<- Muhammed
disguised as paris hilton.
The Facebook page that encouraged users to post images of Islam's Prophet Mohammed was taken down globally on Friday, following an order by a Pakistani court for ISPs in that country to block the social networking site. Facebook officials tell the Associated Press they played no role in the removal of the "Everybody Draw …
Why does Mohamed need to travel incognito? It's like some kind of David Niven film where he's trying to hide his identity.
If people want to draw insulting images, then I understand. Like those photoshopped T-Shirts that say the Pope smokes dope. But just drawing him in any way what-so-ever is a bit like conspiring to protect the identity of the outlaw The Scarlet Pimpernel.
All those effigies of Christ, the Virgin Mary, Apostles etc are false idols People worship the image rather than the teachings. I think the Muslim rule of "No pics of old Mo', ta much" is to try and stop the same thing happening.
Of course, you cannot (and should not) stop people drawings pictures of whatever they damn well choose.
Nor should any such drawings result in threats.
Finally, religion (responsible for more pain and suffering that any other human invention) is nothing more than a method of control and an attempt to curb critical thinking. There is no god. Get over it. Move on.
I would agree with the last paragraph, all except for the comment about god. You can't declare there is no god, that's impossible to know. All you can say (and be accurate) is that "I don't know if there is a god." You can say that the people who believe there is one are wrong, but that's all. Saying there isn't is just as wrong as saying there is.
Oh, and I agree with the rest of your post - well said!
Hmm... I don't agree.
I think we can probably go as far as "there is almost certainly no God".
I don't know that there are no fairies in my garden, but I don't feel the need to buy fairy repellent spray, because, on balance, I don't think there are.
As a result saying that there isn't a God is orders of magnitude less wrong than saying there is, but you're right, it's not strictly prudent to say "there is no God".
Or at least more cost efficient. The mind boggles; I wonder if the Indian intel guys at RAW are paying attention to all this. You don't need an army or nukes to destroy 'the old enemy'; if a well placed facebook page with only 100,000 members can cut the country off from the world and generate civil unrest, just imagine what utter chaos and self-immolation a properly planned 'false flag' campaign of diss Mohammed events might produce.
A few strongly worded suggestions of support for freedom of speech at various web 2.0 sites, womens institutes and christian associations, and you can sit back and watch it all kick off. India can nod sagely and sympathise with it's neighbour as the flags of every western nation are burned on the streets of Pakistan, along with the offices of ISPs and the more traditional targets for Pakistani national outrage, such as shopping centres, buses, schools, power stations and government buildings. By the time the WI's "Knit a Prophet" week gets into full swing, the Pakistan government will be in exile, everyone will be very tired and irritable, and wishing perhaps they'd skipped out on torching the Bollywood movie rental stores, and the whole place south of the North West Frontier will be ripe for a peaceful takeover without a shot being fired across the border.
Congress could claim the credit on behalf of Gandhian non-violence, the national defence budget could be diverted to welfare + health, thus guaranteeing the BJP become obsolete and LK Advani never gets to be PM, although there might be a brief global crisis in the supply of footballs and cricket balls.
Everything else aside, I take great issue with companies who use free social sites for marketing purposes. Boiled down to the simplest argument, you get what you pay for, and free is not worth the paper on which it is printed.
So when a Facefeck, MySpace, Twitter, or whatever outage seriously hurts your business... really.
Paris, really...
I enjoy a good fart joke as much as anybody and remember seeing a hilarious South Park episode several years ago where everyone ran about farting madly. However, for the most part, having watched several episodes I found South Park to be a tasteless and vulgar experience and do not watch the show.
Concerning the latest South Park flap, it seems the writers suffer from a malady that affects more and more citizens of the “free world”. To wit: with freedom comes responsibility. A famous example often cited is that free speech does not give someone the right to cry “fire” in a crowded theater when no fire exists. Or, to put it another way just because you CAN do something does not mean that you SHOULD do it.
It is not hard to argue that the leadership of the vast majority of “organized” religions has become corrupt and morally bankrupt. It is also not hard to argue that the religious extremism practiced by all too many followers of Christ, Mohammad, et al is a vile and despicable thing.
