Moderate Muslim against Ground Zero Mosque

Ground Zero Mosque and ?Peaceful Muslim leaders

Interesting clip for PJTV.

Drawing, Freedom of Speech and the Law of Identity

Everybody Draw Mohammad Day has come and gone.

I'd say it was a great success. Here's a few pages with compilations of drawings:

The Objective Standard has a page "Drawings of Mohammad, In Defense of Human Life."

An "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" page on Facebook has over 100,000 members and sparked such a controversy that Pakistan blocked access to Facebook and You-Tube. Here is an interview with one of the Facebook page's administrators--which I found particularly interesting in that the interviewee, a German, also condemns Germany's anti-Holocaust denial laws. Three cheers for consistency! (NB: The blog for this page appears to have been hacked, as was the reinstated Facebook page.)

Reason Magazine has announced its winner to their Draw Mohammad contest.

There's a nice post and drawing compilation at The Friendly Atheist. Take the time to scroll down through the images. Some are quite clever and funny. None are intentionally hateful or grotesque. Although I strongly defend the right to be blatantly offensive--the benignity of these images highlights the grotesqueness of any attempts at censorship.

If you like animation and film, you can find a large number of You-Tube clips in celebration of this special day. One clip is even of a Muslim inviting Muslims to participate in Draw Mohammad Day to support freedom of speech!

Wikipedia has a page nicely summarizing the event.

And true to form, the current US administration has come out in support of those violating Freedom of Speech:

“Pakistan is wrestling to this issue. We respect any actions that need to be taken under Pakistani law to protect their citizens from offensive speech,” said the US State Department official while rejecting a suggestion from a journalist to condemn Islamabad’s actions...“At the same time, Pakistan has to make sure that in taking any particular action, that you’re not restricting speech." (Dawn.com)

How can you "respect any actions to protect their citizens from offensive speech" and at the same time "make sure...your're not restricting speech"?

You can't.

This is a classic example of Obama's (and his supporters) ability to get away with emphatically stating contradictory statements, even in the same speech! Each statement in itself seems reasonable, but closer inspection reveals that placed together they are self-contradictory--an attempt to have one's cake and eat it too. You can't be credited with supporting freedom of speech while at the same time supporting the violation of freedom of speech. Ever since Aristotle formulated his Law of Identity, there is no excuse those who attempt to inform us that A can be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same respect.

Freedom of speech, rationally understood as a corollary of the individual right to life, can not entail both freedom and censorship. No amount of trying to straddle the issue with one foot on freedom and the other foot on the tenets of tyranny and statism, can avoid the fact that A is A, and censorship is censorship.

Either you are for freedom of speech, or you are for government abridgment of speech.

Obama and his administration, in this issue and in so many others, are clearly on the side of statism.

(Cross-posted in part at Wealth is Not the Problem>)

Draw Mohammad Day May 20

A lot of great drawings, but this is one of my favorite.

It's part of a post which is also one of my favorites on why it is important to draw, and why it is preferable to simply draw and not necessary to intentionally be insulting or grotesque in one's depictions.

Check out Mohammad and the Middle at The Meming of Life.

Jesus and Mo

A cartoon worth checking out:

Mohammad by Stephen Bourque

Stephen blogs at One Reality.

Why Draw?

The purpose here is not to offend or anger or insult or ridicule Islam.

The purpose for drawing is simply to "speak" out for free speech and to refuse to be intimidated into self-censorship.

This is serious stuff--complete with death threats, fatwas, violence and actual murder.

Ayan Hirshi Ali has a recent editorial in the WSJ explaining the importance of actively resisting attempts by radical Muslims to prevent images of Mohammad from publication. Ali's friend, Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh, was murdered for the film Submission (written by Ali and directed by van Gogh) because of its graphic critism of the abuse of women perpetrated in the name of Islam. Ali herself was threatened and evenually forced to leave the Netherlands as a consequence of the subsequent controversy.

Here is part of what Ali has to say:

One way of reducing the cost is to organize a solidarity campaign. The entertainment business, especially Hollywood, is one of the wealthiest and most powerful industries in the world. Following the example of Jon Stewart, who used the first segment of his April 22 show to defend "South Park," producers, actors, writers, musicians and other entertainers could lead such an effort.

Another idea is to do stories of Muhammad where his image is shown as much as possible. These stories do not have to be negative or insulting, they just need to spread the risk. The aim is to confront hypersensitive Muslims with more targets than they can possibly contend with.

Another important advantage of such a campaign is to accustom Muslims to the kind of treatment that the followers of other religions have long been used to. After the "South Park" episode in question there was no threatening response from Buddhists, Christians and Jews—to say nothing of Tom Cruise and Barbra Streisand fans—all of whom had far more reason to be offended than Muslims.

Islamists seek to replace the rule of law with that of commanding right and forbidding wrong. With over a billion and a half people calling Muhammad their moral guide, it is imperative that we examine the consequences of his guidance, starting with the notion that those who depict his image or criticize his teachings should be punished.

Ali's courageous work resisting the tyranny of the Muslim religion is told in her autobiography, Infidel.

Freedom is of a piece. Each attack must be vigorously resisted.

The old adage "safety in numbers" takes on a new meaning as we draw in support of those under threat.

Mohammad by Lynne

Mohammed by Ken Andrews

Mohammad by Earl

from Prometheus Bound

Mohammad by SouthPark

Mohammad by Kelly from Denver, Colorado

Mohammad by Craig Biddle

from

The Objective Standard

Mohammad by Gideon

from the Armchair Intellectual

Mohammad Dot-to-Dot

Mohammad by Jennifer Armstrong

Mohammad by Ari Armstrong

Mohammad by Beth Haynes