It's hard to place where the line is on that. But I have no problem with a private commercial entity self-regulating its own output to both protect its employees and not further mock and demean the religious beliefs of a group of people (Sunni Muslims in general, not Revolution Muslim and radical fringe groups like it) who have already been unfairly maligned in public discourse. Especially when said output was unfunny and in poor taste to begin with. If that's the worst "violation" of free speech we have to deal with in America, I will sleep the sleep of the just.
Oh, also:
http://www.wnd.com/images2/muhammadcourt.jpg
Here's Muhammad on the frieze of the Supreme Court building. he's one in a line of 18 historical figures commended as "lawgivers" long with Hammurabi, Moses, and John Marshall. The book he's holding is the Qur'an. You'll notice that while he's holding a sword, he's holding it by the blade with the handle facing up, a decidedly non-combative stance, which goes along with the Qur'an's preoccupation with the just application violence and military action.
Sorry to get all IslamicStudiesgum on yall with these comments. Hope it wasn't boring.
And here's yet another, this time with some of his family members, plus the Angel Gabriel.
http://www.hf.uib.no/religion/popularikonografi/bilder/12b.jpg
Muhammad is the big dude in the center. The veiled woman is his daughter Fatima (the burqa is pretty anachronistic, Arab women in Muhammad's lifetime were not usually veiled so thoroughly), the guy with the bow is Ali, his cousin and son-in-law (the marital practices and politics of 7th century Arab clans were not unlike all of European royalty forever), and the kids are Ali & Fatima's kids, Muhammad's grandkids. In the red is Husain, in green is Hasan. These five are of particular holiness in Shia tradition.
The big difference between these types of representations and those of South Park and the Danish cartoonists is that they're respectful devotional items, while the cartoons are pointedly mocking and derisive, critiquing with an attitude of authority something which they have not tried very hard to understand. The irony of the radicals' vitriol against such breaches of respect is that they engage in the same kind of ignorance and misunderstanding of us in their anti-Western rhetoric. It's pretty much an endless feedback loop of :(
Anyway, Food For Thought / The More You Know.
[Sorry to all you pious Sunnis who are also vgum monsters, if these offend you. Don't mean to insult, just trying to show the diversity of Muslim belief and practice.]
Here's another one:
http://www.hf.uib.no/religion/popularikonografi/bilder/14b.jpg
Doesn’t he look like White Jesus? That’s not an accident–all goes back to the Medici family and their dashing good looks/so much money, and how the "cultural divide" talk is pretty much total bullshit, the Christian and Muslim “cultures” are actually super deeply involved with each other. In fact there’s a whole book about it, “The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization” by Richard Bulliet, which everyone should read.
[Woops, forgot about multiple picture posts getting the "awaiting moderation" treatment. But this is important I think so sorry if the full comment appears later and it basically becomes a double post.]
Pictures of Muhammad are fairly common in Iran. Here's one:
http://www.hf.uib.no/religion/popularikonografi/bilder/01b.jpg
You evacuate a building when a credible bomb threat has been made against it, don't you? Why put your own employees in danger over a stupid cartoon? Whatever wins or losses for free speech the censorship of this stupid cartoon incurs, I think everyone will go to sleep more comfortably knowing that no one has been murdered over it.
I understand where this is coming from and sympathize with it, but by doing so you're also thumbing your nose at the vast majority of Muslims who a) are already a put-upon minority in this country, b) have to endure other people's ignorance and misunderstandings about their beliefs and their culture on a daily basis, c) believe that it is morally wrong to visually depict the Prophet Muhammad, especially as a goof to piss off insane people or make a cheap joke about farts, and d) are not total assholes about it.
Also, assholes like the people at Revolution Muslim will never get the fuck over anything. To argue with a fool is a fool's errand.
Bloodshed is the only "win" for terrorists. They love it when someone does something they see as blasphemous, because that means they get to kill people and it'll be "justified."
By saying "Muslims feel strongly about x" you're already generalizing way too much about something as specific as visual depictions of secondary prophets. The vast majority of Muslims don't care about Jesuspics. There are Christian holy sites all across the Middle East with depictions of Jesus that have been around for centuries. Islamicate societies have historically been among the most religiously tolerant societies in the world. Until the second half the 20th century and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Muslim-majority areas like the Middle East and North Africa were a much better place for Jews than Europe.
And equating radicalism with idiocy is a dangerous underestimation--a lot of these people are very smart and very well-educated. Osama Bin Laden comes from an obscenely wealthy family and went to elite schools. Ayman al-Zawahiri is a surgeon. The Underpants FAILBomber got a mechanical engineering degree at University College London, one of the top 5 higher education institutions in the world. Yousef Al-Khattab, the guy who runs the Revolution Muslim website, reads Chomsky. It's easy to just write them off as idiots, but they're not and it's important to be wary of that.
Maybe Treme will flip the Simon paradigm and only have musical montages in the middle of the first episode of the season--assuming there'll be more than one season of Treme (knock on wood).
While what he's actually saying is kind of insane and ridiculous, I have to say that his voice and speaking style are incredible. Someone needs to get CopperCab a syndicated show on talk radio, where he would probably be a voice of reason (relatively). Look out Limbaugh, the kids are coming up from behind!
The captain of the Black Rock wasn't actually the English guy though, it was Magnus Hanso, (whose descendant Alvar Hanso founded the Dharma Initiative) and that guy is Danish, and Denmark abolished the slave trade in 1803 and slavery outright in 1848. So my guess is that the slave ship was an illegal PIRATE slave ship or something.
But of course none of this explains why the slaves were all white Spaniards. I still feel icky about that. And Richard's Amistad move with the nail? Yiiiiiiiikes racejail.
Comments