According to them, it wasn’t Facebook that took down the page, but one of their members taking the page down after getting their e-mail and Skype accounts hacked.
Everybody Draw Mohammed Facebook Page is Back Up
May 22nd, 2010A Few More Everybody Draw Mohammed Day Tidbits
May 20th, 2010IowaHawk has declared that he’s sitting out Everybody Draw Mohammed day. Unlike:
“Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, whom I understand is planning an upcoming episode of the popular infidel TV cartoon in which Stewie and Griffin family dog Brian take turns anally raping Islam’s holy prophet (PBUH) while singing show tunes. ‘After slamming Jesus and Christians countless times, I would qualify as the biggest hypocritical pussy in Hollywood if I didn’t give that psychotic medieval child molester the vigorous cartoon anal raping which he so richly deserves,’ MacFarlane has reportedly said.”
Over at The People’s Cube, they’re putting a new spin on things by having an Everybody Draw a Positive Mohammed Day. More power to their cube. They also seem to be the source of this:
Facebook Caves
May 20th, 2010Sadly, the grand poobahs at Facebook have caved into the Islamic Extremists: the main Everybody Draw Mohammed Day Facebook page has been “disappeared” in the last hour or so; clicking on it just brings you back to your main Facebook page.
Sad.
Edited 5/22 to add: Now back up again and, according to them, not Facebook’s doing.
Kurt Westergaard Approves of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day
May 20th, 2010Kurt Westergaard, creator of the Mohammed Bomb Turban image and Patient Zero of Islamist Cartoon Rage, says he approves of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.
“The initiative must surely be understood as a manifestation of freedom of expression, where Muhammad and my drawing has become icons of this culture struggle. I always think it is excellent when it is touched by the debate. There is obviously a risk that it may provoke some of the dark forces which then inspired terror. But it is not so much to do, we must not let ourselves be cowed.”
(Hat Tip: Tundra Tabloids. )
In other Everybody Draw Mohammed Day news, http://www.drawmuhammadday.com/, a site that was very slow getting off the ground at all, seems to have completely disappeared. Hmmmm…
Draw Mohammed Day: Props to Over the Hedge
May 20th, 2010Today is Draw Mohammed Day! (If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve probably figured that out already.) Just in case this is your first visit, you can find my own craptacular contribution here.
In addition to all the pages mentioned yesterday, I just like to give special thanks to Over the Hedge creators Michael Fry and T. Lewis for participating. It’s one thing when us yahoos out in the sticks do it (even those, like myself, who are quasi-semi-demi-famous), and quite another for those who are actually risking their livelihood to stand up for the First Amendment. Especially when so many others aren’t.
A Different Islamic Take on Everybody Draw Mohammed Day
May 19th, 2010While looking around for comments on Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, I came across this post by one Kamran Haider. It offers quite a different Islamic take on the cartoon controversy than you usually read:
Every now and then someone throws a lit matchstick to the curtain covering our weaknesses and we start dancing around the fire to amuse the whole world….now when someone draws cartoons of the prophet, their idea is not to spread paganism but it is either to express resentment or plain hatred or apparently for the sake of free speech. Our way of reacting to this is normally, rioting, knocking down our own property and killing innocents.
Instead, I want to pose, some different questions to the muslim community. Lets just go back in history and ask ourselves, how did the prophet himself react when people in his time used all means to offend him (facebook didn’t exist back then but if you study history you will find out they used everything that they had at their expense)? What did he do when people threw garbage at him?
If the prophet was alive today and an old lady had thrown garbage at him, what would her fate be at the hands of angry mobs of ‘devout muslims’. Most probably they would storm her house and tear her into pieces. Wait a minute though…would the prophet let them do this? Since he chose to take care of her when she got sick instead of ‘getting offended’ then I am pretty sure he wouldn’t suggest rioting, burning down their own property in anger, killing innocents and mounting an irrational response.
I don’t agree with everything in the essay, but it’s certainly worth reading.
