I don’t hate Reason as much as John does, but their unbelievably self-congratulatory, faux-courageous “Draw Mohammed Day” was truly one of the most gutless things I have ever seen in my life. The three winning pictures all look as though they were chosen specifically so as to avoid inflaming radical Muslim sensibilities (one is a beach, one is a play on Magritte, another is dots with a face).
If these losers had the guts to face down a possible fatwa, I might have some respect for them. But it’s far braver, I’m sure, to strut around in leather jackets, write paeans to heat-packing tea-baggers, and pretend you’re sticking it to Al Qaeda with allusions to French surrealist art, just the way John Galt and Howard Roark did, all on the Koch family’s dime.
Grow a pair, fellas, or shut the hell up.
joe from Lowell
Finished?
;-)
joe from Lowell
That thing’s Mohammed.
DougJ
@joe from Lowell:
Sorry — it needed a lot of copy editing.
Mike Kay
Freedom isn’t freedom, unless you have the freedom to bash
darkiesmuslims.Karen in GA
For some reason it makes me think of when I was around 7 years old, and I’d threaten to run away from home. I’d leave the house, walk down the block, and then come back.
Probably the “Look how tough I am” followed by the “eh, not so much,” maybe.
(The added extra-credit bonus lesson: going Galt is harder than it looks.)
CalD
Much as I hate to say anything nice about Reason, I actually thought those were pretty great choices. My art school roots may be showing.
Ash Can
I wonder what the kids at Reason want to be when they grow up.
DougJ
@CalD:
They’re also the kind of things that won’t piss anyone off. Also, let’s be frank, the kind of things the commenters here would have come up with in 30 seconds. They’re not that clever.
Just Some Fuckhead
Nothing screams serious libertarian like a neener neener cartoon draw-off.
russell
Better yet, lay off being dicks.
What’s the point of pissing off a billion and a half people?
CJ
Let’s all hold hands for whatever price the free market allows. Vomit.
Shade Tail
@Just Some Fuckhead #9:
Unfortunately, your sarcastic sneer pretty much hits the truth. Libertarianism is little more than the “I’ve got mine, so screw you Jack” selfishness of a kindergartener who doesn’t want to share his toys. A childish philosophy leads to childish results.
arguingwithsignposts
Did they really need to spend all those words on three derivative images? they need to learn the art of tl;dr
Karen in GA
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fixted.
Martin
If they had any stones, they’d have picked out at least one of the “gratuitously insulting imagery” ones as representative of the community, because, well, it was.
beltane
Do glibertarians ever grow up to be adults, or do they remain perpetual preschoolers?
DougJ
@Martin:
Yes, exactly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I saw headlines about this and assumed it was the Freepers or RedState. I never read Reason, but I always thought they were at least somewhat grown-up in their approach to their arrested-adolescent hothouse pseudo-philosophy.
jfxgillis
Doug:
>
As I just pointed out on a Newsvine thread a little while ago, they had a perfect opportunity to do just that, and show real commitment to their Free Speech absolutism, simply by leaving up the “gratuitiously insulting” images that had been posted to the earlier thread.
So they turned out to be both cowards and censorious anyway.
arguingwithsignposts
By the way, I’m wondering about that “Where’s Waldo” knockoff. Is that real, or just a scanned rip-off of a Waldo image? The jpgs on the site don’t enlarge.
ETA: Just scanning some of the copy. What pretentiousness.
DougJ
@jfxgillis:
Do you have a link or cached copy? I can’t see anything at that link you provided.
Tonal Crow
The concept appears to be to inflame radical Muslims just because they can. It’s infantile and dangerous, and it does nothing to improve the world. On the contrary, it only makes things worse.
JGabriel
DougJ:
I can’t quite agree with that assessment because Beware of what you wish for, etc., but it does show how fucking pointless the whole excersise was:
Oh, whee, lookee here, we can draw respectful drawings (by our standards) of Mohammad, and Muslims are still pissed off! They have different cultural taboos than we do! Neener neener!
Whoop-dee-fucking-do. Who gives a fuck except the type of brats who like to mock people just because they’re different from them?
.
beltane
@jfxgillis: They wanted to make a statement without going the full Theo Van Gogh, which ended up not being much of a statement at all.
DougJ
@Tonal Crow:
But they’re not even inflaming anything. They’re making a few smart aleck art jokes. It’s as if Winston Churchill decided to read Tristam Shandy aloud on the BBC instead of giving those wartime speeches.
ellaesther
Eboo Patel, an American Muslim author (Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation) and founder of an interfaith organization whose work is supported by the Clinton foundation wrote a really smart piece about this Draw Muhammad bullshit on HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eboo-patel/free-speech-vs-fundamenta_b_571459.html
His post essentially asks one question: By drawing Muhammad, are you protecting freedom of speech — or just being a jerk?
Mark S.
Hey, Fonz, they’re your fans.
JGabriel
@DougJ:
Not really, because that would have been kind of cool, and pretty damn funny too.
.
John Cole
In fairness, I think that would be really hard. But if you read them a good deal and make sure to supplement their blog posts with Nick Gillespie videos, you could get really close to my level of hate in no time.
