Everyone Draw Mohammed (may Allah honor him and grant him peace) day

[yagathai]

So recently it was apparently Everyone Draw Mohammed Day, wherein people were encouraged to draw the Prophet of Islam. This was in direct reaction to some high-profile and recent terroristic threats made by certain Muslim extremists towards (primarily Western) artists, threatening violence in reaction to depictions of Mohammed which are forbidden according to strict religious codes.

tithenai and I had some words over the 'holiday', because she believes that it's wrong to offend an oppressed minority for the sake of satisfying some jingoistic urge to "put Muslims in their place".

This strikes me as a terribly defensive and reactionary view, and that is certainly not my motivation. However, honestly, even if it does offend the world's Muslim population, on a personal level I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, mockery is always a valid response to threats of unreasonable violence -- it may even be the best response. If people that hew to a frankly absurd tenet are offended because of a reaction to violence perpetrated other people that hew to that same tenet, I have not one iota of pity for them. Underclass or overclass, victims or perpetrators, violent desert barbarians or ancient and maligned culture -- I don't care.

To put it another way, is it OK to blame vegetarians if, say, a militant ecoterrorist group kills a security guard in an attempt to liberate a factory farm? Absolutely not. But you'd better believe that I'll be participating in "Eat A Rare, Juicy Steak Day" that week to show the murdering assholes that their abhorrent tactics haven't cowed me, but rather energized their oppositions. If that offends all the non-violent vegetarians, tough titty.

In other words, it's OK if it offends the emperor's tailors to point out that the Emperor has no clothes. Pointing out the Emperor's nudity is a good in and of itself, but if one of the tailors has been threatening to hurt me if I pointed out his flimflammery, so much the better. A statement of defiance and scorn towards that violent tailor is an additional good, and if the rest of the tailors get hurt feelings that's too bad. No matter what the tailors' circumstances, the Emperor is still completely goddamn naked.

Comments

[aghrivaine.livejournal.com]

In addition, if the whole world ends up drawing the Prophet Mohammed, it makes such a target-rich environment for the extremists that the original cartoonist who was the first pebble in this avalanche won't have to worry so much about say...getting his house burned down. When the violent extremists only have one or two offenders to bully and terrorize, they've got a manageable situation. If half the world is guilty though... what will they do? Kill everyone?

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

That's another excellent point.

[aghrivaine.livejournal.com]

That poor man did have his house burned down, BTW.

Unsurprisingly, I completely disagree with you.

[babyraven.livejournal.com]

No, Mike, you're just wrong. Shitting on someone else's beliefs is never justifiable.

Re: Unsurprisingly, I completely disagree with you.

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

Certainly pointing out the absurdities of religion is for the greater good, and often if not always justifiable.

Re: Unsurprisingly, I completely disagree with you.

[dje2004.livejournal.com]

I can think of plenty of cases where shitting on someone's beliefs is totally justifiable. Are we supposed to treat the beliefs of holocaust deniers, anti-vaccinationers, HIV-deniers, creationists, racists, or the members of the Westboro Baptist church with respect?

Re: Unsurprisingly, I completely disagree with you.

[babyraven.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between a discussion where you rationally discuss why someone's point of view does not make sense, versus actively shitting on it.

Example: kosher laws are outdated, and in some senses utterly nonsensical. For example, if the law is based on "don't drown a calf in its mother's milk," why would chicken, which is not mammal and therefore could never produce milk, count as "meat?" Pointing this out is totally fine. However, using that as an excuse to trick a black hat into eating pork? NOT COOL.

My POV is: feel free to criticize; just don't cross the line into "asshole" while doing it.

[saladinahmed.livejournal.com]

Except that viewing the Muhammad cartoons and the response to them in a vaccum is silly and useless.

Despite a few isolated incidents to the contrary, and despite a horseshit campaign of fear mongering against the 'muslim threat,' the facts on the ground -- the NUMBERS -- are clear: The 'western world' hasn't been suffering mass violence at the hands of Muslims. Exactly the opposite is true. And therefore viewing the Muhammad cartoons as anything other than a scummy, self-important insult added to a hundreds-of-thousands-of-dead-people injury is dishonest. One western cartoonist or filmmaker getting stabbed or burned out of his house is a tragedy. But hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and Afghans is just business as usual. This has been the state of affairs since long before Bush II and it hasn't changed with Obama. Half a million muslim kids died from US sanctions on Iraq in the 90s. Do you know any of their names? No. But you know Salman Rushdie's.

