I could more easily understand getting so pissed off that I never stopped drawing the Mighty Mo. Sheesh. what would Bugs Bunny do?
Posted on 07/21/2015 4:28:56 AM PDT by markomalley
A short while after the Islamist terrorist attack in Chattanooga, it came out that the French magazine Charlie Hebdo—its staff members the victim of an Islamist terrorist attack in France—will no longer draw cartoons of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad. “We have drawn Muhammad to defend the principle that one can draw whatever they want,” Laurent Sourisseau, the magazine’s editor, said. “We’ve done our job. We have defended the right to caricature.”
One can understand the impetus: Sourisseau survived the shooting after taking a bullet to the shoulder. When you just barely make it out of a slaughter in which 11 of your friends died, one imagines you’d want to maybe cool off a bit, perhaps avoid the kind of confrontational material that nearly got you killed in the first place. Next time you might not be so lucky; next time they might bring more guys, or more guns, or bombs. Next time.
“We’ve done our job,” Sourisseau says—and he is entirely correct. From the standpoint of free expression and free speech, the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo are unqualified heroes; a number of them are martyrs to the cause. They have done their jobs, and they have earned a respite, particularly given that the cowardly media abandoned them in the aftermath of the shooting. Who would want to go through the whole thing another time only to once again see the vast majority of newspapers and magazines too fearful and too pathetic to come to your defense?
So we should not begrudge Charlie Hebdo its retirement from the fray; the magazine deserves it. What is necessary now is to ask ourselves: how do we move forward? What is the future of Islam and free speech? Islam still has a violence problem. It is still a significant risk to draw Muhammad, made all the more significant because most people will inevitably criticize the artists rather than the murderers who come to kill the artists. Charlie Hebdo has “defended the principle” of freedom of speech, but that principle is still under serious threat around the world: from the murderous gunmen of radical Islam, to the fanatical “hate speech” laws of Western Europe, to a media class that responds to acts of terrorism by asking that we comply with the demands of terrorists.
In the face of these genuine threats to one of the most precious of human freedoms, it might not seem like such a big deal to give up a narrow segment of your free speech: who cares if you can’t draw Muhammad, so long as it keeps the peace? That is obviously what Charlie Hebdo is betting on—but then, that is what the Islamist killers of the Charlie Hebdo staff were betting on, too. They bet smart: they won, and Charlie Hebdo lost.
So it turns out that one of the sharpest critics of radical Islam now shares one of the same goals as the clerics of radical Islam: namely, do not make fun of Islam. This is one way to keep the peace. This peace has no use for freedom of speech, but you will certainly avoid getting slaughtered in your magazine office for drawing a silly cartoon.
That is what everyone is hoping for, anyway, and perhaps it will pay off: perhaps if people stop drawing Muhammad, we’ll have less Islamist terrorism to worry about. Then again, terrorists are never satisfied: once you’ve complied with one of their demands, they inevitably think of ten others. Perhaps next year they’ll ask that people stop critiquing Islam so harshly. The year after, perhaps they’ll ask that we stop criticizing it at all. What’s to stop them? “We have defended the right to caricature,” Sourisseau claims—shortly after announcing that he intends to no longer exercise that right. What’s next?
So perhaps the answer to the question above—“How do we move forward?”—is this: we do not stop. We continue to draw Muhammad, or reprint the drawings of others. We do not give in. We demand that Islam be subject to the same standards as any other religion, and accept the same standards of criticism and mockery that other religions have endured for centuries. We do not give up our right to freedom of speech in order to placate the desires of madmen.
If we are to preserve our precious liberties, in other words, we must first refuse to surrender them. Sourisseau is right: Charlie Hebdo “defended the right to caricature,” and defended it well. Their job is done. Ours is not.
I lost respect for Hebdo when they distanced themselves from Pamela Geller’s event.
Now it is Pamela Geller and other pro-freedom fighters job now.
Either we in America are governed by the Bill of Rights, or we are ruled by Shariah. There is no middle ground.
Death to Islam!
Another day, another revolution of earth. Totalitarians tightening the screws on the cages around our existence.
The NYT, WaPo, ABC, CBS and NBC will pick up the torch.
If they do, it'll be by the wrong end.
In France and Italy, in a few years time, precious works of real art (frescoes, statuary, reredoes, altarpieces, etc.) will be destroyed by vandals as idolatrous.
These will be dismissed as random incidents.
Editorials will be written about how Protestant mobs in the XVIth century also, in their stupidity and barbarism, destroyed illuminated manuscripts, altarpieces, monstrances, etc. and so it is OK for it happen again.
Editorials will also mention how the highly cultured fascists of the XXth century bombarded, defaced and stole art treasures.
The language of moral equivalence will prevail, and Europe will further decline.
But they will mock Christian figures. They are a worthless bunch of jihadi-appeasing Christian haters.
Easy to criticize Charlie from the safety of your home in the US. For all the t
ough guy warriors on this thread. If all your coworkers were mowed down and you had no means to defend yourself. Would you go to work?
I could more easily understand getting so pissed off that I never stopped drawing the Mighty Mo. Sheesh. what would Bugs Bunny do?
IMO, they never were respectable ...
True, although in the aftermath of the shooting one could at least admire and respect their courage in going ahead with Mohammed cartoons in spite of credible threats to them. Of course, one would think that would give them common cause - despite any other political differences - with Pamela Geller and her Draw Mohammed Contest. Hence, my comment.
Imagine, for example, if our founding fathers spoke ill of the French Revolution because - despite the fact they, like the founders, were shaking off oppressive regimes - they were really more anti-nobility than pro-liberty. However, in the context of what was going on during that period, the fact that the founders, after winning their war, had no desire to execute English nobility (as did the French) was not seen as a reason to disassociate from France. The same should be true for Hebdo, re Geller - but apparently it isn’t.
I can agree with that.
Next question. Hey, wait a second; Muhammed, who do you think will do the next artistic rendering?
Thats a keeper....oink !
After what happened I have no problem with Charlie Hedbo’s decision not to draw Mohammed. But don’t tell me you won some sort of victory. You eventually lost. Islamists defeated you. I will wait for someone who is the eventual victors.
Pick a photograph of a Muslim rapist, There’s at least a 40% chance he’s named after his prophet, he may not look exactly like the original did, but he carries the spirit of his namesake inside of him, they all do.
Every time they show ISIS on the news America is seeing an image of Mohammed.
Reminds me of a Twilight Zone ep. one of the hour long ones. “He’s Alive” (Hitler). Mohammed is alive.
“Easy to criticize Charlie from the safety of your home in the US. For all the tough guy warriors on this thread. If all your coworkers were mowed down and you had no means to defend yourself. Would you go to work?”
Or, how many of the courageous typists in this thread would be willing to put up a sign in front of their yards with a cartoon of mohammed with the sign caption, “He was a pedophile”? Any typist here going to accept the challenge?
To defeat terrorism and protect our rights we need a lot more than a few foolish martyrs willingly (or unwillingly) sacrificing themselves.
If we are serious about protecting our right to free speech, we need to eliminate the people that are against it. In this case it’s the rabid islamists. Question is, how do you differentiate them from the more sensible ones?
So far we haven’t found a good way to do that, mostly because of a lack of will.
Pamela Geller actually did it right, she knew what to expect, so she prepared well for it, she exercised her right of free speech AND gave us the unexpected bonus of reducing the islamist population by two.
She’s a (smart) hero in my eyes.
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