John Cole
Up next, to show their displeasure with the financial reform bill, Reason magazine will stage a very rambunctious cello performance.
Karen in GA
Like a kid threatening a classmate all day — “I’m gonna beat the hell out of you after school” — and then, when school lets out, he’s nowhere to be found.
The weird thing is, their chickening out tells anyone they figured might go after them, “Hey, their fear of us made them back down.” By their own reasoning, they handed the violent extremists a victory.
None of these people can possibly be any older than 12.
jfxgillis
@DougJ:
That’s weird. It opens okay for me. Hotlink maybe. Scroll down:
http://hampton.newsvine.com/_news/2010/05/20/4311044-youtube-everybody-draw-mohamed
JGabriel
Just looked at the drawing that references Matisse, and, honestly, my first impression was that they were mocking Reason, just as much as, or instead of, Islam’s taboo on representing Mohammad.
.
Tonal Crow
@DougJ: I disagree. First, any depiction of Mohammed is inflammatory to fundamentalist Muslims. Second, while Reason featured mild depictions, the contest reportedly motivated some people to draw some very raunchy stuff.
giantslor
OK, so I’m really confused why all the liberals are pooh-poohing Draw Muhammad Day. I understand why all the right-wingers are trumpeting it, but this seems like something liberals can get behind too. Radical Islam is antithetical to liberal values. Threats of violence against those who “blaspheme” Islam chills free speech. As a liberal who agrees with 99% of what I read on this site, I have to disagree on this issue. Muslims need to learn to tolerate “blasphemy” just as Christians have. Draw Muhammad Day is just one step toward normalizing blasphemy toward Islam. Muslims need to be desensitized and this is one way to do it.
Brian J
@russell:
People in this country who do stuff like that in such a public setting are like the relatively weak kids who pick fights in a bar in college because their huge friends are with them and won’t let them get beat up. In this case, the huge friend is the military, and the individuals acting like a bunch of punks are the clowns at Reason.
DougJ
@giantslor:
Well, I actually don’t have strong opinions about Draw Mohammed Day except that I think that if they’re going to talk the talk, they should walk the walk. They want to take an “edgy” position without doing anything that might actually put them in danger. I think it’s gutless. I think it would be gutless if they made a big deal about sticking it to the Catholic Church and then, just, I don’t know, put up a YouTube link to “Like A Prayer”.
ed
Why not up the ante? How about drawing some pictures of Jesus Christ as a gay man. Some people tried to put on the play Corpus Cristi in which that takes place, but had to shut it down. You know, because of death threats.
Or Reason could open an abortion clinic. You know, like Dr. Tiller.
There are lots of douche-bag religious nutjobs to mock. It ain’t just Muhammad-philes.
ellaesther
@giantslor: I would direct you to the Eboo Patel piece that I referenced earlier: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eboo-patel/free-speech-vs-fundamenta_b_571459.html
Depictions of the Prophet are not merely inflammatory to extremists — they are offensive to just about any Muslim with any degree of faith. I don’t understand it, but there it is.
And I certainly don’t believe that it is my job to run around desensitizing anyone to anything that offends them. Riffing off of Eboo’s piece, I would say: Should I next work on desensitizing Blacks to the n-word?
JGabriel
giantslor:
And most of them do. But it can still be offensive and discomfiting. And to them, it’s not a lesson in tolerance, it’s just rudeness.
Furthermore, as Ramiah Ariya, a non-Muslim from India, pointed out in an earlier thread on the topic:
It’s just a bunch of brats yelling, “Neener neener! We can do whatever we want!”
And, yes, they can. So what? That doesn’t make it admirable or noble, it’s still just bratty.
.
Cat Lady
Wouldn’t it be more meaningful if Reason showed photos of Fonzie and Matt Welch holding up the pictures that won, with each of their names and home addresses? I would respect that. This is just stupid and pointless.
Chuck Butcher
“Muslims need to be desensitized and this is one way to do it.”
Excuse me while I roll around on the floor … um … laughing. Your idea is that, what? They’ll get worn out from all the anger? So tired they can’t … think you’re exercising free stupidity rights?
If you want to put a turban on a fucking bomb then maybe you’ve made some point, but this is – there has to be a better word than – pointless rudeness.
MikeJ
@ed:
Since Islam forbids pictures of *any* prophet, that would serve the same purpose as picture of big Mo.
But they were too cowardly to offend a majority religion.
Wile E. Quixote
@ed:
You mean pictures like Warning! Completely Fucking Unsafe For Work this one? Or perhaps they could sell this Warning! Completely Fucking Unsafe For Work t-shirt.
ellaesther
@JGabriel: Exactly.
Jeff Fecke
@ed:
Oh, ed. Silly, silly, ed. When Christians do it, it’s just good Amurikan values like the Founding Fathers got from Jesus. It’s nothing like those vile, brown-skinned terrorists would do.