This isn't 'eat a bloody steak' day. It's more like 'spit on a queer' day. Watching all these twits patting themselves on the back for their bravery in kicking people when they're down is pathetic.

[dear-amaranth.livejournal.com]

Very well said.

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

Your rhetoric aside: Queer isn't a choice, like vegetarian or Muslim. Queer isn't an on-its-face ridiculous restriction on behavior. Drawing a picture of Mohammed doesn't actually cause anyone any harm, which is very different than assaulting a homosexual.

I live on this side of the cultural divide. Were I to live on the other side, I could see myself being motivated to, say, burn an American flag on the 4th of July. But I'm not. I'm on this side, and so instead I stick up for people scribbling stick figures (though on a personal note I don't really have a problem with flag burning either).

People are frustrated and scared, and while certainly I think the "Muslim threat" has been far overblown, it doesn't mean that people don't have some right to be frustrated and afraid, regardless of how real the threat is, regardless of who threw the first punch. They're going to lash out, and I think that drawing stick figures is a pretty benign way to do it.

Am I defending US policy in the Middle East? Certainly not. I'm not supporting violence or direct action against any Muslim. Am I supporting disrespecting a (especially ridiculous) religious tenet? With a work of defiance through art? As a response to violent assault both real and percieved? Hell yes. I supported Piss Christ*, and so I'll sure as hell support this.

*Personally I think I have more to fear from fundamentalist Christians than Muslims, but that's beside the point.

[saladinahmed.livejournal.com]

"Queer isn't a choice, like vegetarian or Muslim. Queer isn't an on-its-face ridiculous restriction on behavior. Drawing a picture of Mohammed doesn't actually cause anyone any harm, which is very different than assaulting a homosexual."

Actually, you're wrong. To take the easiest claim first, any grown person knows that words and images can cause harm. Calling someone a nigger causes harm. Publicly shitting on their most dearly-held beliefs (esp. in the context of a culture that makes shitting on such beliefs a national passtime) hurts people.

More complicatedly, to be 'queer' (when 'queer = what westerners mean when they say the word queer') IS a choice. All over the world there are people who prefer having sex with people of the same gender. That's probably biology at work. But to say that they're 'queer' in the US-ian sense is about as accurate as saying that every woman worldwide who asserts her needs and desires aggressively is 'feminist' -- that is to say it's not accurate at all. Though I realize it's a lamentable tragedy for white taxonimists-of-humans everywhere, the labels the progressive US/western european communities have come up with in the past few decades don't obtain all over the word so neatly as some folks would like.

Similarly your notion of 'choice' as far as being a Muslim goes seems to depend on a notion that the middle-class US-ian experience of growing up with a set of beliefs, then going to college and taking World Religions or Philosophy 101 and Questioning It All is universal. It's not. Most Muslims in the world are so CULTURALLY emeshed in their local form of Islam that they can't possibly pick and choose doctrine ala American-style buffet religion.

The funny thing is, you acknowledge that this lack of choice imposed by culture is inevitable -- but it's only ok for US-ians:

"I live on this side of the cultural divide...I stick up for people scribbling stick figures...People are frustrated and scared, and while certainly I think the "Muslim threat" has been far overblown, it doesn't mean that people don't have some right to be frustrated and afraid, regardless of how real the threat is...They're going to lash out"

I live in the west, too. I was born and grew up in freaking michigan! The idea that that means that you inevitably must wed yourself to racist idiot shitbags is preposterous -- and is disproved by the fact that lots of westerners are saying that this 'holiday' is hatemongering nonsense. But even more dangerous is the idea that people "have some right" to be "frustrated and afraid" and "lash out" REGARDLESS OF HOW REAL THE THREAT IS.
I mean, doesn't that sound insane to you? Western europeans for centuries PERCEIVED a threat in from Jews. So were pogroms and shtetls and genocoide ok? Or only, say, throwing pig's blood on people's doors, since that's a 'symbolic' act? That's some sad, baa-sheep thinking, esp. form someone who's patting himself on the back for being such an iconoclast.

[arya.livejournal.com]

This isn't 'eat a bloody steak' day. It's more like 'spit on a queer' day.

