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Thursday, February 2, 2006

Depictions of Mohammad—From Iran

Posted by on February 2 at 8:03 AM

There’s a great link up on Sound Politics this morning. This website has images of Mohammed—ancient, modern, reverent, satirical. Some are even from countries that are currently screaming that creating any images of Mohammad is blasphemy. Check out this picture of Mohammed from Iran…

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Hmm… Mohammed is sooooo dreamy. And, hey, is that fairy dust coming out of his book?

There’s also a good story on the controversy in today’s New York Times. I particularly liked this graph:

In Germany, the conservative Die Welt printed one image on its front page and declared in an editorial: “The protests from the Muslims would be taken more seriously if they were less hypocritical. When Syrian television showed drama documentaries in prime time depicting rabbis as cannibals, the imams were quiet.”

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Those folks need to lighten the fuck up.

The Muslim countries or countries runned by Muslims or Muslims living in Arab countries do not have a right to threaten someone’s life for expressing a stupid opinion. Hypocrisy, however, is not solely practiced by Islamic religions. They all do it, every single one of ‘em, and their unenlightened followers can be found in Judeo Christianity, Hinduism and all the others. Start printing cartoons making fun of Moses as a crazy West Bank settler or of Jesus blowing up the Oklahoma federal building and see what happens. Do it consistently, and not just of the Virgin Mary, who is only a symbol to Catholics and recovering Catholics and see what happens.

It is ok to criticize, and condemn Islamic fascists, but the Xenophobia and the “get out of the West” is playing right into Sharkanski ( website promoted here) and others on the right is just plain ignorant and stupid. Xenophobia is not cute, it might play well to black clad Capitol Hill hipsters and some Stranger Readers, but is not Cute. Its stupid. The get out of the West crowd in Europe is headed by the National Front and others right wingers. As a brown person who has traveled throughout Europe, I have seen this enlightment at Soccer matches, where Enlightened white Europeans throw Bananas at black players and yell Effing Gypsy at brown fans and police stop you on the street and ask for your Id and they don’t ask your white travel companions. As much as there is repression here, it is nothing compared to the enlightened European West.

Denmark certainly does well in keeping immigrants out of its country, since it has some of the worse immigration laws in Europe, and even spouses who marry Danes can not immigrate into the country. With the exception of France and the UK, Europe has some of the most repressive immigration laws and immigrants are kept out of the mainstream. No where in Europe do you see cab drivers of color or policemen and forget about politicians or government workers. Yes, Europe has tons of good things, but a lot of those things are not being enjoyed by immigrants. Listen to Manu Chao’s music and you will hear about the plight of the immigrant in Europe.

So in conclusion, I say, I have no use for religion, I’m a proud atheist, and I think Islam is as silly as Judaism and Christianity, and though I certainly condemn people who attack freedom of the press, and who use their silly religious views to impose their fascist views. But... Stay away from the “ stay out of the West’ racist Xenophobic crap.


Go Hawks!!

My "get out of the West" comment wasn't just directed at Islamic immigrants. I'd like everyone currently residing in the West who can't handle Western values—freedom of and from religion, freedom of the press, free expression (of thought, sexuality, etc.)—to get the fuck out. That includes folks born here that would clearly rather live in a theocracy. Get the hell out. All you all.

But it's not that any (rational) person is calling for all brown people to "stay out of the West," it's calling for those fuckwads who want to use their religion to tell us what we can and cannot think. I think the "stay out of the West," rational applies just as much to white Christian bigots (Fred Phelps, I'm looking at you, cutie pie) as to Islamic bigots, to Jewish bigots, to Nazi bigots, to Martian bigots… basically anyone who tries to project their way of thinking as the only way, and other's rights be damned.

Right on, Pope!

If you live in a free society, you have to deal with the Nazis marching in Skokie phenomena. You just do. Papers can print what they want and readers can boycott. That's the deal. It's just like democracy: sometimes you get George Bush and sometimes you get Clinton. I think you get into dangerous territory when you start calling for deportation because you don't agree with them.

“Stay out of the West,” does have a racist subtext, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. You choose not to. That’s cool. Conservatives who themselves feel western and whose ideology I consider the antithesis of democracy spouse Xenophobia because they feel that you can rally people around the cause of “securing the borders’ and blaming immigrants. It would have made sense to say Intolerance should stay out of the business of modern societies, but sadly that is not what you re saying, and it is no secret that your buddy Sharkanski, Fox news and all the other conservative papers agree with you on the Stay out of the West message. In an earlier post you said you don’t want to be Xenophobic but you would rather be.. Why? There was no need for that. Your message was clear and on target.