Chuck Butcher
Why is it so hard to understand that pictures of the prophet are offensive, that Jews do not spell the name of god, that yelling “fuck” in a church is not cool. And not one bit of it makes rational sense and so what?
ellaesther
@Chuck Butcher: (teeny correction: We spell it, we just don’t pronounce it. Leading to much confusion in Hebrew class, when teaching non-native speakers to not say what those letters look like but to substitute “Adonai.” But other than that: Carry on! I agree entirely).
Vince CA
You’re welcome to defend them, but they’re idiots, if only b/c they’re hosting their site on AWS S3. That means they get micro-dimed every time someone hits the site. I’m hitting reload over and over again just to rack up their bill. (Disclaimer: I don’t own shares of AMZN anymore, but their Cloud Computing racket is making me wish I still did.)
Karen in GA
I never saw it as censorship thing so much as behaving-like-a-functional-adult thing. If I see an ugly stranger on the street, I won’t tell him I think he’s ugly. I have the right to do it, and if he responds by punching me I can have him arrested for assault. But does my refusal to say anything mean that he’s somehow repressing me?
And I don’t remember people complaining, “We can’t draw Mohammed? But we wanna draw Mohammed!” before 9/11 and the ensuing rise of anti-Muslim sentiment. Hell of a coincidence.
ETA: Not equating Muslims with ugly strangers. Just making the point that… ah, you get it.
arguingwithsignposts
@ellaesther:
Hmm, I’ve read some Jewish writers who wrote it as “G_d” sometime in the past.
Chuck Butcher
“We spell it, we just don’t pronounce it”
Apparently I’ve become dislexic since I knew that – duh.
giantslor
@ed: I’m a big fan of all blasphemy. But few of today’s Christians would get behind killing blasphemers. You can’t say the same about today’s Muslims. For crying out loud, a large percentage want to kill you if you just post a historical painting of Muhammad or animate a bear costume with Muhammad supposedly inside. This is insane. We can’t let others threaten our cherished freedom of expression.
Reason’s “winners” were pretty tame. But I’m not surprised. Reason’s office location is likely public knowledge. They don’t want to get bombed. I think being anonymous is the right strategy for the time being. Once blasphemy toward Islam becomes more common and “normal,” maybe people can start blaspheming more openly.
The point of this isn’t the blasphemy. It’s the right to engage in in. I have no interest in burning any American flags, but if it became illegal, I would be organizing the mass burning parties.
Chuck Butcher
“God” is an avoidance, that’s not it.
ellaesther
@arguingwithsignposts: Some folks do that, but it’s kind of an odd form of over-kill. It’s really entirely unnecessary. The religious issue is over the Name, which is by definition in Hebrew, and anyway, doesn’t translate to “God” — “Elohim” translates to “God,” and that is a thing we say all the time. Some people like to create, and then go, that extra mile!
(Just yesterday, in fact, I read something about how unnecessary it is, but I can’t find it, which is driving me nuts. If I do find it, I’ll get back to you!)
ellaesther
@Chuck Butcher: That’s ok — I’m sure Dog will forgive you.
giantslor
Everybody’s so opposed to offending people and being rude. Guess what, it’s our right. It’s my right to post a picture of Jesus masturbating with his stigmata, or a dog fucking Muhammad in the ass. Religion isn’t a race or a gender or a disability, it’s a belief. It’s my right to make fun of people’s beliefs, whether they be political, cultural or political.
But this goes so much further than being offensive. Radical Muslims want to start getting violent just because Wikipedia posts historical paintings of Muhammad on the Muhammad article. That’s absolutely unacceptable. Maybe this whole Draw Muhammad Day is already having a normalizing effect where the pictures on Wikipedia seem like nothing in comparison.
Mnemosyne
@giantslor:
Wait, you think that a “large percentage of Muslims” want to kill people who draw pictures of Muhammed?
What percentage is that? 30 percent? 40 percent? There are about 5 million Muslims in the United States. You really think that over a million of them want to kill you for drawing a picture of Muhammed?
There are 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide. You think that 450,000,000 people want to kill you for drawing a picture of Muhammed? Note that you are convinced that the total combined populations of Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia — every man, woman and child in those countries — wants to kill you for drawing a picture of Muhammed.
Dude, get over yourself. I guarantee you that the vast majority of Muslims don’t actually care, any more than a large percentage of Catholics agree with Bill Donohue when he defends pedophile priests.
JGabriel
@giantslor:
Most Muslims do not want to kill people for drawing Mohammad. It doesn’t even carry a death sentence in most – or to my knowledge, any – Muslim countries. The accusation is insulting and ignorant.
Most Muslims would either a) want to educate you as to why it’s offensive in their faith, or b) protest it, or – if they’re especially short-tempered – c) sock you, or d) just forget it and move on ‘cuz you’re a jerk for doing it and they don’t want to deal with it.
Look, I will defend to the death the right for some jackass to paint Mohammad all day long, but I’m also gonna defend the right to mock and criticize that jackass, and I’m gonna be one of the mockers and critics.
.
