Whose Offense?
February 17th, 2008 
I believe the comic speaks for itself, so I will conclude this post with a quote by Imam Zaid Shakir, a respected Islamic scholar and civil rights activist
‘Until we start to think of ourselves as the children of Adam, concerned about the welfare of all our fellow human beings, we are missing the point of being faithful. These are days when there is a lot of talk about defending the honour of the Prophet. What would it do for the honour of the Prophet if Muslims mobilised their tremendous resources to eradicate hunger from this planet?
What would it say to the world if Muslims mobilised to end the conflict in the Congo or to make generic Aids drugs available where they are not?
Loading ...
Loading...
Hell yeah, these are wise words.
As usual, no one will listen to them.
before i type this i pause for two seconds and pray that my comment will be posted directly and won’t be pending awaiting moderation….got the joke? MEY against censorship everywhere except in the comment section in their website…not even a joke?
anyway Kawthar, the message you try to get through her is simply pathetic.
Muhammad is a prophet while the Jews are a race made of 13 million individuals, 6 million of them live in Israel and the rest – except a few – are strong supporters of Israel.
if you want to make valid comparison make it between Arabs anti-Jews caricatures vs the Hollywood image of Arabs in movies…..and as far as i know no embassies were burned because Muslims were portrayed in a bad light in some Hollywood movie
Kawthar, may i ask what your religion is? or let me guess that…..hmmmm….you are a moderate liberal Muslim who believe in unconditional free speech…the old name of that religion was “i am an atheist but…shhhh…keep it a secret!”
Spanky, I hope you learned your lesson. Any more racist, homophobic, insulting remarks will always pend moderation.
Just like any other website in the world, we have a comment policy – read it. It’s simply our job to moderate trolls like you. This has nothing to do with censorship, and everything to do with standards. Your comment right now is just as absurd as advocating for freedom but then allowing thieves to rampage your house because you believe everyone is “free” to do so. Censorship is stopping you from starting your own blog and rambling there on your own, and then stopping people from looking at it. That is censorship. Not cleaning up trashy comment threads, the kind that we’ve let you start for so long. Get a clue before you embarrass yourself and whine about “censorship” again. If you troll, you get banned. End of discussion.
Well said! (The Iman, not Spanky).
if only more imams sounded like this guy..
I believe you are right Spanky – it’s not a valid comparison.
Demonizing an entire group is worse than drawing cartoons about a religious figure.
I’m a self-hating Muslim
Demonizing an entire group is worse than drawing cartoons about a religious figure.
Yeah this.
Though I also think that the second group are a bunch of douchebags.
Also guys I can’t believe that we’re still talking about this.
Aren’t you keeping up with news?
Like 17 Danish papers republished the cartoons again and it sparked a lot of violent reactions, a few places are being blown up right now and many Muslims are threatening against “worse consequences.”
So yes, of course we’re still talking about this, it’s relevant as ever and the situation is escalating as we speak.
Kudos to Kawthar for bringing this up.
Yeah, I have, I just can’t believe this is still going on.
What can I say? People need to get jobs. And lives. And a television or something. I seriously think these things come out of boredom rather than passion, and I bet half of the people attempting to blow things up don’t even understand what they’re doing it for.
I think what’s important about posts like Kawthar’s is just reminding readers out there (especially those who are also just as violently offended, and I’m confident there’s quite a few of those lurking around this place,) how ironic and stupid this whole thing has gotten.
[...] is a very, very important and serious issue. Forget everything else. Even Kawthar [...]
just wondering why these particular expressions of the
Prophet are such a big deal when movies like “Gabriel” and “Dogma” are out there, not to mention the whole Dante’s Inferno thing…
Are only the newly offensive, directly confrontational items being considered? I mean, there’s just reams of completely nasty crap about the “Musselmen” from the last couple of centuries. I guess it’s just the stuff that was produced after the West realized how much folks were going to be offended…
I must remind everyone that the Danes would not have republished the cartoons if it weren’t for the 3 Muslims that were caught in a plot to kill one of the cartoonists.
“I bet half of the people attempting to blow things up don’t even understand what they’re doing it for.”
Then where do they get the idea to do so? Someone – or something – must be convincing them that violence is an appropriate response to a newspaper cartoon.
Of course, violence and hate is tought at home, in mosques, on TV (in certain parts of the world) plus the carrot, paradise for faithful Muslims. We need more Imams like Zaid Shakir. The majority of people follow the crowd. There is nothing scarier than a mob, with all those heads, there’s not one functioning brain among them.
Muslims are not alone in passing on hatred, the feuds go back thousands of years, all over the world.
Seeing ourselves as Adam’s children is exactly what we all should do, one people, we all are equal and should look out for each other’s good. Love thy neighbour, love others as you love yourselves, serve one another, do unto others…. Love is the only way to heal a hurting world.
Will it happen? Not even families manage to live in peace. We each can only do our own part. It can make a big difference, I think of Mother Theresa, for one; many others have selflessly served the common good.