Therefore, it would seem a natural response to ridicule and demean the religious icons and symbols of these corrupt religions. However, there are many decent folk practicing the various faiths that would be greatly offended by depicting their most respected inspirational figures in such a disrespectful manner. And, as we have seen, it gives extremists a great excuse to either retaliate or pour flames on the fire out of hatred. How does that benefit us as a whole?
Personally, I am offended by the depiction of the prophet (Mohammed) in a bear suit, Jesus watching porn and Buddha snorting cocaine. This does nothing to start a discussion on the real problems of blind or misguided religious belief but only stirs up the worst aspects of the human condition through insult and innuendo.
Would I wish it censored? No. Would I wish to see the ratings plummet for several weeks after such episodes? Yes.
I'm tired of the West bowing down to the wishes of these idiots. It's OK for them to bash Christianity, Buddism, the Holocaust, etc but if you offend them you had better watch your back! When will we grow some balls and stand up for what we believe in? Oh wait I forgot, we lost those after we stomped Hitler, now we use the appeasement philosophy, though I remember we tried that on a dictator last century and it only made the problem worse. Striving to please everyone will please noone.
//End rant before I get fatwa issued for my head on a plate.
an "everybody claim the earth is round" day, you could get bonus points for claiming it circles the sun too.
In the past, claiming both of these woud have resulted in you being tortured to death by the christian church.
However, the world has progressed a tad over the last few hundred years. Threats and outrage over something so petty as this, just shows the world that Islam, as a religion, is stuck in the past. It need to either adapt to the modern world, or die out.
Show the World+Self+Dog what a John 8:32 Bizness Suit looks like.
Depictions that include tall, budding, five- or seven-leafed Stringy Green Vegetables in the background shall be awarded Extra Points. Depictions that include the Bible in any form (paper+ink or digital samesame) must also include a comparable image of every other Holy Book of every other Genuine Truth-Respecting Discipline all the world around or be disqualified from the competition.
Depictions that do the job right albeit sans any such images of Ancient Wisdom Tomes etc are gladly accepted so long as they remain true to the spirit of the event. (This includes Playmobil depictions.)
Boolean Truth Tables are explicitly encouraged. Kindly post (and do not 'submit') all such depictions to http://dev/null. Walking Turtle does not do FaceBook. 0{:-)o<
This event was rough around the edges so to speak, but the intent behind it was sincere. Always stand up to the bullies on the playground. They need to be ‘taught’ how to behave by the rest of us.
Sometimes you have to respond in a manner that the other side can take notice of regardless of how banal and crude other people think it may have been. They took notice that people were standing up to their tyrannical antisocial expectations put upon the rest of us by them.
The first page received up to 100,000 supporters prior to being removed, the 2nd page was up to 14,500 supporters before it was also removed.
The ‘protest’ was a huge success, no one had acid splashed into their faces, no one had their hands cut off with swords, and no one was bombed by a homicide bomber.
We [atheists, Pagans, Xians, Hindus, & Buddhists] all exercised our right to freedom of expression in the face of “Hate Speech Mongers” who masquerade as a “Religion of Peace”.
So what if it may not have been done as some would have wished it to have been. It was done. That is what was important.
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Yeah, send them all home. We don't need their monotheistic doctrines here! We have a local religion for local people! Down with these foreign belief systems! And while we are deporting all this nasty, foreign stuff; anyone with a French suname; OUT! Back to frogland you go. Angles too. Go on, sod off. Saxons, on yer bike. Every man-jack of you invader spawn. Britain for the British! Which, given racial mixing etc., will turn out to be one bloke and his goat or something.
The bigoted reactionaries on all sides really need to get a grip.
..I always find religeous extremists (of every flavour) utterly arrogant.
They believe that someone is doing something that they perceive God/Allah won't like, so they appoint themselves as proxy to sort it out. Seems to me any surpeme being worth it's salt would be able to fight it's own battles and wouldn't need their help.
In fact I would go so far as to say that an imperfect human assuming they completely understand the mind of a god and appointing themselves judge, jury and executioner in his name would seem significantly MORE blasphemous than drawing a picture of a prophet, But maybe that's just me.
...boil down to a few basic rules:
1) To be Good you must do as God tells you.
