Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Pakistan blocked Twitter access because of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

Did you know that May 20 was Everybody Draw Mohammed Day? Whether or not you do, that was apparently why Pakistan blocked access to Twitter 2 days ago.

Leftist Comics Alliance, which spoke about this, didn't help matters by making a grave factual error though:
May 20 was the third annual Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, the event in which artists depict the Prophet Mohammed in cartoon form to protest censorship and extremist threats (The event was created by cartoonist Molly Norris in 2010 in response to the death threats received by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for attempting to feature the figure in their Comedy Central series). If you live in Pakistan, however, you wouldn't have seen any mention of this on Twitter yesterday, because government regulators shut down access to the site for hours to keep a lid on things, just in case.

Norris went into hiding on advise from the F.B.I. in 2010, going so far as to change her name and relocate after receiving death threats for illustrating a cartoon that depicted Mohammed as common household objects. Cartoonists worldwide have continued participating, however, as an expression of free speech. Visual depictions of Mohammed are historically uncommon in Islam, and remain so as both a matter of reverence and a measure against idolatry.
A most misleading statement, I'm afraid, considering how the Hadith/Koran both revere Mohammed's violent behavior and acts, and his marriage to a 9-year-old girl. Images of Mohammed are forbidden because they worship him. Which, now that I think of it, is certainly a most peculiar double-standard if the Religion of Rape is supposedly monotheistic, and then it goes along and elevates the horrific man to a level where picturing him is not allowed, unlike both Judaism and Christianity, which both allow for imagery of Moses and Jesus.

But maybe that shouldn't be too surprising, since the writer of that piece at Comics Alliance is someone who'd written a post I'd noted earlier in this post who didn't show a particularly keen awareness of the Koran's contents when he knee-jerkedly attacked Frank Miller for writing Holy Terror. If Comics Alliance writer's got no interest in studying the deeper matters involving the Koran and Hadith, then he's got no business writing about Everybody Draw Mohammed Day either.

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