Reminder: Everybody Draw Mohammed Day is Tomorrow, May 20
May 19th, 2010Just a reminder that tomorrow, May 20th, is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. Sites participating in the event include:
- Reason’s Hit and Run Blog
- The new Everyone Draw Mohammed Blog.
Draw Muhammad Day (they’ve finally started putting up content)Dead- Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor
Note that many of the images on those sites are NSFW.
A couple of them have already put up my craptacular contribution.
Some are wondering if this demonstration of First Amendment rights will have any influence on the real world. Given that the Pakistani government has blocked Facebook over the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day group there, I would say that it already has. If we allow ourselves to have the limits of our freedom of expressions set by the most extremist elements of global radical Islam, then the First Amendment is doomed.
So all those who oppose letting the First Amendment wither under the twin assaults of radical Islam and political correctness should get drawing!
Liberals Double-Down on Arizona Racism Charges
May 17th, 2010I previously mentioned liberal outrage at the Arizona border control bill, despite 61% of the nation approving of the same bill. But liberals doubled-down on the charges of racism, with numerous left-leaning locales calling for boycotts. Hell, Obama even apologized to China (you know, the same China that killed 60-75 million of their own people) for Arizona trying to enforce the same laws his administration is unable (or unwilling) to enforce.
Result? 71% of Americans now support Arizona’s bill.
That’s some might fine politicking you’ve done there, Lou…
Book Review: David Pryce-Jones’ The Closed Circle
May 14th, 2010David Pryce-Jones
The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs
Harper & Row, 1989.
I had heard this was one of the best overviews of Arab culture, and I’ve been reading it off and on between other things. It’s enlightening and depressing. Pryce-Jones asserts that all Arab nations are mired in a power-challenging/money-favoring culture based largely on a shame-honor response. By his account (and he calls on an extensive array of sources to back up his arguments), Arab (and, to a lesser extent, Turkish, Berber and Persian) cultures have always been ruled by strong men succeeding in establishing themselves by force and ruling through violence and money-favoring to eliminate or control possible rivals. The powerful rule (not only for themselves, but for their clan and allied clans) and the weak obey. It reminds me of that line from Black Hawk Down: “In Somalia, killing is negotiation.” In his view, Islamofascism, socialism, communism, Baathism, Pan-Arabism and modernization have all had whatever ideas they originally espoused suborned to become just another avenue for power-challengers to intrigue against the current power-holder, and likewise an excuse for the power-holder to ruthlessly suppress and eliminate possible rivals. He says that all outsiders (Western as well was Soviet) have misread the intentions of various power-holders by taking them at their word rather than viewing their statements as mere excuses or pretexts for their actions, to be discarded as easily as an old shirt should the situation call for it. He also says that mercy, human rights, democracy, etc., are all viewed as signs of decadent weakness by those within power-challenging cultures. In some ways, his is a very compelling argument; in others, it’s such a totalizing worldview that just about any action can be explained in power-challenging terms, and a system that explains everything explains nothing. Still, it’s a fascinating book (including very interesting chapters on how Nazi propaganda took root in the middle east, and the Arab-Israeli conflicts), and an important part of the puzzle as to why the Middle East seems to remain stubbornly immune to “rational” solutions.
My Contribution to Everyone Draw Mohammed Day
May 12th, 2010In celebration of Everyone Draw Mohammed Day, I’ve produced my own artistic contribution to the form. I’ve taken as my subject a particular historical even in the life of Mohammed, the Battle of Badr, in 624 AD, in which Mohammed first promised paradise to his followers in battle. The original was rendered in black ink on an 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet of laser printer paper. I considered digitally cleaning up mistakes, but thought that would detract from the overall “art brut” feel of the piece.
Below find a thumbnail of drawing. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version.
Mohammed at the Battle of Badr, 624 AD
In addition to (Wahabbist-defined) blasphemy, this work also commits the sin of resurrecting a two-decades stale Saturday Night Live catchphrase.
I think this drawing goes a long way to explain why I’m a writer rather than an artist…
Previous information on “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” can be found here and here.