2) Don't worry if you don't know what God wants you to do - I've been specially and magically chosen by that same God to advice you of his wishes.
3) Therefore, to be Good, you must do as *I* tell you.
4) Beats the hell of of standing for election.
Religion needs to get a grip on reality (I know, oxymoron...) If religions kept to themselves, live and let live, and stopped trying to force their worldview on me via too many means then I would be much happier. People have a right to free speech. People do NOT have a right not to be offended. If Muslims find it offensive to draw an image of their prophet, then fine. They do NOT have the right to tell me, as a non-muslim, that I can't draw the same image. "But it upsets them" - so what? I don't have to 'respect' their religion insofar as it infringes on my rights of free expression.
Keep your religion yours. I don't want anything to do with it!
...we're not free at all...
And when it comes to religion, it's almost impossible not to offend people who spend their lives diligently determined to be offended. They demand respect but have none for others. They abandon their own critical faculties, then begrudge the rest of us ours.
Facebook should be ashamed.
while the right of people in the US to draw these pictures is protected free speech, there's nothing that says facebook has to host them
the whole idea of "let's intentionally mock, insult and abuse an entire culture because some pretty shitty people self-label themselves as representatives of that culture day" idea never appealed to me
The administrators of the Facebook page have announced that the page was removed after one of the admin's passwords was hacked and various unsavoury messages were bandied around. The page is now up again. Frankly, I am sick of the constant pandering to Islamic beliefs http://www.paullee.com/bandb/index.php#Islam
From the 'Draw Mohammed' page:
"A great big thank you to the facebook-gang for restoring the page. A great big thank you to all freedom lovers out there. Now we have new persons to handle the media and we will soon release some info about the past few days. And to all of you: One can never beat freedom of speech, opinion and idividuality, because they are all basic human rights."
"This page was removed two days ago, after one of our moderators had his email and skype
hacked. His personal data was revealed. He then got scared and deleted the page, the blog and the emails. The rest of us, are now back without him after he backed out. This is another scare tactic from the Islamic extremists. We won't fall.
Pictures you were unable to post on the 20th? Check the forums for interviews."
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Everybody-Draw-Mohammed-Day/121369914543425
I think Mark Twain put it rather well:
"Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if He is as little as that, He is beneath it."
As an aside, regarding the selection of a teddy bear costume to disguise Muhammad in the South Park episode, it was pointed out to me that this was likely chosen in reference to the 2007 incident in Sudan where the British schoolteacher was arrested for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7112929.stm
I didn't make that connection on initially viewing the South Park episode, but it seems plausible.
My Statement as a North American on Draw Mohammed Day
You’ll not find any quarter from me on the Islamist agenda or much even on basic Islamic doctrine. Today however on Draw Mohammed Day, we the creators, the artists, the writers and the illustrators in this society who care about free expression and liberty, today we take the cowards way out.
If anything we should be attacking the people at Comedy Central who censored the South Park episode. We should know their names, who they are and save our artistic ire for them and them alone.
Instead we needlessly hurt some of our friends and neighbors who are like us but have come from a muslim family background. They too care about liberty and free expression and though they may not like it and wish it did not happen, probably would prefer to ignore the South Park cartoon rather than forbid it outright or ridiculously threaten violence for it’s mere broadcast. No doubt some are even relishing the idea of drawing Mohammed, as Muslims to my knowledge are not monolithic in North America.
Whatever their opinion on this matter, these fellow citizens are not responsible for the actions of those associated with Comedy Central and there is no reason to attack their traditions for the ill-considered actions of the cable channel.
It is to those who were responsible for the decision to whom we must direct our energies and efforts. Anything less is simply lazy and cowardly.
--
I got a lot of flack for it but I pointed out everyday in the West is Draw Mohammed day and that the old South Park pic of Mo is on wikipedia which has a bigger audience than the Comedy Channel alone.
This from the re-activated page:
"This page was removed two days ago, after one of our moderators had his email and skype hacked. His personal data was revealed. He then got scared and deleted the page, the blog and the emails. The rest of us, are now back without him after he backed out. This is another scare tactic from the Islamic extremists. We won't fall."
Not then a Facebook-led reaction, but an understandably anxious page owner fearing for his own personal safety.