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?

Unsurprisingly, I completely disagree with you.

[babyraven.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[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."

[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.

[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...

[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