Today is Everybody Draw Mohammad Day (I'd link to the Facebook page, but will not link to Facebook until they revise their irresponsible, privacy-violating new policies and settings).
UPDATE: Here's a link to the main blog page for EDMD:
http://everyonedrawmohammed.blogspot...
This spontaneously generated, grass-roots event was created in response to efforts by a small minority of intolerant Islamic extremists to impose their beliefs on others who do not share their views, or even share their religion - and, in response to the response of many misguided "moderate" and "liberal" believers, who have focused their criticism on the "not-niceness" of non-Muslim cartoonists and animators expressing their free speech rights in nations not governed by Islamic law, and non-Muslim readers exercising the freedom of their eyes to look at cartoons created by non-Muslims, broadcast on non-Islamic stations and published in non-Islamic newspapers in non-Islamic nations. (BREAKING!!!! See my death-warrant-signing drawing of Mohammad below the fold!)
As Hermant Mehta, the "Friendly Atheist", notes, if Hindus walked into McDonald's and demanded they not sell products containing beef, and committed violence against the manager, and threatened other managers and customers with violence - and then, "moderate" Hindus were to respond by saying that eating Big Macs is offensive, we'd think it was absurd - and we'd be justified in responding by organizing a peaceful sit-in at McDonals all overt the place, and eating Big Macs en masse (not sure I could stomach one, but for freedom, I'd probably manage).
It wouldn’t be anti-Hinduism nor would anyone be purposely trying to piss off Hindus by doing that. It would just be a show of solidarity by those who believe that only Hindus need to abide by their religious beliefs, not anyone else.
The brilliant Greta Christina expands,
The idea that the rules of a religion ought to apply to people who don't follow that religion? It's flatly absurd...
...it is not possible to effectively protest this by simply saying, "This is wrong." The only way to effectively protest this is by violating the damn rule. If we all wring our hands and say, "Oh, yes, this is terrible, how dare these terrorists use violence and death threats to enforce their religious rules on people who don't share them" -- and still nobody will break the damn rule because we're afraid they'll hurt or kill us -- then their terror tactics will have worked.
Here is my breathtaking, painstaking, and just plain superlative-staking work of fine art - the creation of which (technically, the simple labeling of the figure which) has just warranted my death sentence:
(Greta's stick figure is much nicer. But then, she is a student of the Venice School, while I am obviously an interpreter of the sculptural subtlety of Jeff Koons. Either way, we're both dead meat.)
The Secular Student Alliance has a post up with great suggestions for constructive participation in this event and encouraging constructive engagement on the issues of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and artistic freedom.
Join us! Take a stand for freedom - even for poorly-drawn stick figures.
As Greta says,
...if we don't draw Mohammad, the terrorists win.
UPDATE II: "Delaney", a commenter on Xeni Jardin's post on BoingBoing (in which she called the campaign, "kind of stupid and offensive"), said it best:
I disagree that a Draw Mohammed Day is either stupid or offensive. In the words of Rosencrantz/Tom Stoppard it is "the misuse of free speech, to prove it exists."
Anyone should be free to draw whatever they want as long as they don't then use that drawing in a threatening way that a reasonable person would consider assault. If other people don't like it they need to grow up. This is pluralism.
And it's not stupid either. It is satire, which is one of the most seriously useful things we've invented as humans. Good-natured laughter at that which is abhorrent (and not being allowed to make fun of religion is most definitely abhorrent) should be encouraged.
Could somebody get killed over it? Yes. Some already have. People got killed over the freedom rides too. Expressing one's rights when they go against someone else's medieval dogma is always dangerous, but it still should be encouraged whether it's a sit-in or a cartoon.
My hats off to the brave folks who exercise their freedom of expression even with the threat of censorship, oppression and murder. We need more of the Matt Parker/Trey Stones of the world.
Are some of the individual drawings themselves awful and stupid and bigoted? Sure. Don't look at them. Look at the funny cute ones. Or don't look at any.
UPDATE III: Shepard Fairey peace mural painted over in Cincinnati because it offended some people. Like I said, the role of art in political speech should not be devalued because it might offend someone. The mural in question, depicting an Asian child soldier with a rifle, is a collaboration with famous Vietnam-era photojournalist Al Rockoff (portrayed by John Malkovich in "The Killing Fields".)
Mustn't offend, folks. Screw free press, screw free speech, screw artistic expression - oh, let's give it lip service, but never support it when it challenges us to think.
FINAL UPDATE: For people who want a community free of any frank discussion of the merits of religion in general, particular religions, particular religious practices, the existence of a god, the merit of theism, etc., there is a site, sponsored by Kos, specifically tailored to your needs. It is called Street Prophets.
I don't post or participate there, because there is no room for free expression outside narrowly circumscribed permissible parameters, which do not include even questioning another person's faith or faith traditions.
It is my understanding that Daily Kos is not that kind of site - in fact, that Street Prophets was created so that people who want that can have a safe, uncontroversial love fest, while the rest of us uncouth heathens can carouse about in drunken stupor and eternal, immoral carnality over here.
Arguing about drawing Mohammad is one thing. But the folks who have started to post here that "one may not ridicule a religion" really need to check out Street Prophets, rather than acting like door to door evangelists telling me what I may or may not say here on Daily Kos. This is the final update to this exhausting diary, in which I have been characterized as a KKK coconspirator, racist enabler, cross burner, Negro lyncher, spray painter of swastikas on synagogues, teller of Holocaust jokes, Islamophobe, and, my favorite, "cooperating with the killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims". So much for "respect", "tolerance" and "diversity".
REAL, HONEST, POST-FINAL, POST-POST-PENULTIMATE, POSTPARTUM, POSTPRANDIAL, POST-COITAL UPDATE:
As Kossite cai points out, Muslims have been depicting Mohammad for centuries.
He also notes that the following drawing is prohibited from being published by all US networks, all major US newspapers, and most other media outlets around the world - prohibited because of fear and intimidation, and the mistaken notion that Muslims have the right to dictate speech for all of us. it will likely be deleted from this site, and possibly deleted by Photobucket as some kind of violation of their rules.
THIS is what you are defending universal censorship of:
Illustration showing Mohammed (on the right) preaching his final sermon to his earliest converts, on Mount Ararat near Mecca; taken from a medieval-era manuscript of the astronomical treatise The Remaining Signs of Past Centuries by the Persian scholar al-Biruni; currently housed in the collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (Manuscrits Arabe 1489 fol. 5v). This scene was popular among medieval Islamic artists, and several nearly identical versions of this drawing were made in the Middle Ages. http://zombietime.com/...
(emphasis mine)
Posting that image in my diary on an American website devoted to US Democratic politics is what you are equating to spray painting swastikas on synagogues, lynching Negroes, burning crosses on lawns and even "cooperating with the murder of hundreds of thousands of Muslims". Oh, and this watercolor:
Oh yeah. That watercolor happens to be one of the twelve political cartoons the Danish newspaper published when this all blew up. Some of the others are quite offensive, by the way. But, see, that is the problem: the moment you support censorship - whether official or through violent intimidation or "merely" through the overwhelming social pressure, insults, verbal violence and intimidation practiced by critics of this diary - you lose it all. You lose the right to publish art, to express dissent, to support the oppressed, to speak truth to power, to stand up for injustice, to speak free.