Chuck Butcher
giantslor
You’re like a 10 year old that can’t stop saying “dick” because his parents and teachers are aghast. Anonymous is the ticket – oh yes, we’re such believers, soooo tough. Sort of like that unlinked handle of yours? Oh yes, mine will lead you right to my door and if you act like that in my house I’ll throw you right back out it. (not caring a lot if you bounce) So did the link bring you out? You’ll get mocked for your trouble.
JGabriel
@giantslor:
Yep, it is. It’s also your right to mock the blind, the halt, the fat, the skinny, the blonde, the dark, the deaf, the dumb, and the smart.
And the stupid, but that would be self-denigrating.
.
someguy
Whatever.
@:{>
Chuck Butcher
Why the hell can’t this site decide whether or not to get along with my browser. Now the “reply” button is dead and the comment tags as well.
Martin
@Tonal Crow: What’s the difference? If Muslims find pictures of Mohamed offensive and you set out to offend them in the name of ‘free market of ideas’, which was clearly the point of the event, why stop short of Jesus assfucking Mohamed? If offensive was your goal, you’re in the same place that you were except that you’ve now also offended Christians, but you’re still demonstrating the same free market of ideas.
The only reason to not show the more offensive picture is that either you are afraid of the people you are offending, which means you’re a fucking coward, or you think there are limits on the free market of ideas, which means you’re completely full of shit, or you are afraid of offending people that are more important to you, which means you are a coward, full of shit, and a bigoted pigfucker.
Martin
@giantslor:
Agreed. And a large percentage of Catholics want to rape my pre-teen son. Given I have a son and haven’t drawn any pictures of Mohamed, I feel a lot safer around the Muslims.
ed
@Wile E.
Egads. That’s pretty motherfucking blasphemous. And funny.
giantslor
@JGabriel: I didn’t say “most,” I said “a large percentage.” I was purposely vague because I don’t know the actual percentage. But if even 1% of Muslims want to kill people who depict the “prophet,” that means 16 million Muslims think this way. Maybe I should have said “a large number.” I mean, you’ve seen the violent mass demonstrations and read about the violent and murderous acts against “blasphemers.” It’s not an insignificant number.
According to a Pew survey of American Muslims, 8 percent of American Muslims think that suicide bombing is often or sometimes justified. Another 5% think it’s rarely justified. You can look at this glass as half full if you like, or half empty. I think 13% is way too big a percentage. What percentage of this subgroup thinks it’s justified in cases of depiction of the prophet? Probably plenty, if they’re that fucked up that they think suicide bombing can be justified.
ed
giantslor:
People who wanted to put on Corpus Cristi got death threats. People who drew Muhammad toons got death threats. Why quibble with perceived percentages about how many of each religion wanted the alleged blasphemers dead? Why not mock them both, as they both deserve mocking? What’s the marginal cost of mocking asshole Christians while we’re already mocking asshole Muslims?
(Oh, and Scott Roeder. And Eric Rudolph. Though some asshole Muslims have made good on their threats, they don’t have a monopoly on asshole murderous religious nutjobs. Ya dig?)
Anne Laurie
@giantslor:
I can’t speak for “all the liberals”, but I say Reason is being stupid in the same way the free spirits who thought showing up at the anti-war protests to get naked and/or smoke weed were stupid. Sure, it gets eyeballs (media attention), but 95% of the minds behind those eyeballs will think you’re a damned idiot for conflating a serious question of public policy with your personal desire to
punish your parents for not loving you enoughinflate your hit-count.Except, of course, the Reasonoids aren’t even getting nekkid in public… they’re just encouraging other people to do so. Like the guys who thought it was tremendously effective for Code Pink to flash their boobs at the riot police, because hey who doesn’t like boobs? (and besides, they weren’t the ones going to be arrested).
OriGuy
@ellaesther:
Not really true. Sunnis are generally opposed to depictions of any of the prophets, some going as far as opposing depictions of any animal. Shi’a are less stringent. There was a tradition of portraiture in Persian and Ottoman art that included the Prophet and other Shi’ite holy figures.
Wikipedia has an interesting article on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Islam
It’s still supposed to be done with respect, though. I’m an atheist, but I don’t go around yanking crosses off people’s necks.
Martin
@giantslor: I guarantee that if you swapped white American protestants for Palestinians, you’d see identical numbers of WASPs defending suicide bombing.
Or do you think that white Christians are fundamentally opposed to bombing civilians? You are aware of the IRA, right?
giantslor
@JGabriel: You’re right, that is my right, but it would be stupid because those are things beyond people’s control or just not worthy of criticizing. Religion is not something beyond people’s control. They can realize it is false, or at least adopt a more moderate version.
If Republicans were threatening to kill people who drew pictures mocking Ronald Reagan, I’d sure support a Draw Reagan Day. Why would you treat religion any differently?
Shade Tail
@giantslor #57:
So? If you don’t like that, tough shit. We aren’t going to stop you from being rude and offensive, but unless you actually have a real meaningful statement behind it, we’ll treat you with the contempt you deserve. And like it or not, pissing people off just because it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling isn’t a meaningful statement.
