Interesting takes on Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.
CAIR, of course, hates it. And also utterly misses the point of the First Amendment.
I will be the first to defend anyone’s right to express their opinion, no matter how offensive it may be to me. Our nation has prospered because Americans value and respect diversity.
But freedom of expression does not create an obligation to offend or to show disrespect to the religious beliefs or revered figures of others.
Well, of course it doesn’t create an obligation to offend. Strawman argument. But don’t let the facts get in the way of your propaganda.
Reason has some pretty funny pictures.
And here are some major American cartoonists not defending freedom of speech.
“I don’t think it’s kowtowing to be respectful of another’s belief system,” says San Diego Union-Tribune cartoonist Steve Breen. “I seldom participate in staged editorial events,” says Seattle Post-Intelligencer cartoonist David Horsey. And “the ‘Draw Muhammad Day’ is a demonstration in the worst impulse for some editorial cartoonists,” says Chicago Tribune cartoonist Scott Stantis.
You know who else wouldn’t draw Mohammed? Ted Rall.
Those sentiments reflect the official stance of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. The group’s president, Sacramento Bee cartoonist Rex Babin, says: “I would be opposed to our organization getting behind such an ‘event’ because … something like that can be too easily co-opted by interest groups [whose agenda can go] beyond a simple defense of free expression.” Past AAEC president Ted Rall also says he won’t draw Muhammad on Thursday, either.
Let’s see. Terror widows, check, American soldiers, check, Mohammed? Not so much.
While most AAEC members vigorously support free speech, many are uncomfortable with the idea of provoking the anger of devout Muslims with no other intent than to provoke anger. When there is a legitimate satirical and/or political case to make, few of us shy away from controversy — but this seems more like a frat prank than standing up for free expression.
Or maybe Rall knows that while Jews and American soldiers won’t threaten his life, Muslims will. But you keep telling yourself how far above this you are, Teddy. We’ll nod our heads and smile.
Stantis is a conservative cartoonist.
I’m disappoint that he refused to take a stand for free expression.
After the Dave Brown cartoon, which showed Ariel Sharon eating a dead Palestinian child, won the British Political Cartoonists Society award about 5 years ago, I asked Tim Benson, President of the organization, to show me just one cartoon drawn by a member of the Society which portrayed Arafat in a similar fashion. He could not do so. Later, on a visit to Canada, when asked why British cartoonists don’t draw cartoons about Islam, he replied, “They would face death, wouldn’t they?”. He added, “Jews don’t issue fatwas”.
I might harbor a very slight respect for the view of Muslims that their religious sensibilities shouldn’t be ruffled if any of them had the slightest inclination to extend that courtesy to anyone else. But the spew of vicious and overt anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism all over the Arab world, and to a lesser but real extent in the west, continues without even a hint that Muslims shouldn’t ask for what they aren’t willing to offer to others.
Arab Muslim culture in particular seems to lack almost completely any empathy for anyone else or the idea that such empathy ought to be cultivated. It’s entirely a one-way street.