Cartoons cause an uproar

Post questions or suggestions here.
User avatar
Dan Rowden
Posts: 5739
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 8:03 pm
Contact:

Post by Dan Rowden » Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:03 am

You make a good point about cultural differences. An offensive cartoon (as seen that way by Xians) would no doubt illicit a different response in say, the Phillipines or various countries in Sth America than it would in the U.S. or Australia.

The actual nature of the cartoons makes some difference but from what I'm reading there may be more to this story than meets the eye (as there so often is). Our old friend Victor Danilchenko, without supplying a source, said this at The Ponderer's Guild:
The publication of cartoons occurred in September 2005; nothing happened, until a danish muslim group put together a dossier showing how muslims are oppressed there, and included in it three extremely offensive cartoons which it did not actually get from any publication; this dossier was then distributed to leaders around the muslim world.

In short, this seems to have been an artificial escalation of hostilities where none need to have existed, and the Danish newspaper is not the primary culprit.
I did find this article from last year so the matter isn't as recent as it appears:
December 30, 2005

Row deepens over Danish cartoons of Prophet

Protestors Arab foreign ministers have condemned the Danish government for failing to act against a newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. At the Arab League conference in Cairo, they said they were "surprised and discontented at the response." Islam forbids any depiction of Muhammad or of Allah.

The Jyllands-Posten newspaper published a series of 12 cartoons showing Muhammad, in one of which he appeared to have a bomb in his turban. The Arab League's ministers council said the cartoons were an insult to Islam. The government's response "was disappointing despite its political, economic and cultural ties with the Muslim world", it added.

Death threats

Danish Muslim community leaders held talks with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in July to complain about press coverage of Islam. At the time, Mr Rasmussen said he could not tell newspapers what to print - or what not to.

Source: [BBC]

Arab ministers also said they were unhappy that European human rights organisations have not taken a clear position on the issue.

There have been street protests both in Denmark and in Muslim countries following the publication of the cartoons. The newspaper insists on freedom of expression and says it has the right to print whatever words and pictures it chooses.

It said both the paper and the cartoonist had received death threats.
Actual Page

Plus this article is interesting.


Dan Rowden

SBN Charles
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:46 am
Location: England, U.K
Contact:

Post by SBN Charles » Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:22 am

I cant believe the protestors are threatening to kill people who attack/mock their religion, carrying signs which send this message, which is consequently illegal.

Our societies see this as inappropriate behaviour, but their actions seem totally ungoverned by are laws.

User avatar
Dan Rowden
Posts: 5739
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 8:03 pm
Contact:

Post by Dan Rowden » Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:05 am

I'm not so sure that in the overall scheme of things these events are really that big a deal. The Mulsims factions doing the violent protesting and issuing death threats have always done that kind of thing (remember Rushdie?). It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that they're doing it now. But what percentage of the global Islamic population is actually responding this way? A significant one, such that we ought to tremble in our boots about it? I don't think so.

In the current global political environment it's to be expected that Muslism communities are going to be highly sensitive to this sort of thing. And, of course, in certain middle eastern countires there are laws that explicitly ban anything insulting to Islam so there's bound to be a degree of tolerance towards more extreme forms of protest. I don't know why you think any of those countries should feel compelled to be governed by our laws. It would be nice if they felt compelled to be goverened by reason and sanity, but since we offer such a poor example of it ourselves I'm not sure how much of a high moral ground we can sensibly occupy.


Dan Rowden

avidaloca
Posts: 231
Joined: Wed Dec 26, 2001 6:24 pm
Contact:

Holocaust cartoons commissioned

Post by avidaloca » Tue Feb 07, 2006 10:31 am

Iran to publish Holocaust cartoons
From: Agence France-Presse From correspondents in Tehran
February 07, 2006

IRAN'S largest selling newspaper announced today it was holding a contest on cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publishing in European papers of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

"It will be an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust," said Farid Mortazavi, the graphics editor for Hamshahri newspaper - which is published by Teheran's conservative municipality.
He said the plan was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression.

"The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," he said.

Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionist historians, who maintain the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as well as other groups during World War II has been either invented or exaggerated.

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted international anger when he dismissed the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel.

Mr Mortazavi said tomorrow's edition of the paper will invite cartoonists to enter the competition, with "private individuals" offering gold coins to the best 12 artists - the same number of cartoons that appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Last week, the Iranian foreign ministry also invited British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Teheran to take part in a planned conference on the Holocaust, even though the idea has been branded by Mr Blair as "shocking, ridiculous, stupid".

Mr Blair also said Mr Ahmadinejad "should come and see the evidence of the Holocaust himself in the countries of Europe", to which Iran responded by saying it was willing to send a team of "independent investigators".

