Everybody Draw Mohammed Day #3 Sunday 20th May 2012

May 13, 2012

This coming Sunday will be the 3rd annual Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, it doesn’t seem to have caught on so much this year so please get involved as the fight to defend freedom of expression from Islamist intimidation is far from won.

In early 2006 the carefully whipped up controversy around cartoons of Mohammed published in Jyllands-Posten a Danish newspaper dominated the headlines for months, the media in Britain, Canada and the USA extensively covered the events yet failed to show any of the images, deliberately leaving viewers and readers in ignorance of what all the fuss was supposed to be about.

I don’t think the cartoons are any good, in fact as with most editorial cartoons I think they’re rubbish. But approval or otherwise of the cartoons is not the point. The sad fact is that the demands, backed by both the implicit and explicit threat of Islamist violence. From (a portion of Sunni) Muslims that everyone else ‘respect’, which in this case seems to mean obey, their belief that Mohammed should no be artistically represented. Have had such a chilling effect effect that coverage of the biggest news story in the world at the time was singularly lacking in some not insignificant details. Anyone who like me wanted to know what all the fuss was about was forced to search the internet.

Not only did the British media not show the public the cartoons but sections of it actually gave voice to those condemning the cartoons:

This is the same guardian that habitually publishes cartoons like the one on the right, note that both the Pope and Jesus are featured. This is the Guardian that gave Jerry Springer the Opera a 4 star review. Now I agree that the Pope & Jesus are fit subjects for cartoons and that Jerry Springer the Opera was really rather good, even though I know both those things upset some Christians. I just don’t see why the same standard shouldn’t apply to Islam. The BBC showed Jerry Springer the Opera but didn’t show the cartoons.

Sadly this chilling effect isn’t restricted to the mass media, in 2009 Yale University Press published The Cartoons that Shook the World, by Professor Jytte Klausen. Yale University Press officials removed images of the cartoons and historical pictures of Mohammed from the book. Self censorship is just threatening freedom of press but that other pillar of liberal democracy, academic freedom as well.

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day wasn’t actually directly inspired by the Danish cartoons but by the controversy surrounding South Park episode 201 which was in a large part about the controversy of depicting Mohammed. That episode provoked the seemingly inevitable death threats despite being censored and never actually showing that particular prophet, though numerous other religious figures & supposed deities were shown.

Islamists may be able to intimidate a few media outlets but they can’t possibly target 1000s of private citizens, so I urge you to like Everybody Draw Mohammed Day 3 may 20 2012 and post your drawing next Sunday. I’d also like to urge some restraint in what you draw, the point is merely to break the taboo on depicting this particular prophet, a stick man with a label would serve that purpose admirably without undermining the point the day is trying to make.

Below is a drawing drawing of Mohammed that I’m responsible for. The drawing itself is obviously of the kind a disappointed parent would dutifully stick to their fridge if their 3 year old gave it them. However it’s unlikely that any such parent, disappointed as they may be, would actually find the drawing objectionable or ‘offensive’. Yet supposedly the addition of a mere label stating that the smiling stick man in question is Mohammed means that the image is so ‘offensive’, so ‘blasphemous’ that death is a fit punishment for having drawn it.