Cartoon Jihad IV

As the Cartoon Jihad claims its first lives, BYF points out that, as always, other Moslems are among the first victims of Islamism. I like the Kipling quote, too, Toby!

Tim Blair has published two readers' emails; the first argues:

It is also not a matter of freedom of speech, it’s a matter of respect. Displaying cartoons of our beloved prophet is the same as insulting Muslims. Is anyone allowed to insult a race, religion, or group of people on the media? Why is that not allowed? Because it is wrong. You cannot argue that it is a matter of freedom of speech.

He also "argues" that Zionists are baby-killing, sister-raping monsters, and that that's the only thing he has against Jews. I'll leave that to one side, for the purposes of this post.

Consider this. Many pious Moslems refer to their deity as Allah (SWT). The letters "SWT" are the acronym for the Arabic "Subhanahu wa Ta'ala" meaning "Allah is pure of having partners and He is exalted from having a son.". Now, that seems to me to be a deliberate repudiation of Christian trinitarian theology. Is it not, in its implicit abasing of Christian theology (note the references to 'purity' and 'exhaltation') a deliberate insult to Christians? A minority of fundamentalists might think so. So let's ban references to "Allah SWT", "Allah Ta'ala" and the like as anti-Christian insults. What about the Muslim claim that Jews and Christians have "falsified" their scriptures? This is a core Islamic belief. No doubt it is offensive to Jews and Christians. Let's ban it.

On the other hand, let's not. Because, as, "Amanda" (who says she is Jewish, and as such a member of the most "provoked", "offended" and persecuted people on the face of the Earth):

There are many things in the media which are unfavorable to Jews (and Christians, etc.), but as far as I’m concerned, one needs to cop it sweet, and respond with intelligence and dignity (or not at all), rather than with unjustifiable violence.

If there's one thing the Moslem world needs, it's a lot more intelligence and dignity.

Finally, there is this article in the Sydney Morning Herald. I think that the quote attributed to David Penberthy is noteworthy. The editor of the Daily Telegraph, said that publishing the images could have "nasty consequences", especially given racial tensions in Sydney. Be that as it may, as Professor Alan Dershowitz argued in a different context in his book The Case for Israel, to hold back on that basis is to allow a "stonethrower's veto"; it is a mark of a mature democracy that insults, provocations and affronts are met with arguments, not bombs and bullets. That is the essence of the whole dispute, and that is what much of Islam needs to learn and accept. In liberal democratic countries, indeed, in the modern world, citizens are not supposed to kill people and destroy property because they feel insulted, or religiously belittled. We are not in seventh-century Arabia now, chabibi.

Moreover, Islam is a belief system, nothing more, and like liberalism, capitalism, communism, fascism, or whatever, it ought to be subject to free criticism in a democratic society.

Having criticized Penberthy for his craven submission to a bunch of atavistic reactionary thugs, I should just like to say that of the haraam cartoons, this is my favourite:

The Cartoon Jihad III - Jihad Comes to Australia

Sheik Fehmi El-Imam, the general secretary of the Board of Imams of Victoria has warned the Australian media not to publish those infamous characatures of you-know-who.

Of course, that inspired Paul & Carl to publish the cartoons under the most politically incorrect heading I have seen in a long time. I won't quote it; readers can follow the link. Suffice to say "reactionary" and "atavistic" are the nicest things they have to say about the Islamic community...

If you really want to offend 1.3 Billion people, it's hard to go past this effort by SobekPundit; western bien pensants have been slavering all over "artists" who do this sort of thing to crucifixes and images of the Virgin Mary for years, but as Mark Steyn recently said, "if you're going to be 'provocative', it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.". At least SobekPundit apologised to those Moslems who are offended by his photoshop but who don't want to kill him for it.

Less provocatively, Tim Blair highlights the all-too-obvious point made by the cartoon in my last post, namely that:

Far from being against hate-speech, many Muslim spokesmen seem to be aggressively for it; until, of course, someone contemplates publishing harmless drawings of an old beardy guy.

...then they call for beheadings and start with the Embassy-burnings. Given the content of my last three posts, if anyone wants me, I'll be seeking refuge at the Israeli Embassy...

The Cartoon Jihad II

The above is courtesy of Filibuster Cartoons.

Cardinal Silvestrini (see Cartoon Jihad I) is doubless familiar with Dante's Inferno. I hope that linking to Canto XXVIII is not a mortal sin in his Koran-kissing interpretation of Catholicism!

At Ceperano where all the Apulians
Turned traitors, and those too from Tagliacozzo
Where old Alardo conquered without weapons,

And those who show their limbs run through and those
With limbs hacked off — they all could not have matched
The ninth pocket’s degraded state of grief.

Even a cask with bottom or sides knocked out
Never cracked so wide as one soul I saw
Burst open from the chin to where one farts.

His guts were hanging out between his legs;
His pluck gaped forth and that disgusting sack
Which turns to shit what throats have gobbled down.

While I was all agog with gazing at him,
He stared at me and, as his two hands pulled
His chest apart, cried, "Look how I rip myself!

"Look at how mangled is Mohammed here!
In front of me, Ali treks onward, weeping,
His face cleft from his chin to his forelock.

"And all the others whom you see down here
Were sowers of scandal and schism while
They lived, and for this they are rent in two.

