Those cartoons...anyone want to read why they were published?

[hunkermunker]

Am wary of posting this, but am posting all the same - I think it's very interesting

Fuzzywuzzy:
I was interested in knowing more about the very start of this affair, which, apparantly, and according to the article linked below, had it's roots in 'fear of consequences' in anyone illustrating the children's book. That, apparantly, is why the paper decided to ask for people to do cartoons.

Of course Christ wasn't blonde and blue eyed (or I very much doubt it) - but he was painted like that in at least one of my school books...I was making a not-very-important point that any illustration is presumably entirely speculative because we have no idea what any of these people looked like.

I was at the John Latham exhibition at the Tate on Sunday, and saw the explanation about the withdrawal of one piece. John Latham explores some really interesting ideas about where our reality is based - in time, rather than in a material context, our relationship to infinity, and to power and escape. I would have liked to see the 'removed' exhibit, and i think that if we consider art to be important at all, then it is sometimes going to be confronting, maybe offensive and maybe disturbing. I didn't 'enjoy' the portrait of Myra Hindley done entirely in the handprints of small children, but i thought it was brilliant and certainly did not glorify M Hindley or her acts. But people vandalised the canvas because it was 'offensive'.

The foundations of art - aesthetics - are the basis of much that is experienced as sacred - I have been in the Paris mosque, and the sheer beauty of the architecture has a profound effect, likewise stained glass windows, gregorian chant, Faure's Requiem, zen temples, etc etc. Art also enables us to confront and explore other areas of our humanity, and may be as powerfully 'offensive' as it can be affirming.

I too am uneasy about Holocaust denial being an actual crime. I can see the context, in Austria, and have not one jot of sympathy for the racist little worm that he is, but alongside 'glorifying terrorism' it seems to be a law expected to do a job better adressed theough other functions.

No, sorry I dont find his explanation convincing. the 12 cartoons together constituted an unflattering, stereotyped and misleading portrait of Islam. If he'd published stuff that was true and/or funny, I'd have accepted his excuse, but it wasn't.

What I find the hardest to understand is that fun is made of God all the time, you don't have to look very hard to find cartoons mocking him, films made about him, articles savaging him, yet where on earth are the Muslims then? This is their God too, why are they not demonstrating every time the media pokes fun of God? Why is it just Mohammed?

It was once said of the catholics that they worshipped Mary more than God. I think you could say of the Muslims that they seem to worship Mohammed more than God.

And I don't believe that people should be gagged, regardless of the current climate. No-one gagged the comedians making fun of the catholics during the IRA years, why should this be any different?

Agree wit you Ruhbarb - why is it OK to take the pis* of of the pope, or Mary or Jesus, but not Mohammed? Maybe catholics should all rise up and get agitated!

We can't be bothered!

Lazy bastards.

I once vaguely mused about doing a paper on anti-catholic bias in British culture. You only have to look at soap operas to see how negatively catholics are repsented - Ivy Tilsley in Corrie, Shelia in Brookside - they're perfectly normal characters and then suddenly as soon as their catholicism is mentioned they turn into absolute nutters, spouting fanatical fundamentalist rubbish that all the catholics I know (except my mum) just laugh at.

And those lazy catholics can't be bothered to complain about it...

i'd go further than that. Blu, I would say pictures of Christ have in the past reflected a desire to make him a WASP to fit the prejudices of his flock. I mean he was Jewish for goodness sake!
I don't agree with Karen Armstrong tho, MT, that Christianity has advances to benefit commercially in modern times regarding the emancipation of women. I would say that Christ's teachings and actions were clear in treating men and women as equals, but it didn't suit the patriarchal church to follow that particular bit. Maybe that's not so far from what she was saying, but for me its a crucial distinction. and there have always been powerful women in Christianity, eg.Hildegard Bingen.
Read an interesting interview in last week
's Sunday Times with Saira Khan [from the Apprentice apparently]she calls herself a moderate Muslim and said some pretty challenging things. I guess she criticizes some aspects of the way Islam is misused in the same way i would criticize some aspects of Christianity.

