The GirlAlive Blog

Just a few more items about drawing Mohammed.

May 21, 2010 on 11:01 am | In Computers and Web Stuff, Current Events, Drawings | 1 Comment

The big day was yesterday. People all over the world drew Mohammed and Muslims all over the world had hissy fits. Pakistan banned Facebook and YouTube, only to re-open YouTube when they caved to terrorist demands and deleted a bunch of videos for being “blasphemous”. I didn’t know that YouTube was my religious authority, but apparently they have decided they are. By this morning the main Everybody Draw Mohammed page was removed from Facebook. (At this point it is still unclear whether the Facebook page is down due to Facebook spinelessness or hackers – again. It is back now, and the admins tell us that it was down due to Muslim hackers tracking the personal information of one of the admins and sending him very specific death threats. That admin panicked and took the page down, but now he has stepped down as an admin and the page is back up.)

I’m deeply disappointed in the cowardly reactions from YouTube and other American corporations (like Viacom). Since when do we just give in to terrorist demands? This protest from Muslims was not about drawing Mohammed. They don’t even have any true religious backing for their claims about drawing Mohammed (which I’ll get to in a minute). This was about the Muslim world trying to impose Sharia Law on the western world, the way they do in their own countries. Their goal* is to make the entire western world dhimmi, which is to say a person with no protection from the Muslim world, but with an obligation to follow Sharia Law anyway. We do not need to cave in to these demands under the guise of political correctness. They are stripping us of our religious freedom and our free speech, and that is not something we should ever give in to for any reason. Not after all the wars we’ve fought to get to where we are.

There is nothing in the Quran about drawing pictures. Nothing. There are some passages in various hadith that are very anti-art. But they are against all art depicting people, animals or plants, not just the Prophet and other important figures, as Muslims will claim. These writings also do not prescribe any earthly punishment for people who draw pictures. Mohammed himself believed that their punishment was God’s business. (And Mohammed was not shy about prescribing beatings and death for various sins.) Please read this brilliant article if you want more detail about this. This is important: I do not want to hear from any Muslims who have not read that article. Please make the effort to understand your own religious texts before forcing them on others. Because the truth is, if you’re here on the internet you are already breaking Sharia Law, and you have no right to try to impose that law on me, when you don’t find it important enough to follow for yourself.

To end with, I found a great video that expresses very well how I feel about this issue. It is a vlog from a religious studies teacher who stuggled with this issue on a very personal level because he truly does have love and respect for people from all types of religious background, including Muslims.

And one more site if you’d like to do some more reading on Islam:
TheReligionofPeace.com

* This reference of “they” refers to the leadership elements of Islam, not the average Muslim going about their daily business. The average Muslim has no idea what their leaders are using them for, so unless they are getting in your face and starting a fight with you, they should be treated with the exact same respect you’d give to anyone else on earth (with maybe a hint of pity).