Sometimes, purposefully violating a taboo is a defensible act. Sometimes, it’s just being an asshole. This contest Reason was holding was nothing but a deliberate attempt to offend Moslems merely for the sake of offending them. It wasn’t some great message to the oppressor, or even some artsy-fartsy “statement”, it was just asshole-ism.
And as if that’s not bad enough, it was gutless asshole-ism that they didn’t have the brass to live up to, as DougJ pointed out in the post way up at the top of the page.
tripletee
@giantslor:
I’m glad you’re not opposed to offending people and being rude, or I might feel bad about calling you a fucking idiot with your head crammed so far up your ass that you’ve formed some kind of cranial-rectal Escher drawing.
Mnemosyne
@giantslor:
So all Muslims should be punished because 1% of them may freak out at the idea of someone drawing a picture of Mohammed?
People like you are the reason we’re bogged down in the Middle East right now. I guess if the Iraqis didn’t want their country invaded, they shouldn’t have let al-Qaeda attack us.
Zuzu's Petals
@giantslor:
Really? Exactly how many Muslims issued death threats over the bear costume? I’m pretty sure it was one, but maybe you can educate me.
And as to “historical” depictions, I’ll repeat what I said on another thread. Mohammed is prominently depicted (pdf) on a famous frieze displayed in the Supreme Court building. Can you tell me how many death threats there have been over all these years?
ellaesther
@OriGuy: I’ll admit that I’m not an expert in this, but if I recall from my studies, Persian Shi’ism was once more relaxed about this issue, but not really anymore. The Prophet was shown in some Persian art centuries ago, and then that developed to the point where, if Muhammad was depicted, it was a human body with a flame where the head would be. And now I think (though I absolutely could be wrong) that most mainstream Shi’ites shy away from it all together.
And either way, your last point is really the most important one. It’s not for me to decide what is and is not offensive to another religion/culture. My job is to be a mensch and try to be respectful.
maus
@giantslor: Because we’re not childishly grabbing our balls like a bunch of neocons excited about pissing off the “ragheads”.
What separates you from them? What elevates this exercise above their constant stream of hate and bile? I support your every right to do what you choose to do, but it’s disappointing.
JGabriel
@giantslor:
“I didn’t say ‘most’ black men want to rape white wimmens, I just said ‘a large percentage’.”
Yeah, you’re right, there’s nothing bigoted or ignorant about either of those statements. How foolish I was not to realize that the number was the point of that statement, and not the killin’.
(/snark)
.
LibertarianAtheist
Hmm. Maybe it’s because the libertarians aren’t supportive of the idea of giving Israel unconditional aid and diplomatic support while the Palestinians are subject to ethnic cleansing and apartheid? Or maybe it’s because libertarians don’t like the idea of going to war and spending inordinate amount of American blood and treasure while breaking apart the country we invaded in order to defend the interests of a foreign country? Just sayin’.
giantslor
Alright, everyone’s coming at me from all sides and I can see I’m not getting anywhere, so why bother arguing further.
My last word on this is that I want to have the freedom to criticize or make fun of people’s stupid beliefs, unmolested. That doesn’t extend to things people can’t change like race, sex, and so on. I fully expect and deserve to get punched in the face for using a racial slur (although it should remain legal). But we should all feel safe criticizing people’s beliefs. Go ahead, make fun of atheism and atheists all you want. I may get angry and think you’re an idiot, but I’m not going to threaten you. I expect the same in return.
Draw Muhammad Day is a way to show radical Islamists that we can say what we want about Islam and they’re not going to stop us. I don’t care if some moderate Muslims get their feelings hurt in the process, just as I don’t care if I hurt Christians’ feelings by criticizing their stupid beliefs.
This is a small victory for free speech. That’s all I want.
Zuzu's Petals
@giantslor:
Why? And…why?
giantslor
@Zuzu’s Petals: Why not? Seriously. You think we shouldn’t feel safe criticizing other people’s beliefs?
maus
@giantslor:
How in god’s name is this a “victory”? You don’t live in an area where any of this is “risky” or prohibited.
Where is all this inflated self-importance coming from? I haven’t seen such delusion of grandeur since the Ron Paul Revolution fizzled out and was fully co-opted by the GOP.
Mnemosyne
@giantslor:
So you want to be allowed to be an asshole to people’s faces but they’re not allowed to retaliate because your assholery is righteous but their assholery is not.
Funny, that’s how most assholes feel — they’re just “telling the truth,” whether it’s informing people that their prophet was a child molester or saying that The Bell Curve proves that black people are inherently dumber than white people, so why are people getting so upset?
Try this little experiment: the next time your wife/girlfriend/female friend comes home with a bad haircut, make sure you tell her that she looks hideous and you can’t believe she would even leave the house looking that stupid. After all, her hair is going to grow back, so why shouldn’t you tell her how awful it looks?
maus
@Mnemosyne: Then slap yourself on the back, because you have the LEGAL RIGHT IN THIS COUNTRY to call your wife/girlfriend/female friend an ugly skank, and you have achieved a victory for exercising the right to FREE SPEECH because it’s in THE CONSTITUTION. AND OTHER THINGS AND MAYBE I SHOULD MENTION FOUNDING FATHERS I FORGET WHAT ELSE REASON SAID BUT I ASSUME IT IS ALSO GOOD.
