No jokes, please, we're Muslim Puritans

[winterbadger]

Excellent piece in the WSJ; many thanks to redactrice for pointing it out to me.

Bonfire of the Pieties
Islam prohibits neither images of Muhammad nor jokes about religion.

Comments

[principia.livejournal.com]

And this is news how? For instance, in Shiite communities (such as Iran), it's very common to find depictions of Mohammed for sale.

As far as I'm concerned, it's just the Mideast's version of Bush's shtick about terrorism... keep the people scared and pissed off at someone else and maybe they won't pay so much attention to what you're doing to them.

[winterbadger]

Well, it's news to those who only get their knowledge of Islam from the papers. I'm well aware of the tradition of depicting the Prophet in Persian art (though I didn't know that about the janissaries--that's cool!) but I've found it remarkable that none of the news reports I've seen have challenged this rather ridiculous assertion.

[principia.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of that whole kerfuffle over Robert Mapplethorpe's 'Piss Christ' from several years back... that certainly offended a lot of people, but no-one rioted or burned downed the Corcoran gallery.

The current series of events in the Mideast is reminding me of nothing so much as the Rodney King riots.

[winterbadger]

The current series of events in the Mideast is reminding me of nothing so much as the Rodney King riots.

Not really sure I see the connection.

[principia.livejournal.com]

We're talking about large bodies of poor, disenfranchised people. When the press has actually bothered to talk to the protestors (a la the BBC), it turns out that most of them are protesting over general issues of respect/quality-of-life and not necessarily the specific trigger to which the riots are attributed (offensive cartoons/Rodney King's beating).