Canadian Magazine Publishes Muhammad Cartoons

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Great comparison, Alexis. That was a funny case - CJ and I went to check out some of the trial. The judge was a real goof; I remember him making some elbow-in-the-rib comment to the prosecutor that Playboy was the first place he'd learned that women could bend in three places.

And I remember the editorials at the time from pissed-off women who were for some reason under the impression that the ruling meant that they now had to go around topless. Go figure.

[ollie]

Yeah, good post Alexis. You captured the spirit of what I was so clumsily trying to say up above.

[Birdy]

i don't know. i think there might be a little more to this than the old 'you tell me i can't, well watch this' attitude. mainly because we've never said they can't. there's fundamental rights and freedoms that allow them to. rather, i tend to think it boils down to cultural differences and a little bit of an anti-islamic sentiment amongst 'western' publications. the ripple effect that's ensued kind of points that way, at least.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Do you mean that people like Levant are anti-Muslim, or just stroppy pricks?

[Birdy]

a little of both. i don't mean people are anti-muslim in terms of race and religion, but rather in terms of culture and thought.

Edited February 16, 2006 by Guest

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I'm not sure how to work with those distinctions.

- I don't buy the concept of "race" whatsoever;

- "religion" is word that appears in English only around the 16th century (prior to that, we only had the adverb "religiously", used as a synonym for "diligently" or "with passion") in response to the discovery of other literate civilisations, but has since come to mean everything under the sun (I'm partial to Ricoeur's definition as that which is the centre of "ultimate concern," but there are problems with that definition too);

- "culture" can be so expansive a term as to include everything that has to do with meaningful activity;

- and "thought" can mean anything that involves the concatenation of synapses and all the residue of memory.

All that's left is "this is the way we do things here, and that's the way they do things there," which seems to me to be about habit, which may or may not be flexible for any variety of reasons. I've always been more interested in why people insist on being inflexible, and this cartoon fiasco makes for a helluva case study.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Meanwhile to stupid flame-fanning continues....

Italian minister quits over Prophet t-shirt

Italian cabinet minister Roberto Calderoli resigned on Saturday after wearing a T-shirt printed with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

News that he had the shirts made sparked a five-hour riot outside the Italian consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on Friday. At least 10 people died as police tried to disperse the crowd of more than 1,000 demonstrators.

...

Calderoli, a member of the anti-immigration Northern League party, wore the T-shirt underneath a suit this week. He told the Italian news agency ANSA it was a "personal initiative" that was meant to invite "real dialogue.''

[Birdy]

- "culture" can be so expansive a term as to include everything that has to do with meaningful activity;

- and "thought" can mean anything that involves the concatenation of synapses and all the residue of memory.

All that's left is "this is the way we do things here, and that's the way they do things there," which seems to me to be about habit, which may or may not be flexible for any variety of reasons. I've always been more interested in why people insist on being inflexible, and this cartoon fiasco makes for a helluva case study.

for sure. staggerlee hit the nail on the head in the 'angry people' thread when he drew the distinction on the basis of critical thought. that was what i was not so successfully trying to imply above.

[Thorgnor]

More relativism... Critical thought in Western culture does not begin with the tenets of Islam... in the devout Muslim mind, it ends there.

Freedom of speech or not, doing something that we KNOW will offend is generally considered to be in bad taste and not always necessary. In this case, one reprint was enough to offend. If you don't understand why the cartoon is offensive based on a description of it then the picture itself will not explain that any image of a prophet is, in Islamic thought, considered against the good. I would venture to guess that this explanation would have offended far fewer Muslims than a reprint. But then, where's the freedom in NOT grinding salt into a wound?...

PS. I find the idea of the annointed one rocking his wife with a crucifix pretty hot, but I'm clearly no Catholic.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

PS. I find the idea of the annointed one rocking his wife with a crucifix pretty hot, but I'm clearly no Catholic.

I can imagine scenarios like that with all sorts of ethical twists that might be more untenable; imagine taking the worst of those and then splashing them across the media worldwide, and every time you expressed your discomfort with those, twenty more would pop up, out of spite.

[Birdy]

spite is such an ugly word.

[Thorgnor]

Not out of spite...

out of FREEDOM!!!!

Once again I ask, do we really need the purple font?

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

spite is such an ugly word.

Purple font business aside, too much of what I get out of this whole cartoon business is all about spite; I think Ezra Levant's performances last week just cinched it. It's hard to get anything like a dialogue moving forwards when all one side seems to have to say is "you're all [sic - I mean, for all the diversity within Islam, the one thing they agree on amongst themselves is the centrality of Muhammad] just a bunch of psychotic evildoers." And that does seem to be the tone of the people printing and reprinting these cartoons: "Sorry, we're here, in terms of our cultural developments [never mind our shortcomings, and damned if we'll ever share those with you], and you're not, so fuck you. Here's something we know pisses you off, and here's some more of it, and here's some more." That seems kind of spiteful to me - unless, of course, you abstract out a huge proportion of the actual audience and say it's for the intellectual consumption of non-Muslims alone. That seems a kind of funny way of thinking in a world with all sorts of new media.

[Thorgnor]

I simply cannot see the fucking point of reprinting them.

Curiosity is not validation for a continued insult. These cartoons are not against a religion in the same way as Galileo's discoveries, they are not based on truth of any sort. They are culturally, religiously and, if we must, racially motivated, period. These cartoons are motivated by the same bullshit as McCarthy-ism, IMHO.

Edited February 19, 2006 by Guest

[timouse]

PS. I find the idea of the annointed one rocking his wife with a crucifix pretty hot' date=' but I'm clearly no Catholic. [/quote']

I can imagine scenarios like that with all sorts of ethical twists that might be more untenable; imagine taking the worst of those and then splashing them across the media worldwide, and every time you expressed your discomfort with those, twenty more would pop up, out of spite.

not to mention the sharp corners

[Thorgnor]

Psssst... Birdy... remember this?

"I said it before and i'll say it again, spiteful voting only makes you a spiteful person, and karma gets you in the end." Ugly, eh?

[Birdy]

yup. it is an ugly word.

according to dictionary.com:

"malicious will prompting an urge to hurt or humiliate"

steer clear is my best advice.

i think there's a multitude of motives behind the continuous reprints, spite just being one of them.

generally speaking the publications that i care about and that i value aren't printing them, which makes me happy. reading comments made by levant and the like only confirms what dr evil mouse had suggested - they are jackasses.

hopefully we can cough it up to this, the repeated reprints will stop and this particular news story will just fall through the cracks and be forgotten about. before the scars become too deep that is.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Let's do hope.

Meanwhile - non-spiteful Muslims prevail in Canada:

Thousands protest in Ontario over Muhammad cartoons

And even this is considered contentious within the Canadian Muslim community -

A Muslim organization in Canada on Sunday call[ed] for an end to the demonstrations, saying they were only serving to inflame tensions around the world.

The Muslim Canadian Congress said the protests were being used by Islamic extremists as motivation to spread violence.

"We understand their pain, but Muslims should channel their anger not by burning and pillaging, but by following the example of Prophet Muhammad himself, who urged restraint and calmness in the wake of provocation," Tarek Fatah, a spokesperson for the group, said in the statement.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Et tu, Harper's?

Retailer pulls magazine featuring Muhammad cartoons.

The largest book retailer in the country has pulled all copies of the June edition of Harper's Magazine because it reprints a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, according to a media report.

And, apparently, in the interests of fair play,

Harper's also includes five cartoons inspired by a call in an Iranian newspaper for an international Holocaust cartoon contest.