JGabriel
@tripletee:
My own person term for that is: The Human Klein Bottle.
Usage example: That guy’s head is so far up his ass, he’s a human klein bottle.
(As far as I know, I originated it.)
.
Joseph Nobles
There shall be no treating Mohammed like a Jew in a Middle Eastern newspaper. It’s inflammatory, it is.
Mnemosyne
You know, there’s one thing Reason could have done that would have actually made me respect them: they could have taken those top three pictures and sent them to Revolution Muslim.
But why would you target the people who actually provoked the censorship when you can insult a billion Muslims who had nothing to do with it instead? Hmm, it almost makes one think that their problem is with Islam, not with terrorist threats or censorship.
Mnemosyne
@Joseph Nobles:
Because retaliating in kind has always worked out so well throughout human history.
giantslor
Groan. I’m done with this thread. It’s disheartening seeing liberals willing to give up a piece of their freedom of expression. Would you lay down so willingly if it were radical Christians threatening murder?
Joseph Nobles
@Mnemosyne: Yes, because some of the people offended by cartoons of Mohammed are drawing cartoons of Mohammed cartoonists. No, wait, they’re assassinating them, head-butting them at lectures, and trying to burn down their homes. Responding in kind? Give me a effing break.
Seriously? If everybody was drawing cartoons about everybody, that would just be hell on earth? What are you smoking?
JGabriel
@giantslor:
No, but I’d mock them, not draw pictures of Jesus raping 6 year olds. You wanna draw pictures of bin Laden in a French stripper’s outfit giving a blow job to al Zawahiri, be my guest.
I just think it’s pointlessly insulting to mock the religious sensitivities of 1.5 billion people, Muslims who aren’t terrorists or religious fundamentalists, just to prove you can. You don’t; you think it makes a point. We disagree.
.
TenguPhule
Fuck you, you’ve not had the experience of the fucking Fundies making atheists lives miserable.
jimbob
@giantslor: Well, you’ve done a good job of arguing that you are a childish, self-entitled, jackass so far, but then I haven’t gotten any farther in this thread, so there’s that. “Douchey” comes to mind, but I’ll save that for downthread . . . .
TenguPhule
Tell you what, when we can get Dog completely removed from the Government’s currency and pledge of allegience, THEN we can talk. Until then, shut up.
TenguPhule
And I’d like Republicans to shut up the stupid forever.
And a nice slice of pie.
Zuzu's Petals
@giantslor:
Seriously, I think you should go back and read my comment.
I notice you’ve completely skipped past the questions I posed @ 76, by the way. Care to give those a try?
jimbob
@TenguPhule: ZING!!!
jimbob
@jimbob: Okay, Giantslug, we’re there. Douchy, childish, self-entitled, jackass. Hey, ya high-jacked a thread, ya crazy terrorist, you. All are base are belong to u!
maus
@Joseph Nobles: LET’S ALL ACT LIKE MANCHILDREN WHOOOOOOO
LibertarianAtheist
Oh come on, man they don’t really make our lives that miserable! They make a lot of other people’s lives miserable, but they’re mostly a constant source of entertainment for us. The most annoying thing I’ve heard a prominent public figure say about atheists in a while was when Mitt Romney decided to get up and pontificate about how great it was that we have so many different religions in America and pointedly left out anybody who didn’t have one. Like everything else the man has ever said, it had absolutely nothing to do with any kind of conviction and everything to do with cowardly political posturing, which made it much worse. Incidentally, Reason had great coverage of that. At any rate, our freedom of speech is infinitely more precious than whether or not “God” is in the Pledge of Allegiance or on the currency. And yes, freedom of speech is most certainly under threat by Muslim fanatics, and, like everything else related to freedom of speech, it’s infinitely better to be too offensive or insensitive than to be too cautious.
Joseph Nobles
@maus:
Acting like manchildren. Wooooooo.
RSA
I’m reminded of PZ Myers having desecrated a host. He received death threats.
Bill Zebub
Hey, PZ Myers is in favor of it too. Why don’t you try arguing with him about it instead of going after an easy target like Reason? After all, given what a bunch of craven accommodationists you people are, I’m sure you have the same criticisms of the so-called New Atheists – “why do they have to be such jerks? Why can’t they just let people believe whatever makes them feel good?”
Because for some people, what’s true and what’s right in principle matters more than your stupid fucking PC sensitivities.
Besides, if those billions of tolerant Muslims you presume to speak for are that seriously disturbed by people who don’t belong to their religion violating one of its rules, well, I guess they’re not all that moderate and tolerant then, are they? It’s one of the most basic concepts of life in a diverse society – people who aren’t part of your group have no obligation whatsoever to pander to your sensitivities, especially when they are ridiculous to an extreme. If you can’t handle that, then go retreat to an island somewhere and enjoy a monolithic culture where you never have to hear a dissident idea. I see things that are important to me mocked on a regular basis. It doesn’t hurt my feelings, because I’ve grown the fuck up enough to accept it as the price you pay for that sort of freedom. Funny to see how you paternalistic liberals condescendingly assume reasonable Muslims aren’t capable of doing the same thing.
