Posted on 05/19/2015 6:46:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
I see my example as a purely political provocation. It doesn’t say anything about the Moslem religion or its adherents. You could even caption my generic Arab male figure as “Mohammed, 570-632 A.D.”
How is that mocking religion?
The good Muslims I know are barely Muslim. A holiday or two, and maybe a yearly appearance at the Mosque. The ideology itself is terrible. The less of it, the better.
Actually, the world loves it’s own. Satan is the Prince of this world. The world hates Jesus. Love, kindness, truth, conservative values.....are of Jesus, not the world. Idols like money, fame, power, lust....these are what the world values. We are what we love. Thus the basis for reactions to people come from what we love. Scary world, but Jesus won our victory.
Some of us listened, but most did not, apparently.
So here we are in 2015.
A murderous thuggish death cult is gaining worldwide power, through violent terrorist tactics, while idiots “debate” their “religious credentials” and chastise others for a lack of “tolerance”.
You are correct. It doesn’t “disturb” me in any way like the contest just somehow did.
To me, the specific content is important. A picture of Jesus (or any significant figure of my religion) doesn’t bother me. A cartoon doesn’t bother me, even if it’s frivolous, or if it’s intended as criticism. What bothers me is obscenity or obvious falsehood.
Therefore, on Golden Rule principles, if Ms. Geller’s contest excluded instances of obscenity or deliberate falsehood, then I think it’s acceptable. It’s not necessary to go beyond the simple facts to be extremely critical of Islam.
There definitely needs to be more open truth telling about Sharia and Muhammed. And I’d be open for some real creative attempts, say, but you have to start with something to reel people in, positively, and Geller could have been better.
Say, instead of a contest to draw Muhammed (the equivalent for other religions might be a bacon eating contest for Jews or a gay kissing contest for Christians — I.e. Offensive from the get out and provocative in a bad way), it would be Readings about the Prophet Muhammed and those readings would be the truths about what he said, believed, and did. That stands up because if you did the exact same about Jesus or Moses there would be nothing offensive to say. Do you see what I mean?? Basically we do agree.
One thing to remember is that “provocations” of other religions are already going on. Those who want to provoke Jews (Moslems and some old-fashioned anti-Semites) use guns, bombs, rocks, graffiti. We should also recall that Jews don’t (as far as I can tell) object to the consumption of pork, or cheeseburgers, by people of other religions.
Provocation of Christianity goes on all the time, including with homosexual behavior. It is not at all unusual for homosexual activists to invade Christian churches. Christians respond with prayer, sadness, letters to the editor, an occasional boycott or peaceful protest.
The key thing about pictures of Mohammed is that only Moslems (and not all Moslems) believe this is wrong, and they believe it is wrong for everyone, so wrong that they kill over it. No other religion acts like this.
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