Plenty of moderate, atheist Arabs lives in Europe, and none of em hold jobs of importance in these Free Western papers. Their news rooms are completely white; though their societies no longer reflect that whiteness. Arabs are completely shut out of the European mainstream, and though it is not an excuse to attack freedom of the press, it is certainly something the European WEST ( whatever that means) needs to look at.

Europe is like Garfield High School. It has two realities, one for whites and the white visitors and another for brown visitors, immigrants or citizens of color. The Europeansy were great at fortifying their institutions after their dark periods, while going abroad as Rhodesians, Afrikaners or whatever other forms of colonializers you want to call them and destroying third world institutions and promoting dictatorships and other monstrous forms of government. Now, they sit back and say , look were democratic and you’re not. Simplification is something that should be left to the lovers of Burke.

But, yet they ( The west) also engage in religious violencein places like the UK’s Northern Ireland where PROTESTANT death squads still ignore the peace process and go around killing Catholics. Mighty western of them. Perhaps the Stranger should run an ad in The Belfast Telegraph telling all its Christian citizenry to stay of the west. It would be one empty province.

You can throw your “get out of the West" tantrum, but you’re only making those that hurt Democratic values happy. They agree with you on something, and they can concentrate on bigger things like turning this country into an aristocracy.

This kind of crap is what gives the Minutemen who hunt down Latinos on the Mexican border more ammo. You could have easily said the same thing without saying this crap, It’s a shame you’re too condescending to see it.

Those damnable cartoonists are raising a stink here in the Homeland, too.

But isn't the subtext that goes with the words "stay out of the West," supplied by your interpretation, based on your experience? Aren't we going down a road of semantics?

I totally agree with you that the right wingers have used that message to turn their ire on people who are different than they. And you will get absolutely no argument from me that many of the "enlightened" European nations use their supposed great liberal societies as a screen for outright anti-foreigner policies.

I think is that it can be better put this way "Hey ____ if you want to impose your religious values on ______, stay out of it." That's true to day and it should have been true in history. You can fill in the blanks with lots of things: "Islamofacists; the West," "America; Iraq," "English Protestants; North Ireland," "Afrikaners; Africa," "Conquistadors; Incan Cities," "Vikings; English Isles."

Saying that wanting to keep ignorant dicks bent on making us all believe the same thing away from a free society is not the same as saying that we should keep other races out of that same society. And of course we have to put up with language and beliefs that we find repellant, that’s the beauty of free speech after all, but that does not mean we have to let those repellant ideas run out country.

Apparently Mohammed looks like Tim Curry.

Or Joan Crawford, more like.

Did I really use the word "repellant," in my rant? Er, I think I meant "repulsive."

And I don't think the Mo in this picture is dreaming of female virgins in paradise. Must be the rouge and lipstick.

*But isn't the subtext that goes with the words "stay out of the West," supplied by your interpretation, based on your experience? Aren't we going down a road of semantics?*


Maybe, but I don’t think so Pope. I believe I’m making informed observations, but how can one escape experience or existence in our everyday opinions? Aren’t your views shaped by your experience?

I don’t think its necessary to make things too complicated, but sound bites are the enemies of informed debate, all I’m saying is that the main point ( No to anti Democratic violent forces) were valid and didn’t need to be adorned with Xenophobic comments.

But I don’t want to get off the main topic, I do agree with some of your points, I’m just not a friend of sweeping statements.

=) If we keep this up were heading into Sartre territory.

And speaking of, I think all of us (so called Westerners included) in our quest to make everyone believe the same as we do, are perhaps a little fascist. Religion is certainly narrow-minded, and fascist, but all ideologies have some of this as well. We all believe were right, and through persuasion or other not so cool- means we impose our views. As Jean Paul Sartre once wrote, Man is the being whose project it is to be God.

Humanity, it’s a complicated thing.

Buy Danish:
http://hnn.us/blogs/comments/21097.html

The Islamic world's boycott on Danish products has already begun regisering on Denmark's small economy. (It has fewer people than the state of Washington.) In the spirit of market liberalism, the best reply is to enjoy some havarti and carlsberg with the super bowl this weekend.

Go hawks!

I take issue with calling Danish immigration policies racist. They don't let anyone in, not whites, blacks, arabs, asians. However, they do have an excellent refugee policy. People from war-torn, suffering countries can apply for asylum. Consequently, Denmark's immigration population is very small, but it's made up of Somalians, Sudanese, Afghanis, people from really fucked-up parts of the world. Of course, the Danish right wing wants to do away with the refugee immigration policy, but their right wing is not popular.

If I am not mistaken - Denmark will give political asylum to American Gays and Lesbian - as do the Swedes and Dutch.

what is result of this clash?we should escape clashes of civilization.a crusede war is not good for all humans.intellectuals must b responsible,because world depennd over their comments.

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