of stampedes, called 'tragedies' in the press, during the Hajj which killed several hundred pilgrims. I say 'tragedies' in quotation marks because there have been similar 'tragedies' during the Hajj and each time, the Saudi government promises to improve security and facilitation of movement to avoid these. Over 251 pilgrims were killed during the 2004 Hajj alone in the same area as the one that killed 350 pilgrims in 2006. These were not unavoidable accidents, they were the results of poor planning by the Saudi government.

    "And while the deaths of these pilgrims was a mere blip on the traditional western media's radar, it was a huge story in the Muslim world. Most of the pilgrims who were killed came from poorer countries such as Pakistan, where the Hajj is a very big story. Even the most objective news stories were suddenly casting Saudi Arabia in a very bad light and they decided to do something about it.

    "Their plan was to go on a major offensive against the Danish cartoons. The 350 pilgrims were killed on January 12 and soon after, Saudi newspapers (which are all controlled by the state) began running up to 4 articles per day condemning the Danish cartoons."

- Soj: Muslim Cartoon Controversy: What the Media Isn't Telling You -   

"As Your Majesty requested recently, in order to divert public attention from the regrettable demise of a small number of pilgrims in Makkah during the last Hajj, Saudi newspapers were instructed to revive the four-month-old story of cartoons about the Prophet (PBUH) in a Danish newspaper, and turn it into an attack on Denmark, together with a 'spontaneous demand by the people' for a boycott of Danish goods."

I really like this one...

 

 

just because of the style, and not because it says anything, which it doesn't. Still, simply because it portrays someone supposed to be Muhammed, the rioting idiots don't like it any more than the rest.

 

"To summarize: you can be a confirmed Bushophobe and still acknowledge that the cartoon rioters are idiots. Likewise, you can be a fully paid-up member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy while realizing that just because you can do something like publish cartoons that offend Muslims, doesn't necessarily mean you should, especially when the lives of U.S troops might be at stake."

- lgfwatch -

Remember that episode of South Park where they made fun of Tom Cruise? He was hiding in a closet and Stan begged him to come out of the closet. You'll never see it again. Why? Tom has threatened to sue so the Comedy Channel has removed it from their repeat schedule.

 

What's the difference between a fundamentalist Muslim and a fundamentalist Scientologist?

 

Nobody said anything when Muhammed appeared on the Super Friends episode of South Park.

 

 

Might I point out that the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten commissioned the cartoons to highlight the difficulty experienced by Danish writer Kåre Bluitgen in finding artists to illustrate his children's book about Muhammad. In other words the cartoonists were fulfilling AN ASSIGNMENT. As The Anchoress points out:

 

 

"The socialist take is very clear on this. There should be no bans or censorship whatsoever. Censorship does not achieve what it sets out to stop and is never productive. It is a sign of the fragile nature of the religious mentality that humour or cartoons can be seen as such a threat to beliefs."

- Gray: Causing Offense -

 

    "Both sides are spoiling for a fight on this one and there is a fair amount of unattractive posturing. When push comes to shove, I have to say that I would take a lot more notice of the outrage in the Middle East if I had not come across dozens of anti-Semitic cartoons published in the Arab press.

    "The striking part of Arabic Jew-baiting is that it is as prevalent, nasty and dehumanizing as it ever was in Nazi Germany. Newspapers published in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Oman and UAE all use demonic images of stereotypical Jews (big nose, black coat and hat and laden with money bags) pulling the strings behind the scenes in US politics, buying political influence and spreading death, terror and disease. Josef Goebbels would have felt quite at home reading these newspapers.

    "They are unacceptable and would, if published here, cause an outrage equal to last week's, but this does not seem to have occurred to the Muslim spokesman or clerics that I have heard on the subject."

- Henry Porter: A few bad cartoons are no reason to fall out -