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

Re: Unsurprisingly, I completely disagree with you.

[babyraven.livejournal.com]

Sure. Everyone does. Including the 12 year old Muslim kid they just insulted who now has reason to believe that the extremists are right about us, and will now decide to join them to save his religion from the infidels.

[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.

Re: Surprisingly, I do somewhat agree with you, Mike.

[dynix.livejournal.com]

"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."

That bit was genuinely useful. Ta.

Re: Unsurprisingly, I completely disagree with you.

[dje2004.livejournal.com]

How are we supposed to change their minds? By pretending that not causing offense to their religion is more important than freedom of expression? Because in our society, that just isn't true. In a free society, religion is not exempt from criticism or satire or mockery. You can certainly show your disapproval - that's all a part of free speech too - but you don't get to hurt or kill or threaten people because you don't like what they're saying. I think that reaffirming those values is the good this does.

[cynic51.livejournal.com]

relevant blog post on the topic