Seriously?

Because if a bunch of Christians were to decide that Good Friday is also going to be "Eat a bacon cheeseburger day" I don't think you'd find a single Jew threatening to kill anyone over it.

[saladinahmed.livejournal.com]

Your metaphor is so inaccurate on so many points as to be useless.

A) Jews aren't the primary targets of brutal military assaults and occupation by the world's most powerful armies. Muslims are. Except by a vocal antisemetic minority Jews are not discussed in the west as if they are The Big Scary Problem Of the 21st Century. Muslims are.

B) 'Eat a bacon cheesburger day' is not equivalent to what we're talking about here. Throwing pig's blood on people's doors or going into a hasid neighborhood and making holocaust jokes over a loudspeaker is more like it.

C) If you went to my next-door Hasid neighborhood of williamsburg and did one of the above things, I guarantee you AT LEAST one of those dudes would threaten to kill you. And you'd at least get your nose broken. Those dudes don't play. But if that happened it would be taken as an isolated incident, instead of representative of their entire religion. Which brings us back to (A)

[dje2004.livejournal.com]

Wait, so you're saying that if muslims had killed more westerners, and westerners had killed less muslims, then you wouldn't have a problem with this?

Or are you saying that since we've killed so many muslims, we shouldn't make a stink when muslims kill or threaten to kill some of us?

[saladinahmed.livejournal.com]

I'm saying that it's annoying listening to people who don't know a damn thing about REALLY living in fear* but who enjoy a bloated consumer lifestyle whine about how horribly their freedom of expression is supposedly threatened by the impoverished people** whose real fear (of stravation-sanctions, of predator drones, of depleted uranium bombs, of random recist detentions and torture) sustains that bloated lifestyle. Clear enough?

*Before anyone brings up 9/11: I was actually living in Manhattan and thought my friends were dead, and spent that day watching the smoke rise and the fighter planes roar overhead, so please, to those who just watched it on TV, I don't want to hear about how I'm downplaying this.

**Yeah, yeah, I know: "Bin Laden is a rich boy. The Saudis have oil money." But the essential economic relationship of the US and western europe to the muslim world is still parasitic. I'm talking forest, not trees.

[harrytheheir.livejournal.com]

I agree with Jill. And to be honest, the idea of "Eat a Juicy Steak Day" bothers me less than "Draw Mohammed Day," even though the absurd tenet being transgressed here is one that I agree with. Eating a rare, juicy steak is enjoyable for its own sake, but most people who are drawing a stick-figure Mohammed don't get any satisfaction from the act of artistic creation.

Besides, it's hard not to notice the discrepancy between the reaction to death threats that the South Park creators received from Muslims and the death threats that many other people have received for controversial art that offended other groups. When the people who tried to put on the play Corpus Christi received death threats for their trouble, there was no "Put On A Play In Which Christ Sucks Cock Day."

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

I think the reason for the vehemence of the reaction is pretty obvious. Violent fundamentalist Muslims are the current national boogeyman, so the urge to strike back is strong.

The intrinsic value of eating a tasty stake vs. drawing a stick-figure Prophet doesn't really factor into my reasoning.

[harrytheheir.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I get why the discrepancy exists. And I assume that you personally would participate in a demonstration designed to offend some equally arbitrary conservative Christian tenet should a similar incident arise. But I seriously doubt that most people who are drawing Mohammed would join you, and in any case this sort of demonstration probably wouldn't even get started in that case, because Christian death threats and Christian violence wouldn't be greeted with the same kind of media firestorm. I know you to be ecumenical in who you piss off; but a lot of people doing this just want to show how much they hate Muslims.

[saltedpin.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with you more if Islam actually affected my life in any way in a day-to-day sense. As it is, I'm snug in my majority white country (as, I'm willing to bet, most of the Mohammed artistes are too), and Islam is not even approaching anything like my emperor, naked or not.

[yagathai.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find that you still live in a country firmly yoked to the mores of Middle Eastern desert cults.

[lostreality.livejournal.com]

I'm with you yagathai, I think this is partially motivated by anti-islamic sentiment from some, but this is much more a reaction to the south park fiasco in which we experienced actual censorship in this country on the basis of the religious views and threats of another group- this was an assertion of one of the basic rights of this country in response to that censorship.