"A devil goes in back here who dresses us
So cruelly by trimming each one of the pack
With the fine cutting edge of his sharp sword

"Whenever we come round this forlorn road:
Because by then our old wounds have closed up
Before we pass once more for the next blow.

What the heck! I'll even illustrate the Canto! Here's William Blake's depiction of Mohammed in Hell:

The following picture is a detail from an early Renaissance fresco in Bologna's Church of San Petronio, created by Giovanni da Modena and depicting Mohammed being tortured in Hell. This is the fresco that Islamists plotted to blow up in 2002.

Zombietime's Mohammed Image Archive has an excellent catalogue of depictions of Mohammed over the last 1400-odd years, from Islamic and Medieval Christian paintings, to South Park and the courageous Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Have a look, while it's still legal.

The Cartoon Jihad I

Chip decries the lack of freedom to satirize Muhammad in the United States, and explains the Shari’ah of “picture making” and blasphemy for the benefit of the news media. BYF applauds the decision of the European media to thumb their noses at Islamists (for once). Liz has a good survey of attempts to draw the Catholic Church into what she terms the “cartoon trap”, and points out that Cardinal Achille Silvestrini’s recent comments condemning the “deliberate mockery of religious belief” seem to overlook, if not ignore, this sort of filth served up by the Arab world on a distressingly regular basis. Of course, they are Arabs, so, as with children who have not attained the age of reason, we cannot expect them to behave decently. She also points to this and this, as recent examples of serious persecution of Christians by Moslems in, respectively, the Philippines and Pakistan.

So Moslems are killing Christians, while half the world is up in arms about a dozen (pretty unremarkable) cartoons.

Melanie Phillips has this excellent post, about the whole fiasco, highlighting the Foreign Office’s (and, indeed the US State Department’s) typically craven submission to the savage exigencies of political Islam, and commending a comment by, of all people, the French foreign minister, who said in the Telegraph that:

‘It is not normal to caricature a whole religion as an extremist or terrorist movement.’ But the extreme reaction to the cartoons ‘would suggest the caricaturists were right,’ he added.

Indeed. Ms Phillips continues:

The madness of this protest deepens when one considers that the claim at its heart, that pictorial representations of the Prophet are forbidden in Islam, is not true. Like so much else, it is all a matter of interpretation; but the fact remains that there have been many representations of the Prophet in Islamic art over the centuries.

This quote from Charles Moore is also apposite:

There is no reason to doubt that Muslims worry very much about depictions of Mohammed. Like many, chiefly Protestant, Christians, they fear idolatry. But, as I write, I have beside me a learned book about Islamic art and architecture which shows numerous Muslim paintings from Turkey, Persia, Arabia and so on. These depict the Prophet preaching, having visions, being fed by his wet nurse, going on his Night-Journey to heaven, etc. The truth is that in Islam, as in Christianity, not everyone agrees about what is permissible. Some of these depictions are in Western museums. What will the authorities do if the puritan factions within Islam start calling for them to be removed from display (this call has been made, by the way, about a medieval Christian depiction of the Prophet in Bologna)? Will their feeling of 'offence' outweigh the rights of everyone else?

Obviously, in the case of the Danish pictures, there was no danger of idolatry, since the pictures were unflattering. The problem, rather, was insult. But I am a bit confused about why someone like Qaradawi thinks it is insulting to show the Prophet's turban turned into a bomb, as one of the cartoons does. He never stops telling us that Islam commands its followers to blow other people up.

Indeed, the whole article, titled “If you get rid of the Danes, you’ll have to keep paying the Danegeld” is worth reading in it’s entirety.

Finally, there is David Conway's 3 February article on Civitas. Conway points out that the Chairmanship of the Security Council will have passed to Denmark just as the question of Iran’s Armageddon I mean nuclear weapons programmes comes before the Council. Coincidence? I hope so.

The Saudi Hillbillies

Come and listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed,
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his fam'ly fed,
Then one day he was a-shootin' at some food,
And up through the ground came a-bubblin' crude!
Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea!

Well the first thing you know ol' Jed's a millionaire,
Kinfolk said "Jed, move away from there!",
Said "Californy is the place you ought to be!";
So they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.
Hills, that is. Swimmin' pools, movie stars.

A YOUNG SAUDI man is receiving psychiatric treatment in hospital after his family forced him to marry four women in six months:

A Saudi man is in hospital after his divorced parents forced him to marry four times within six months.

The battle began when the father insisted the boy should marry a girl from his side of the family.

The mother retaliated by ordering him to wed a girl from her side, reports Arab News quoting Al-Watan daily.

But the father wasn't happy with the balance of power and insisted on a third wife from his side, to show who was boss.

The mother, not to be outdone, then demanded that her son include another wife from her side of the family.

The son has now been admitted to a hospital for psychological treatment. He is refusing to see his parents or his wives [Now, that's a surprise! - Ed].

Can you imagine the consequences of Jed Clampett falling in with a fanatically evangelical, supremacist religious cult, and then finding a goodly proportion of the world's petroleum resources? Well, that's basically all you need to know about "modern" Saudi Arabia....

Well now its time to say goodbye to Jed an' all his kin.
And they would like to thank you folks fer' kindly droppin' in.
You're all invited back a-gain to this localiteee
To have a heapin' helpin' of their hospitality!
Hillybilly that is. Set a spell, Take your shoes off....

Y'all come back now, y'hear?.