Caligula, we've more pressing matters to attend to, like where the next pint of Guinness is going to come from!

Catholics do get a bad press still, but luckily we can take it! We just affect our smug "I'm going to Heaven and you're not" look!

sorry, i didn't mean you don't get blonde Jewish people, i just meant their were times when the fact that he was Jewish was probably overlooked.

He's Irish in Ireland!

Yes and the virgin Mary was always blond and blue eyed as well, because that was the image of the beautiful woman in Europe.

The dark one was always the temptress and the baddie. Like in the old mills and boons.

Rhubarb, we all know the real reason that catholics don't kick up a fuss is that you are all too busy having sex with out contraception and all have millions of children....you don't have the time to complain about things

Rhubarb, we all know the real reason that catholics don't kick up a fuss is that you are all too busy having sex with out contraception and all have millions of children....you don't have the time to complain about things

Rhubarb, we all know the real reason that catholics don't kick up a fuss is that you are all too busy having sex with out contraception and all have millions of children....you don't have the time to complain about things

And I seem to be multiple posting Sorry comphuer fart!

Very true mb!

Jesus is black in Africa - we all do it, we make him a part of us, don't see what's so wrong with that!

I like Jesus being all things to all men in that way - it adds to his good egg image. Never thought of him as a blondie though - always mousy with brown eyes.

I want to tell you something.

Someone in DEnmark said that he was ready to piss on the Bible, but was afraid to do so on the Quran.

The fact that he was ready to do that on the Bible makes me think he needs to be sent to a re-education or correctional facility.

What sort of person would piss on a book or aywhere other than the WC. Exception can be
made when there are no conveniences, but on a book, that too on one that is holy to a vast number of people!

That is not freedom of expression or freedom of action; that is bloody-mindedness; that is
provocation.

I feel angry when someone ridicules or enigrates God, or any of the prophets, including Jesus (pbuh). Whether Catholics feel that or not is not the point. I do feel it.

I also think that the Muslims (and many others in the third world) are way down in the ranking of Human Development Index, but the sort of liberation and freedom being forced upon them won't raise the HDI.

I also think that the Taleban, or the Saudis, or the Pakistanis and the Nigerians have not implemented the Shariah in the true spirit, but that is a separate issue. Suffice it to say that I neither agree with those who haven't read and understood the texts on which Shariah is based, nor do I agree with those who are misinterpreting it to impose punishments without full knowledge and understanding of the context.

And I also think that the Danish newspapers refusal (which I appreciate) to publish the cartoon of Jesus (pbuh) but its commissioning of cartoons that are highly provocative do

indicate that the Danes are not the tolerant lot we have been fed. The Danes in WW2 were tolerant and heroic in helping the Jews escapt Nazi tyranny, but not the majority of today's Danes.

Again what the editor says against the Imams, needs to be read with what the Imams have said. Who is right and who is wrong needs to be established, before we condemn the Imams.

There we disagree. I don't think that people should be sent to a 'correctional facility' for
anything that they do to a book, regardless of what that book is. It is a book.

I might find someone pissing on the bile personaly distateful, but no-one is sufferening, no one is being denyed the right to practice their faith, no-one being evicted from their house, beaten, or killed, refused an education or any one of a hundrad other awul things that happen each day in our world. It is a book. It doesn't care.

"Someone in DEnmark said that he was ready to piss on the Bible, but was afraid to do so on the Quran.

The fact that he was ready to do that on the Bible makes me think he needs to be sent to a re-education or correctional facility."

Blimy PD, you really need some perspective in your life if you think weeing on a book should equate to a jail sentence.

It's such a stupid, bathetic thing to use in an argument for free speech 'I may not agree with you pissing on a bible, but I will defend your right to piss on any book you want' - It's just absurd isn't it?

I think he might already have a place in some kind of correctional facility - the outpatients department at his local psyc. ward, for instance.

I don't think that people should be sent to a correctional facility for something that they do to a book....do you MT?

No I don't; maybe Coventry though {grin]. I don't think they should be given a platform either. He's an idiot, not a criminal.