The GirlAlive Blog

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

May 18, 2010 on 11:46 am | In Christianity, Current Events, Drawings | 9 Comments

I’m giving you fair warning right now that there are people who will find this blog post offensive. Probably offensive enough that they’ll threaten to kill me.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” -First Amendment of the US Constitution

If you are a fundamentalist Muslim and you believe that viewing depictions of the prophet Mohammed is a sin, please scroll carefully because I have no intention of forcing anyone to do anything they believe to be a sin. There will be a drawing of Mohammed below and if you believe that viewing such things is wrong, please don’t look at it. Maybe it is a drawing of your prophet. Maybe it’s just a guy named Mohammed. It’s hard to tell, since half the Muslim men on earth seem to be named Mohammed.

In the last couple years, cartoonists in the Netherlands and Sweden have had death threats against them, and even have had their houses firebombed and have generally been terrorized by Muslims who are offended that they drew pictures of Mohammed. Most recently, an episode of South Park was censored into meaninglessness because Trey Parker and Matt Stone depicted Mohammed. Even though they didn’t really. He was in a bear suit or in a trailer the whole time. It was censored because Comedy Central recieved death threats from Muslims.

Where does this come from? I’m not even sure. The Quran does not forbid depictions of Mohammed. This is a rule that was brought in later, probably around the 16th century. Until that time it was common for Muslim artists to draw full depictions of Mohammed and it was no big deal. Then sometime in the 16th or 17th century they decided that drawing pictures of the Prophet was wrong. It was originally supposed to be to prevent idolatry, but the spirit of this rule seems to have been completely lost to those who follow it to the letter.

Now the entire Western world is being bullied into following this debatable rule of Islam, whether we are Muslim or not. They argue that we are not respecting their religion. I would argue that freedom of speech requires that we be allowed to be disrespectful. Trey Parker and Matt Stone frequently depict Jesus (who is my own savior whom I love) as a dimwitted cable access show host. And whether I am offended or not, I would not deny them the right to depict Jesus any way they want to. Because how people depict Jesus does not change who Jesus is. Yeah, South Park is disrespectful and blasphemous. They offend everyone. But so far, the only people who think it’s okay to kill someone for being offensive are the Muslims.

This is not okay. Grown-ups use words to work out their differences. They debate ideas and try to understand each other. They do not scream insults and threaten violence, which has been the overall most common response from Muslims to the movement on the internet to have an Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. I’m sick of living in a world where adults think it’s okay to act like bratty toddlers in the name of religion.

Europeans fought and died during the Reformation because the Catholic church forced people to be Catholic or die. Then some governments became Protestant and killed people for being Catholic. Out of this mess, America was born with the core belief that no government has a right to tell its citizens what religion to follow. We fought hard to create a society where people can live in peace, knowing that their religion is a protected personal choice.

There are a lot of things that non-Christians do that I find offensive. Using God’s name as a swear word is offensive to me. I find smug and condescending athiests who are constantly trying to convert everyone to athiesm offensive. I find Westboro Baptist Church offensive. There is nothing about the KKK which is not offensive. But there is no law that says that Americans are protected from having their feelings hurt. Hurt feelings are the problem solely of the victim of the offense, not the offender. As one of my freedom-loving friends said, “That’s why it’s called ‘taking offense’ and not ‘having offense forced on you.’” I may feel offended by these people. I may even occasionally harbor hatred of their actions. I may believe that they’re going to hell for their actions. But I still defend their right to be stupid and offensive. They have every right to offend me and hurt my feelings. They even have the right to insult my God. My God is a grown-up and He can handle it.

That is why I’m drawing a picture of Mohammed. If you don’t want to see my drawing, I warned you at the top of this post, and you have no one to blame but yourself for seeing it. I am not a Muslim, and I will not be bullied into following your religion. It’s not about hating Muslims because I don’t. It’s about freedom. And if you cannot handle this kind of freedom, maybe living in America and Western Europe is not for you.

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Picture below.

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I’m posting this 2 days before the Draw Mohammed Day to give other people a chance to think about how important freedom is, and maybe give them a chance to take a stand. (And the main largest Facebook group about Draw Mohammed Day has degenerated into a lot of crying Muslims and very happy trolls. If you go there, be prepared to have to ignore morons of every type and variety. Some of the smaller ones are a bit more rational.)

(By the way, the llama’s name is French. If you understand that reference, DFTBA!)

Note: On 20 May Facebook removed this picture from my account as “offensive” and violating their terms, yet they refuse to tell me in what way it violated anything. It does not attack a group or individual. It promotes peace.