Also: Mnemosyne, please, just stop. Calm down, go back and read your asinine comments again, and see if you can’t pick out all the fallacious reasoning, non-sequiturs, and just plain galling stupidity that make them up. If you weren’t so full of your own stupid self-righteousness and encouraged by the similar stupidity all around you, you should be embarrassed to be saying such stupid shit.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
“If you weren’t so full of your own stupid self-righteousness and encouraged by the similar stupidity all around you, you should be embarrassed to be saying such stupid shit. ”
I suggest taking your own advice.
Bob L
This is growing a pair on the draw Mohamed thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ja_4neDpiY&playnext_from=TL&videos=fu6wx4JMhR0
And, I love the smell of accommodationist angst in the morning.
No, unbelivers have been nice and respectable to the god botherors for over a century now and what has it gotton us? The creationist movement, god’s name plastered on everything in the government and unbelivers driven out of public life.
pointus
I’m with ya, Giantslor.
Seeing those violent douchbags attacking that Swedish cartoonist giving a lecture on free speech made me sick.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8676351.stm
Until their “delicate sensibilities” aren’t violently avenged at every perceived slight, they deserve to be mocked.
Tonal Crow
@giantslor: Sorry, that’s a strawman. No one here is advocating ceding any of our freedom of expression. None of us support government censoring Mohammed images, nor even private boycotts of those who produce or display them. That I choose not to scream “You’re uglier than a pig’s bunghole!” at the next person who passes my door doesn’t mean that I accept censorship. Rather, it means that I accept the need for courtesy.
And on atheists’ need to contest religion generally, I’m an atheist, and I agree that we need to contest religion. I just don’t think this is a profitable way to do so. I’ll argue until the cows come home about how creationism’s defects, but I’m not into gratuitous offense. And that’s MY freedom of expression. Get it?
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
It never fails to amaze me at how quickly bigots go from “Well, obviously I’m not smearing ALL Muslims…” to “GODDAMMIT WHY CAN’T YOU POT-SMOKING HIPPIE MOONBATS SEE THE GRAVE THREAT ALL MUSLIMS POSE TO US!?!”
Bob L
PZ Myers on this
Now explain to me what is proper respectful discourse with someone who threatens you with murder if you don’t follow his personal religious beliefs?
Mnemosyne
@Bill Zebub:
Again: you want the freedom to tell people that you think they’re stupid, but you don’t want them to be allowed to tell you that you’re being an asshole.
Your idea of freedom of speech is “I can say anything I want and no one can complain about it.” Sorry, but that’s a 12-year-old’s construction. “I got sent to the principal’s office just for telling my teacher that she’s fat and ugly! I’m being repressed!”
Though I do love how riots and protests in Europe are absolute proof that you’re being repressed in the United States. I guess I missed our annexation of Sweden since apparently everything that happens there is a direct insult to Americans.
Mnemosyne
@Bob L:
Here’s a thought — how about sending those cartoons directly to the people making the death threats instead of lashing out at the people who didn’t?
I see that PZ is making the same mistake you are: assuming that all Muslims are extremists so there’s no need to differentiate between different groups. Hey, all those ragheads are alike anyway, amirite?
Calling the police and having them arrested for making death threats. Believe it or not, death threats are not a protected form of speech.
Oh, sorry, I guess that would make you feel like less of a Great Warrior for Truth and Justice to actually do that, so clearly it’s better for you to draw stick figures of Mohammed farting and post them outside your local mosque. That’ll learn ’em for letting completely unrelated people make death threats to you.
Evinfuilt
Screw Reason for trying to take credit for something they didn’t think of, and of course with them it is pointless.
Here’s a great selection, with good info on why it was worth drawing him. Then again, you complain that these simple drawings won’t upset anyone, meanwhile this whole event happened because a stick figure offended a bunch of muslims on a University.
http://friendlyatheist.com/2010/05/20/draw-muhammad-day-a-compilation/
Mnemosyne
@Evinfuilt:
Again, incidents like the one in Sweden involving Muslims have happened where in the United States? Please give some links. Because I’m still not understanding why offending American Muslims is a great blow for freedom against repressive Islam in Europe.
maus
@Evinfuilt: Still comes off as self-absorbed garbage, like a 2003 “Protest Warrior” gathering.
If the intellectual exercise was drawing Mohamed fucking Jesus and setting fire to the American flag, then I would have laughed. Otherwise, it’s pandering to the nativists.
Rick Taylor
The Reason protest is pretty stupid. Who are they protesting on behalf of? Who’s oppressed they’re trying to support? It’s childish; it’s like they’re saying, oh you say you don’t want us to draw Mohammad, well here we’re going to anyway. It’s not as though any of them would have wanted to draw Mohammad if it weren’t for people saying they shouldn’t.