User avatar
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Post by Kevin Solway » Tue Feb 07, 2006 11:11 am

Islam forbids any depiction of Muhammad or of Allah.
A person can't just make up some arbitrary law and expect everyone else in the world to stick to it. Well, they can, but they will have a hell of a job enforcing it.

Imagine if everyone in the world made up their own personal laws, which apply to everyone else in the world, and have to be enforced. It would make an interesting movie. . . . Chaotic, but interesting.

User avatar
Jamesh
Posts: 1526
Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:44 pm

Post by Jamesh » Tue Feb 07, 2006 11:26 am

Muhammad- I'm surprised that if depictions are not allowed, why can people change their names and take his name.

avidaloca
Posts: 231
Joined: Wed Dec 26, 2001 6:24 pm
Contact:

Post by avidaloca » Tue Feb 07, 2006 11:29 am

What do you think the chances are of Western newspapers printing cartoons mocking the Holocaust? I'd say zilch, because that is today's last sacred religion of the West.

Get Real
Posts: 21
Joined: Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:51 pm

Post by Get Real » Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:45 pm

(clapclapclapclapclapclap.................

Howta go Mortazavi! Now that's more like it!

Is this just a dream-- am i still asleep??????????????

This is gonna be good :):):)

User avatar
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Post by Kevin Solway » Tue Feb 07, 2006 1:18 pm

Jamesh wrote:Muhammad- I'm surprised that if depictions are not allowed, why can people change their names and take his name.
Surely the Koran itself is a depiction of Muhammed - not a strictly visual depiction, but a depiction in text.

So what's the difference between a visual and a textual depiction?

What it boils down to is whether insane people are allowed to dictate the laws everyone else has live by.

User avatar
Jamesh
Posts: 1526
Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:44 pm

Post by Jamesh » Tue Feb 07, 2006 2:07 pm

What it boils down to is whether insane people are allowed to dictate the laws everyone else has live by.

I'm in full agreement, and those who value freedom must complain strongly.

Although in Europe muslims are getting some degree of political control by their incessant violence, it will never go anywhere in terms of the power stuggle. they are simpyl to weak.

Unfortunately what will happen is that their opposition to personal freedom will result in more and more people getting scared (in this age of the Last Man) and turning towards or supporting the more fundamental Christian religions and some of the same sort of controls over putting shit on religion will result.

Reason can't win.

Lennyrizzo
Posts: 121
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2005 11:35 am

Post by Lennyrizzo » Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:34 pm

The text is accepted, and has been accepted, as truely representative of the man. An illustration may not portray him accurately which isn't seen as much of a problem in itself, but may become one with time.

It's sort of like what happened to Jesus, there's this one depiction seen the world over, often used in catholic homes on tv, long hair, white man with a beard, a certain soft look on his face. Do you think this points to the real Jesus? Some say he was black, or at least a dark Jew. Whatever the truth this image has stuck, and can influence the way people 'see' him.

User avatar
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Post by Leyla Shen » Tue Feb 07, 2006 7:31 pm

[laughs!]

Now that's the funniest article I've seen in a bit, avidaloca!

What a top response.

Anyone seen Spielberg's Munich, yet?

avidaloca
Posts: 231
Joined: Wed Dec 26, 2001 6:24 pm
Contact:

Looney toons

Post by avidaloca » Tue Feb 07, 2006 10:25 pm

Cartoonists beware!

Image

propellerbeanie
Posts: 154
Joined: Sat Jan 07, 2006 5:06 am

Post by propellerbeanie » Tue Feb 07, 2006 10:38 pm

SBN Charles wrote:I cant believe the protestors are threatening to kill people who attack/mock their religion, carrying signs which send this message, which is consequently illegal.

Our societies see this as inappropriate behaviour, but their actions seem totally ungoverned by are laws.
Muslims are law abiding people, and patient. Religion plays a much larger part in their lives than Christianity plays in our lives, and struggle is a tenant of that religion. If they are in Denmark it is as guests, then what sort of host, in disregard of the beliefs of his guests, would rudely offend with indignity and insult.
Our culture has very little to recommend it, and much of the hardships Muslims flee is the result of the West, and our need to dominate their culture and take the resources that are the property of the Dar al Islam.
If you notice these people, and the strength with which they hold to their religion and cultures, you might be inclined to think they are fanatics. They are anything but fanatics, and only practicing what works in affirming their bonds of family and religion. Their societies work.
Certain of them, as thieves and kings, have armed themselves against the multitude; but the multitude better represents the greatness of Islam. For Islam they can endure any indignity or pain, with the recognition that Allah the merciful is the only reality.
If we will live with these people it will be to some extent on their terms, and with respect for their traditions and religion. If we believe we can insult them into disbelieving their faith, we may find them impossible to live with, and that would weaken us and our societies.
Seeing us in our miserable conditions, wasted and deteriorated by a millenium of law that has broken down every natural affinity without giving us a national or international affinity, why should they want to be like us? Blood is thicker than water, and Islam is more powerful than Christianity, and more logical. And this is not an endorsement. It is a recognition that if we have nothing better than Islam to give to these people we will never have their affection. Islam has every answer at this point, and we cannot show them anything better. We should not convince them we are beyond hope.

