(no subject)

[prog]

Has anyone commented on the irony of the Danish cartoon brouhaha reaching global proportions at the same time as the American release of a movie called "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World"? Probably there'd be a stronger link perceived if the movie were better...

As for my own take on the issue... well, my feelings are very complicated, based on what I think is a fairly good handle on everything involved. I see a lot of people on both sides oversimplifying or misinterpreting things. Rather than offer a summary of my feelings, I will say: I generally do support the exposure of significant social disagreements sooner rather than later, even if they lead to conflict. The rise of the Intelligent Design school, for example, does not fill me with despair but hope and courage: here the Enemy, sensing a threat, has chosen to manifest itself. This is a threat in itself, but it also gives the forces of Good a face to punch in.

This one's weird, though, since it seems a bit trite to speak of "social disagreements" when we're arguably talking about a disagreement at the civilization level, perhaps even at the hemispherical one. Demanding U.N. sanctions on a country because one of its newspapers made fun of your god religion shows a basic lack of... well, it shows a different worldview, certainly, hmm, yes.

Even though I think that only one side here is objectively sane and correct, I think that the Danish paper did with the cartoons' original publication was tactless provocation. I understand the point they wanted to make, and it's a valid one, based on the story of a writer who could not find an illustrator for a picture book about the life of Mohammed because none were willing to risk reprisal from militant Muslims. But the paper seemed to go out of its way to make their point as acerbic as possible.

What's done is done, though, and now we have this thing. It's interesting.

Comments

[cnoocy]

Slight quibble: that should be "made fun of your prophet." And specifically, violated the scriptural commandment to not portray the prophet, lest the prophet be seen as a god. Which is quite a bit different from what's happened here. It does seem that there's an assumption that everyone will follow everyone else's commandments embedded in this. But if I formed a religion and wrote that the portrayal of talking mice was blasphemy, Disney wouldn't voluntarily stop all Mickey-related program activities.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Slight quibble: that should be "made fun of your prophet."

Aye, but I think it abstracts to the same statement. Mm... I think I'll actually s/god/religion, anyway.

[jadelennox]

To the best of my understanding, that commandment only applies to muslims, even within the Islamic framework. So the Danish paper violated no Islamic law at all.

[prog.livejournal.com]

The issue to many Muslims is that any depiction of Mohammed is indescribably offense to look upon, much less create. It seems to be as aggressive an action as a physical poke in the eyeball, to those with this view.

I have been popping in to the relevant WP article's discussion page lately, and there are several comments from people who, seeing a small thumbnail of the Danish newspaper page at the top of the article, feel they must to avert their eyes from the screen and click somewhere else as fast as they can (often to the Edit link, so that they can remove the picture (which gets put back 5 seconds later)).

Let's all make fun of Islam...

[radtea.livejournal.com]

...until the suicide bombers stop killing people.

Seriously. Invading Iraq was pointless and stupid. Now we've found something that really gets up the nose of Islamic militants. It's time to issue an ulimatum: "We will keep up the humour until the killing stops."

[jadelennox]

I have to say that while I'm 100% on the Dansih paper's side in the aftermath, I'd feel less greasy about it if more of the cartoons had made actual political statements, instead of the anout half of them that seemed to say either "look! mohammed! neener neener!" or, worse "muslims are terrorists!" Which is how several of them seemed to me.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Yes, they were mostly pretty lame. I liked the one depicting its own cartoonist looking nervously over his shoulder as he drew, and the one that (according to Wikipedia) showed a boy Mohammed writing something along the lines of "this newspaper is run by troublemaking finks" in Farsi on a chalkboard.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

As a friend commented on Muslim's terror threats against the cartoonist who created images suggesting Muslims were terrorists, "They may not have much sense of humour, but they seem to have mastered irony."

[daerr.livejournal.com]

Demanding U.N. sanctions on a country because one of its newspapers made fun of your god religion shows a basic lack of... well, it shows a different worldview, certainly, hmm, yes.

Such demands may also be related to misinformation aledging that the paper was government owned and/or controlled. There really is a substantive difference between a government publishing cartoons like this and a private newspaper.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Right. And I think that this misunderstanding was exacerbated by major cultural differences about how a free press functions.