Draw mohammed day was also super popular in the atheist blogger crowds, and that crowd at least is not very anti-muslims in particular, we're just against any religions dictating any policy. :) And while personally I don't need to go around drawing pictures of mohammed, and some of those pictures were indeed very offensive, I may not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it...

Surprisingly, I do somewhat agree with you, Mike.

[glamour-junkie.livejournal.com]

I'm betting you're right in that a lot of the people in the Draw-Mohammed crowd (I hadn't even heard of this thing, honestly, until this post... but I was disgusted when I heard about the South Park threats) aren't anti-Muslim, being as a lot of Atheists or Agnostics aren't particularly hateful toward any one religion, they're against the harmful tenets of all religions. What I DO think the Draw-Mohammed people all share is the anger toward intimidation.

What we're talking about here, really, isn't "white America" shitting on the Muslim community for shitting's sake. It's not "cram pork down someone's throat laughing all the way". It's not anti-Muslims vs. Muslims.

What it is, at least mostly, is a small group of people fighting back against threats of violence and intimidation from another small group of people.

Intolerance is bad, sure enough. But NO - absolutely NO fucking religion - has the right to invoke threats (or acts) of violence and retribution against others just because they don't share and honor their beliefs and reverences.

Have I been on the receiving end of any form of discrimination or threats for what I have done or what I have believed (or not believed) in my life? Bet your ass I have. I have had death threats scrawled on walls for me to see, calling me out by name.
(Whether or not a prev. poster above knows what I've been through or not, I don't fucking care. I respectfully disagree with a lot of what they've said, and their tone of superiority here. Speaking for everyone and what they do or do not know about is just as ignorant.)

I, as an individual and a human, have learned to respond civilly and, at the end of the day, to respond in a non-violent way and/or move on. I'm not about to bash in the noses (or brains) of those who believe I'm in the wrong. Because THAT'S what not OK, no matter what. I'm going to use my voice and my vote to try to make positive change, not my fists.

The people who decided to participate in Draw-Mohammed day used their voices, too. They used a non-violent protest (religiously abrasive and misguided, sure, but non-violent) to respond to those few using violent fear tactics. The drawings are for those few, not the rest of the Muslim community. The "holocaust jokes over a loudspeaker" analogy is just absurd - are we really going to compare genocide and an offensive image of someone's deity?

I myself don't feel the need to draw a picture either, but I have a human fucking right to do so. If someone threatens me with violence and retribution for it, I'm going to respond the only way I, as a non-violent person, know how - use my voice. I agree it might be misguided and counter-productive, but it's the only way some people feel like they can respond legally to people that have gone beyond "asshole" and right into "villains" by threatening their legal and moral freedoms. They might be becoming assholes themselves by taking it in this direction, but it's a direct and proportional response to those fearmongers. Draw-Mohammed day is a RESPONSE to threats, not anti-Muslim behavior inherently. My hope is that most people can rise above BOTH sides of this bullshit.


(And I was so calm when I started off this response. Sheesh.)

EDIT: After reading a little more about it, I feel like the anger about this is largely due to misunderstanding. The two sides are fighting from viewpoints WORLDS apart, and aren't even really fighting the same battle.
It's crazy. The DM people are fighting against censorship and a culture of fear, which is valid, and the anti DM people are fighting this because of the racism they believe is there. How frustrating.

[dje2004.livejournal.com]

I remember having the same argument with Sarah, more or less, when the Danish cartoon controversy hit the media.

I'm with you as well.

[dynix.livejournal.com]

It's odd trying to disentangle the comments to this and the original post itself.

Freedom of speech is am important thing.

Not being reactionary and extremist to the perceived threat against your beliefs is important.

Not being reactionary and extremist to the perceived threat against your freedom of speech is also important.

Not being an arse is generally a good thing too.

Your post is incredibly self-righteous sounding and I can see how that would grate, whatever anyone thought of the actual thing you were trying to get across.

Still it was interesting to know that all this is going on.

It might interest you all to know that there's a lot of Muslims who are going to think 'well it's against the rules for me to draw that picture, I don't much care what the rest of you do' and not care much either way until it looks like racist crap is getting mixed in. Seemed worth mentioning, as you won't hear that voice very much, almost by definition.

[cynic51.livejournal.com]

relevant blog post on the topic