The GirlAlive Blog

A Quick Holiday Message From Me.

Just a few more items about drawing Mohammed.

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).

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

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.

The Epic Tale of the Evil Death Spider

After I finished college I moved to Seattle to look for a job because there weren’t any in Duluth, where I lived before. I lived in a teeny tiny studio apartment in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle. It was a crappy and overpriced building, but it was in a great location. Anyway, just after I moved there I went into my bathroom one day and I saw a spider!

But it wasn’t just a spider in the bathroom. I had seen spiders in bathrooms before. They have those in Duluth. But in Duluth, they are pretty small because it’s cold there. The biggest spider I had seen there was about an inch across. But this was a whole nother kind of bathroom spider. It was three inches across and hairy and gross.

It was a giant spider of death and it was in my bathroom and I lived alone so I couldn’t make someone else go kill it. I either had to kill it myself, or accept it as a new roommate. Since it didn’t look like it was going to help with rent, I had to get rid of it. So I ran to the other room to look for something with which to kill the evil spider of death. I grabbed a newspaper and a can of bug killing spray from the other room and on my way back to the bathroom I saw what was on the tv.

It was a news report about a deadly new kind of spider that was being found in Pacific Northwest homes! Holy crap! I’ve seen this before! There’s always a news report about a monster on tv while the hero is battling the monster for the first time. I’m in a horror movie, and it’s not a very good one! As soon as I go into the bathroom I’m going to be set upon by hundreds of spiders, or the one spider is going to grow huge and bite my head off! Holy crap! I’m totally going to be killed horribly in my crappy small apartment!

But I’m still stuck with the matter that if I don’t go into the bathroom and kill the beast, it will forever be in my bathroom and I’ll have to move because I won’t be able to pee or shower ever again. So like the stupid girl in every horror movie I keep going into the bathroom to face my enemy. I’d like to say that I fought an epic battle and barely got out alive. But actually I sprayed the spider with poison, smooshed it with a newspaper and then flushed it down the toilet. Because it turns out I wasn’t really in a bad horror movie.

Then I washed my hands and had some ramen noodles. Cause that’s what heroes do after they destroy the evil.

The End.

Insomnia

I had to get up early this morning for a doctor’s appointment. I normally lay in bed sleepless for several hours and then finally get some sleep between 6 and 10 in the morning. But I had to get up at 7. I’ve been having an even worse time sleeping lately because I have a sore throat and laryngitis and a muscle spasm in my back that only seems to show up when I lay down.

So this was my night last night.

I had the scan this morning and I have nothing to report. I have a tumor on my right ovary, but I already knew that. Looks like another dermoid. They’re also known as Cystic Teratomas. Teratoma means “monster growth” because they’re full of all kinds of random tissue, including teeth and hair. My last one had a parathyroid gland too. I have started calling it “the ovary monster”. I guess I’ll find out what’s going on with it later after my main doctor gets the report from the ultrasound department.

In other news, last night was the UK premiere of Castle. Hooray! I love Nathan Fillion. I’m pretty excited about finally getting to see it after hearing little bits and pieces on his twitter feed for the last year.

I think I might need to go for a nap.

Alana

Hamsters

When I did the last post about guinea pigs, I promised that I’d do one about hamsters too. But then I got sick and then I lost the pen for my drawing tablet and then my husband found the pen but I was still too sick to draw anything. But now I’m a little bit better. I have laryngitis and a bad sore throat, but it seems to be getting better.

Anyway, our primary hamster is Jayne. She is named after the character of Jayne Cobb from Firefly. But that Jayne is a guy, and our hamster is a girl. We purposely got a girl hamster because we heard that they’re more active and that they don’t stink as much as boys. (Plus, our previous Syrian hamster Binky had a disturbingly huge scrotum, and he used it as a beanbag chair, so we wanted to avoid that.) Jayne is bright orange. She also drinks (water) constantly. So we refer to her as “Irish hamster”. She climbs the walls and begs for peanuts. Also, she has never figured out how to use her wheel. She stands on the raised area of the cage and paws the wheel with her front paws instead of running inside it. She’s already lived longer than Binky, and she still runs around and climbs the walls like always, with little sign of slowing down.

Our other hamster is a Chinese dwarf hamster named Dru. She used to have a partner named Fred, but they eventually started fighting, as evidenced by the fact that Dru is missing half an ear. Fred passed away when she was only a few months old, from birth defects. Now Dru has a big luxury cage to herself. She used to hide in her coconut house almost all the time, but lately she figured out that if she climbs the front of the cage early in the morning, my husband will give her peanuts. She loves burrowing under the bedding. She also doesn’t get taken out of the cage much because she’s a bit bitey. She is convinced that fingers might be edible, if anyone would ever let her keep chewing. She’s over 2 years old now, and she also shows no signs of advanced age.

Both hamsters love peanuts. They climb the sides of the cage and beg for them. Dru will take half a peanut and then run around the cage looking for a place to hide her precious treasure. Jayne, on the other hand will immediately stuff the peanut in her cheek pouch and beg for more. She looks at you like, “I didn’t get a peanut. Where’s the peanuts? There’s nothing in my pouches. I need a peanut.” She’ll keep doing that until I stop or until her cheek pouches explode.