__
You know what I would respect? If Libertarians to selected a day to where the Hijab, in solidarity with the Muslim school girls of France who are forbidden to. Now there would be symbolic strike for freedom. Plus you get to poke the French, what more could you want?
Sheila
@russell: I agree with you, Russell. I don’t say Yahweh around orthodox Jews, I don’t photograph orthodox Muslims, I don’t serve beef to Hindus, I don’t stomp on the host in front of Catholics. I do not make fun of anyone’s religion or atheism or culture and I lose absolutely nothing by it except ill will.
giantslor
True story: I once made a Catholic cry when I said in so many words that Christianity was stupid. To this day I don’t know if she cried because I hurt her feelings or because she realized what I said was true, or both. I felt kinda bad at the time but I wouldn’t have done anything differently. In almost every situation I value free speech and free inquiry over all else. If that makes me an asshole, then I’m proud to be an asshole.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
I thought you were done wasting your intellect on us, giantslor.
Linda Binda
PZ Myers’ argument doesn’t really wash for me. He claims that since Hindus and Buddhists don’t make a big stink about people disrespecting their religious beliefs, and don’t get violent when they are disrespected, then it somehow justifies disrespecting the beliefs of 1 billion Muslims because a sizable lot of crazies still wanna get Jyllands-Posten back for what they did with those cartoons back in 2005.
Ya know, there are at least two feelings I have about this.
#1: I would LOVE for many Christians to have to explain the singular popularity of Randall Terry, Pat Robertson, and Bill Donohue to me, but you know what? You know what happens when you expect mainstream Christians to apologize for those idiots? This is what happens when I expect my mom to explain to me why Christianity is so hateful toward gays, even though she herself isn’t, and she half the time doesn’t even believe that that line in Leviticus exists (she apparently thinks I made it up): she doesn’t listen to me, all she sees is my “intolerance” to her entire faith, my apparent inability to grasp nuance and sophistication, and she ends up seeing me as a bigot. In short, IT DOESN’T FUCKING WORK.
It also DOESN’T FUCKING WORK when you try to get Republicans to apologize for George W. Bush. They put their hands in their ears, and they go “laalalalalalalala.. I CAN’T HEAR YOU. This is you: ‘Blame Bush! Blame Bush!’ ” Exactly WHY you expect this to work with Muslims, when it DOESN’T FUCKING WORK with ANYONE-FUCKING-ELSE, I DON’T KNOW. Hey, atheists! Quit beating your head against the wall! You look like over-entitled brats. And you look plenty WHITE, too. (You know what I’m saying. YEAH, I WENT THERE.)
#2 Exactly HOW is this showing off your freedom of speech? You know what would be a REAL freedom-of-speech gesture? A film adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s the Satanic Verses. The governments of Pakistan and Iran are the ones who actively want Rushdie dead. Revolution Islam is just run by some whiny poseurs out of their moms’ basements, whom other *normal* Muslims don’t even like; they mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. The nation of Denmark didn’t deserve assholes bombing their embassies or people murdering Italian nuns, but it was in Muslims’ rights to boycott Danish products when the Danish government refused to apologize for the cartoons. And even then, these cartoons were already a year old back then, and somebody in Iran or whatever brought these cartoons back from the dead to piss people off. Thanks for falling for it all over again, everybody.
You wanna draw Mohammed cartoons? Go on ahead: let your freak flag fly. Let it be known, however, that you are on your own stupid little bandwagon. The real pioneers are those like me who DO think religion is silly, but a) can’t be bothered to give enough of a shit to broadcast this every fucking moment in every person’s face, b) who thinks that the best way for someone to de-convert from stupidity is to have them find out how dumb their beliefs are on their own, or at least get respectful, thought-provoking questions once in a while, rather than every fucking day, which only encourage people to dig in their heels and become more stubborn. The current state of this blog is proof of this. How many of you have been reading this blog since 2005 (*raises hand*), and how many of you have ever convinced Mr. Cole by bashing Republicans and constantly telling him that his then-party was evil and bad? Didn’t work, did it? Didn’t it take Terri Schiavo to make him wonder that maybe he was involved with a pretty stupid crowd? That’s what it takes. No one gives up 20-30+ years of belief, complicated by hundreds of years of ethnic-religious history, by reading a Christopher Hitchens rant, coming away wholly convinced that he or she can dump away his or her entire heritage like it’s nothing. I mean, the man can be fun to read, once in a blue moon, but really? If anyone can be that easily convinced of anything just like that, then, for one, that person’s pretty fucking stupid and gullible. Plus, like Raminah Ariya has said, doing this anti-Islam posturing while we’re still in Afghanistan and Iraq makes us look like fucking assholes. If you want to convince Muslims you think a couple of jack-offs who run a blog and their would-be sympathizers the world over are complete morons, you don’t do it by pissing off all the mainstream Muslims who think those other guys are idiots, too, by mocking their most revered historical figure. It’s like protesting the pedophile priests scandal by insinuating that Mary was a whore who lied about getting pregnant by God. Good luck with getting the Catholics who hate the scandal, too, to join in with you on all the fun. Good luck with that.