Posted on 02/04/2006 2:42:34 PM PST by Cornpone
In recent years, some Christians have been deeply offended by modern "art" that pictures Jesus's face on the lid of a "toilet altar." That has a Crucifix immersed in urine or offers a picture of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung. Some see such images as a blasphemous affront to faith and an attack on believers.
But the American and British artists who produced these images were free to put them on display, and they have been widely reproduced.
Freedom of expression in Canada and other democracies is a cherished, fundamental right. And being free, means being free to challenge, provoke and even offend.
That is the context in which Canadians must consider the fury that has erupted across the Muslim world after the publication of a collection of "blasphemous" caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper, and reprinted elsewhere. The Qu'ran bans depictions of the Prophet.
These cartoons not only show him, but crudely mock him. One has Muhammad wearing a turban bomb. Another has him wearing the crescent of Islam as devil's horns.
The images have sparked one of the ugliest and, possibly, most hypocritical cultural clashes in years.
Yesterday Muslims in many countries staged huge protests after Friday prayers, demanding the Danish government punish the newspaper for its "Islamophobic" and "racist" cartoons. Ambassadors have been recalled. There have been bomb threats. Attacks on diplomats. An economic boycott. Death threats.
While many Canadians will sympathize with Muslim dismay at this shabby treatment of the Prophet, this reaction is out of proportion to the offence. Those living in Western, secular, democratic societies have long since moved away from the days when blasphemy invited stoning.
That said, the cartoons are problematic for another reason.
They bait Muslims and risk inciting hatred by equating Islam with terror and evil. They would likely withstand a legal challenge here, because the courts wisely give wide latitude to political commentary. Papers are free to air a variety of opinion.
Even so, some of the cartoons are gratuitously offensive. The Star would not have published them, although we affirm our right to do so.
And sadly, there is hypocrisy all around in this melodrama.
Many Muslims who are angry come from Arab states where the press routinely prints cartoons linking the Jewish faith to violence. Recent ones have made a Star of David into a terrorist's face, and have shown an orthodox Jew blowing flame from a ram's horn to scorch an Islamic shrine. Where is the outrage at these images by people who are upset by the caricatures of Mohammed?
By the same token, liberal democrats in Europe and elsewhere who fault the Arab press for invoking religion as a means to make a political point, are poorly placed trying to justify the Danish cartoons, which do the same thing.
Jyllands-Posten had a right to print them. Whether it was wise to exercise that right, is another matter.
The author needs to be reminded that when this happens, Christians never question the right of the artists to produce the work, but took the position that public money, which includes from Christians, should not have been used to pay for the offensive art. What muslims are criticizing is the right to produce the work.
They bait Muslims and risk inciting hatred by equating Islam with terror and evil.
Sounds right to me.
My wife always comments on this when she sees the terrorists with the socks over their heads. "What, are they too cowardly to show their faces?"
Don't stand in a puddle when you throw the switch.
Yes, they have, or at least ought to have the right to publish offensive material, but that right demands the responsibility to accept the consequenses when offended peoople raise hell about it.
He's absolutely right that there is hip-deep hipocrisy all around this one...
In general this is quite true, and I certainly agree with the take that many are expressing on this - i.e., that this is the illustration of the coming conflict with the Muslim world. their views are incompatible with democracy and individual rights. They are incredibly intolerant - and you have to believe that while there are plenty of intelligent people in Iran, for example, the spastic reaction on the street to this cartoon matter is really a function of a type of illiteracy. Perhaps they can read - but you have to questions what have they been reading? Only the Koran?
However - I was just thinking about a specific counterexample from many moons ago that was quite humorous. In Chicago - an art student portrayed the late mayor Harold Washington in a less than flattering light, and, well the result was something akin to the Muslim reaction to the "offensive" cartoons.
Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, died suddenly of a heart attack in November 1987, shortly after being reelected. He had become a revered figure to the black community of Chicago — so much so that shortly after his death a poster went on sale in which a smiling Harold Washington is shown in the company of Jesus Christ floating above the Chicago skyline; the poster is captioned "Worry Ye Not." David Nelson, a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, did not think Washington deserving of deification, and so for his entry in the school's annual fellowship competition Nelson submitted a painting intended (he claims) to portray Washington in a more human light. The painting, entitled "Mirth and Girth" and based on a rumor that doctors at the hospital to which Washington had been brought when he suffered his fatal heart attack had discovered that underneath his suit he was wearing female underwear, is a full-length frontal portrait of a portly grim-faced Harold Washington clad in a white bra and G-string, garter belt, and stockings.
For the full recount of the case see: http://www.ncac.org/artlaw/op-nel.html
I remember the incident.
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