South Park & the Mohammed cartoon 25, April 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Islam.Tags: Danish cartoons, Danish muslim cartoons, Mohammed cartoons, Muslim cartoons, South Park, South Park censored, South Park mohammed cartoons
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The creators of South Park the highly irreverent US cartoon have been forced to censor a cartoon from depicting the Prophet Mohammed. They did this after receiving threats to their lives and in the wake of the attacks on the Danish cartoonist who penned the now infamous Danish Mohammed cartoons.
This whole issue is fraught with contention and I have sympathies on both sides.
I see no reason as to why people in the West feel the need to prove their freedom of expression by purposefully going out of their way to insult other people in a way that they know perfectly well will cause offense and hurt. In these instances, I believe that the production of such cartoons has less to do with promoting and protecting the West’s freedom of expression and more to do with publicity, a desire to purposefully provoke a negative reaction and to try to make certain Muslims paint themselves and by association swathes of those following their religion as foolish barbarians.
Yet I find the idea whole idea of ‘I am insulted’ to be deeply annoying and unconvincing, as if people have a right not to be insulted. I am offended by countless things on a daily basis. I fervently hate the headlines on the Daily Mail, I am truly offended when the BNP try to speak for me as a white Briton and I deeply resent the fact that I was/am reticent about writing this. Some Muslims may say that it is different for them as I cannot possibly understand just how offensive it truly is to insult the Prophet Mohammed: how offensive! They don’t know the strength of my personal convictions. Yet I do not send death threats. I take the mature approach and moan a bit on my blog.
There is also, of course, the eternal question of just how many Muslims are offended by these cartoons. I’ll rephrase that, I am sure that all Muslims are offended by negative depictions of Mohammed, yet I wonder how many take my more philosophical approach as opposed to the militant bleating.
If you want to see the cartoon picture in question click here. (Mohammed’s the one in the middle…). If you want to see some more cartoons try here. If you’re likely to be offended by the cartoons, don’t click on the links.
The Gulf blog 