Censorship

[asterroc]

Surprisingly, CNN is covering international news lately - the riots over cartoons of Mohammed. This issue pits the cultural sensitivities of Islam and their definition of capital crime (blasphemy), against the Western ideal of free speech. Most intersting I think are the non-violent reactions.

For example, "CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam." Are they being respectful, or self-censoring? Are they just doing it so their reporters in the Middle East don't get killed? And

A prominent Iranian newspaper says it is going to hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West will apply the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide against Jews as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
...
Hamshahri invited foreign cartoonists to enter the competition and said it wanted to see how open the West was to caricatures of the Holocaust.

"Does the West extend freedom of expression to the crimes committed by the United States and Israel, or an event such as the Holocaust? Or is its freedom only for insulting religious sanctities?" Hamshahri wrote, referring to the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, in a short article on its back page.

I'm really curious to see our reactions to this. I expect we'll (US people who care) be incensed and pissed off, but not to the point of violence. Non-violent protest and all that (thank you, Dr. King). I wonder how Israel will react though.

ETA: Some of the comments are hiliariously offensive! Don't read at work if you work for the ACLU or Anti-Defamation League. Hopefully this warning here nicely skirts the line of not-censorship, but sensitive-to-people's-feelings. Feel free to discuss why it really is censorship or is not sensitive, too. :-P

Comments

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

Personally, if any of the comics about the holocaust were funny, I would laugh. But I don't believe that anything can't be made into a joke.

I heard it from an Israeli so it's ok to repeat it.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Two boys in Auschwitz are in the [real] showers. One accuses the other of taking a crust of bread he'd been saving. The other vigorously denies it, of course, and they begin to argue. Pretty soon, the first one loses his temper and hurls his soap at the other one.

"Hey," says the second boy, "YOU LEAVE MY PARENTS OUT OF THIS!"

Oh My God.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I'm going to HAVE to tell my (Jewish) dad that one. He'll either love or hate it, and either way it'll distract him from the fact that he's got hard braces on both legs after the second knee surgery...

Re: I heard it from an Israeli so it's ok to repeat it.

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

Oh that was good.
I'm sure you've heard it:
Q: How many jews can you fit in a car?
A: 2 in the front, 3 in the back, and 6 million in the ashtray.

Re: I heard it from an Israeli so it's ok to repeat it.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Ach(tung)! I didn't mean this to be a forum for Dead Baby Jew Jokes. But now that they're here, I'm not gonna stop you, just groan in pain with each one. :-P

Re: I heard it from an Israeli so it's ok to repeat it.

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

I know a number of dead baby jokes too :)

Jokes

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Eat your heart out!

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Mohammed is more equivalent to Jesus or some famous Talmudic scholar (I don't know any off the top of my head). Mocking the Holocaust would be more justifiable if the Danish papers had mocked the Crusades.

Meanwhile, I find it interesting that there's been so much furor over "just a cartoon." Lots of people diminish cartoons/comics as a medium of expression, classifying them lower than both "art" and "literature," of which comics are composed. 1+1=0? Some of the most powerful things I've read were comics.

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

A comparison between Jesus and Mohammed isn't a fair one at all. Christians believe Jesus was the son of god, muslims believe that Mohammed was a prophet, not a messiah, also muslims beleive christ was a false prophet.
Mohammed was also a military leader, while Christ was a pacifist. Mohammed led his followers on the first Jihad, it wasn't until after Christ's death that his followers went to war in his name.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

My point was it's better to compare a person to a PERSON, than a person to an EVENT. I don't know my Christian Bible well enough to suggest a militant prophet. Though I can think of a Saint or two, but that's only Catholics.

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, but there are so many catholic saints, it's hard for a few mass murderers to have slipped in there somewhere. Not to mention the whole order of the knights templar who were absolved of any sin comitted while on crusade. "What happens on crusade, stays on crusade" "Crusading, the original Thailand"

[iresprite.livejournal.com]

Actually, Islam views Jesus as one of God's greatest messengers- just not the last. They believe in his virgin birth, but not his crucifixion (interestingly enough).

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

Ok, thats where I screwed it up, it wasn't Jesus who goofed up carrying the message of god, it was his followers.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Am I the only person who thinks the parallel between Mohammed and the Holocaust is just fine? Regardless of the "exactly what each is" difference, both of them are, essentially, important entities the mockery of which makes people really upset. If you want to piss off Muslims, can't do much better than mocking Mohammed. If you want to piss of Jews, it's hard to do better than mocking the Holocaust.

The fact that one is a historical event and the other is an ancient religious leader doesn't make much of a difference when you take the relative fundamentalism/secularism of the cultures into account.

So a homosexual aborted fetus walks into a gas chamber...

[sammka.livejournal.com]

After over a century of floods, famines, and disasterous wars, Christ finally returns to Earth, sends the four horsemen to destroy everything, and finally sits at his judgment seat and starts giving new perfect bodies to the faithful and throwing the wicked into eternal hellflame.

When it's time for Jack Chick to be judged, he stands before Christ and Christ looks him over. "Well," says Christ, "nobody really likes you, but you DID accept me as your lord and Savior, so I guess you're okay."

Chick naturally starts praising Christ's forgiveness and mercy. When he's done jumping up and down and speaking in tongues, he asks Jesus, "Lord, can you answer me a question?"

"Certainly," said Jesus.

"Well," says Jack Chick, "World War II was pretty bad. We were pretty sure that you were going to come around then. But you didn't. And then there was all that trouble with Israel, and we all thought it was going to be a sign of your impending return, but you never showed up. Finally in the early 21st Century I developed this whole theory about Israel, the Pope, and various natural disasters, and us evangelicals were all SO SURE you were right around the corner. But you didn't show up then either. How come you took so long?"

"Well," said Jesus, "the first time I was down here I had a really nice childhood, and I figured I'd try that again while I still could. So I thought it would be a good idea to come to a virgin who knew no sin."

"Ah, I see," said Jack Chick. "So you had to wait until you grew up?"

"No," said Jesus, "that's not the problem. Thing is, I kept getting aborted!"