User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: Holocaust cartoons commissioned

Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Tue Feb 07, 2006 11:27 pm

avidaloca wrote:
Farid Mortazavi wrote:...The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," he said....
What do you think the chances are of Western newspapers printing cartoons mocking the Holocaust? I'd say zilch, because that is today's last sacred religion of the West.
I think you and Farid have a point here, thought I don't think it's the last religious item around. The West, or at least European countries have their own rules about what is offensive or indecent in the legal sense and what not. Apart from the outlawed questioning of the details of the Holocaust there are still cases where art is banned (and owning an arrestable offence) when it's displaying naked children or other taboos (not talking even about child-porn by the way). Books are still being denied publication by law. Then we have the rules about what is considered obscene, discriminatory or hate speech. These are not only uphold by publishers or governing agencies but also by the law! In Holland it's still a criminal offence to display in public an object or image that is deemed offensive or damaging to someones "chastity" or virtue. There's no universal norm of course what is offensive and what's not. The least hypocritical would be to remove all restrictions on publication before claiming the Muslims have no case. I suspect by Danish law they have a case since they feel offended, rational or irrational, that's not the point.

In my view the only worrying aspect of this cartoon event is the dawning realization that indeed because of the globalization of the world and the media, we are now in the situation we have to think about different sensitivities in a global population. It can also work the other way around. Al Jazeera has no problem broadcasting Bin Laden as 'other side of the coin' news. How peculiar that the US government wanted to shut down the whole network, even through bombing as was discussed. Freedom of news and expression, hah! For all parties that boils down to have freedom only when it not threatens the way of thinking or living you hold dear so much....

User avatar
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Post by Leyla Shen » Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:04 am

You know, Kevin, you're probably the only person who seems to blow me away rather frequently in one of two ways: I am either in complete amazement over how fantastically well you express usually complex ideas and deliver insight, or completely stupified by something you've said which I think should be so obvious to, and therefore almost unbecoming of, you.
Imagine if everyone in the world made up their own personal laws, which apply to everyone else in the world, and have to be enforced. It would make an interesting movie. . . . Chaotic, but interesting.
Imagine???
What it boils down to is whether insane people are allowed to dictate the laws everyone else has live by.
You mean suddenly we are living in an enlightened society with an enlightened government?

This doesn't even begin to make up for it!

User avatar
DHodges
Posts: 1531
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2002 8:20 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Contact:

Post by DHodges » Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:23 am

Arab ministers also said they were unhappy that European human rights organisations have not taken a clear position on the issue.
This is a human rights issue - freedom of expression, freedom of the press. It's pretty lame if a human rights organisation won't come out and say that limiting freedom of expression by violence and the threat of violence is wrong.

Seems pretty obvious to me.

User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Post by Diebert van Rhijn » Wed Feb 08, 2006 3:16 am

DHodges wrote:
Arab ministers also said they were unhappy that European human rights organisations have not taken a clear position on the issue.
This is a human rights issue - freedom of expression, freedom of the press. It's pretty lame if a human rights organisation won't come out and say that limiting freedom of expression by violence and the threat of violence is wrong.

Seems pretty obvious to me.
I think you missed the point. At least some of the cartoons seemed to be targeting (stereotyping) a whole distinct group, a class or category of people with a certain cultural or religious background. They were not about Bin Laden or only suicide bombers. This same trend was witnessed against Jews or communists in the last century: not a specific corrupt person, spy or conspirator was targeted but 'the Jew' or 'the communist'. What angered the Muslim community was not as much the publication of those cartoons but the lack of outrage or indignation by all those that are always so 'politically correct' in other situations. This sort of confirmed the suspicion for them that the Muslim is becoming the "21st century Jew", a target of ridicule and suspicion by using the all too human trades of generalization and prejudices. Or in other words, they are playing the victim before the crime might happen.

User avatar
DHodges
Posts: 1531
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2002 8:20 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Contact:

Post by DHodges » Wed Feb 08, 2006 6:04 am

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:I think you missed the point. At least some of the cartoons seemed to be targeting (stereotyping) a whole distinct group, a class or category of people with a certain cultural or religious background.
Yes, I did miss that. Thanks.

User avatar
Leyla Shen
Posts: 3851
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:12 pm
Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE

Post by Leyla Shen » Wed Feb 08, 2006 9:20 am

I have now reviewed this thread somewhat more thoroughly in its entirety.

