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

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.

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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."

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.

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.

I showed up for Anonymous's protests against Scientology. That was fun.

And so what? So what if they're motivated by Islamophobia? Honestly, if the worst thing they can think to do is draw a fucking stick figure, that's a pretty harmless way to blow off steam.

And so what? So what if they're motivated by Islamophobia?

Then people like the friend you mentioned above are justified in seeing it as primarily a tribal act directed against scary foreigners, and not primarily about freedom of expression. It's not the biggest deal in the world (Islamophobia has much bigger consequences), but that doesn't make it laudable.

It can be both, you know. And I think it is.

So, all those people who used to express their anti-black by drawing pickaninny pictures and put on minstrel shows portraying blacks as fools and genetically lesser creatures -- were they just blowing off steam too?

Intolerance -- in any form -- is unacceptable.

If you want to have a rational discussion of why you think Islamic fundamentalism is a problem, be my guest. But that's not what these people are doing. They are cruelly, pointlessly, and self-importantly mocking someone else's beliefs. See my kosher analogy in an above comment.

This only holds up if you assume that drawing a picture of Mohammed as a way of saying that you value freedom of speech and that you refuse to be cowed by extremists is equivalent to mocking and insulting Islam. I don't.

This also assumes that if you don't follow the strictures of another religion, you're insulting that religion.

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

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