Some moron wrote:
They're frustrated to no end, glory has never seemed more remote. With every passing moment it becomes increasingly clear that a violent solution is the only solution. Much of the thanks rests with the christian crusaders. Nothing perpetuates agression better than agression. Iran will get it's bomb, and lead allah's children to freedom; may have it already. A rather bad time to be an eastern jew.
When is it a bad time to be a Muslim?

And this coming from one raised in the lap of Western luxury.

You seem to forget that religions, culture - anyone’s - is of little consequence to history and the pattern and cycle of imperialism. That you can belligerently and with arrogance speak from the vantage point of such luxury affords you no respect, I assure you.

Will we ever learn?

I wonder if you would have any sense of what it would be like to watch people that you have grown up with being slaughtered and otherwise mistreated. People who, unlike those to whose “side” fate has since delivered you by a sort of twisted necessity, had to walk miles and miles barefoot for the most basic schooling - if they were lucky; and usually only if they were male children. People who grew up on nothing more than a slice of bread, soaked in milk and sugar, and an olive if they were lucky.

I wonder if you would have any sense of what it would be like to be asked to deceive those people in their pitiful plight for survival and in exchange for yours: to be told “you are either with us, or against us.“ To have your mother die with you in her arms at an age when you were young enough not to understand but old enough never to forget.

Yes, I think cartoons and outrage over freedom of speech will do it.

Hit or miss, eh?

Is this to be considered the pinnacle of Western thought?

Get Real
Posts: 21
Joined: Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:51 pm

Post by Get Real » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:15 am

Is this some sort of a joke? I don't know what to make of it!

User avatar
Dan Rowden
Posts: 5739
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 8:03 pm
Contact:

Post by Dan Rowden » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:38 am

For the sake of comparison/contrast, I wonder if anyone remembers this:
In 1988, fundamentalist Christians in several nations vented rage and violence because a movie, The Last Temptation of Christ, portrayed Jesus as a wavering human who lusted for the prostitute Mary Magdalene.

A Paris theater showing the film was firebombed, sending thirteen people to hospitals. Another, at Besancon, France, suffered a similar attack. Tear gas was loosed in some French movie houses. Israel's government banned the film. In America, some theaters were ransacked, one was burned, another had its screen slashed, and a screaming protester crashed a bus into one theater's lobby....]
Lunatics on all sides is the essential message.


Dan Rowden

avidaloca
Posts: 231
Joined: Wed Dec 26, 2001 6:24 pm
Contact:

Floating Saddam banned: West censors Islam-insensitive art

Post by avidaloca » Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:23 pm

Image

An artwork depicting a handcuffed Saddam Hussein suspended in liquid wearing underpants has been banned from a Belgian art festival.

Czech sculptor David Cerny's "Saddam Hussein shark" is a homage to British artist Damien Hirst's "Shark".

The mayor of the small Belgian town of Middlekerke, Michel Landuyt, said he decided to ban the work before fury was unleashed over published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed.

Mr Landuyt said the sculpture could "shock people, including Muslims".

Cerny's previous works have included a man hanging from a pole using one hand, a series of "kits" including one of Jesus, and a pair of naked bronze figures urinating into a pond.

Damien Hirst's shark installation, entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, was commissioned by art collector Charles Saatchi in 1991 for £50,000.

In 1992 Hirst was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe.

User avatar
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Post by Kevin Solway » Wed Feb 08, 2006 2:14 pm

Leyla Shen wrote:
What it boils down to is whether insane people are allowed to dictate the laws everyone else has live by.
You mean suddenly we are living in an enlightened society with an enlightened government?
Different people are insane in different ways.

Sometimes it is possible for an insane person to see, rightly, the insanity in another person.

People have enough insanity of their own, without having to go along with the insanity of other people as well.

Christians, while just as insane as Muslims, should not have to heed the same insane laws as Muslims in addition to their own. Otherwise, we would have to say that every person should have to respect and follow every insane law ever thought of, out of respect for the insanity of others, and so as not to offend them.

User avatar
Kevin Solway
Posts: 2766
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2001 8:43 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Post by Kevin Solway » Wed Feb 08, 2006 2:22 pm

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:At least some of the cartoons seemed to be targeting (stereotyping) a whole distinct group,
a class or category of people with a certain cultural or religious background.
Sometimes this generalizing is perfectly justified. Christians for example, as an entire group, believe some very, very, stupid things.

And dissent in Islam is even more rare than it is in Christanity, since dissenters fear for their lives.

There is a Muslim scholar, I think in Pakistan, who has a death sentence over his head because he questioned whether Mohammed's parents were Muslim. He figured that they can't have been, since Islam didn't exist before Mohammed was born. For that simple idea the Islamic leaders ordered his death.

So generalizations about Islam can be far more accurate than generalizations about Christianity.

Post Reply