Everybody Draw Muhammed Day

Recently there’s been a bit of a hulabaloo about the Prophet Muhammed. South Park did an episode about him for their 200th episode, and it was a 2 parter that continued on into episode 201. The plot revolved around Tom Cruise trying to steal Muhammed’s power to not be made fun of, a clear lampoon of the fact that Muslims have been up in arms about images of the prophet, most notably since the Danish Cartoon Controversy. That reared its ugly head recently when Lars Vilks, a Danish Cartoonist, was attacked in a public lecture.



Anyway, Comedy Central censored episode 201, and whenever Muhammed was to appear there was a large CENSORED bar over him, and you never heard him speak. At one point Tom Cruise succeeds in stealing his power to not be made fun of, and a large CENSORED bar appears over both of them until someone does make fun of Tom Cruise. From contextual clues, I’m actually pretty convinced that the episode wasn’t actually censored, and that the entire thing was staged. But that’s beside the point. Whether it was actually censored or fake censored, a website called revolutionmuslim.com decided to start posting veiled death threats against the South Park creators.

Then revolutionmuslim.com got hacked, and things have escalated from there. You can’t actually see South Park Episodes 200 and 201 online anymore, nor can you see their “Super Best Friends” episode that showed Muhammed years ago, before the Theo Van Gogh incident and the Danish Cartoon incident.

I guess Molly Norris was finally fed up with what she considered giving into bullying or into terrorist demands, and so she made a comic that declared May 20th, today, “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.”
She got her own death threats, caved in and withdrew, but it was too late. Facebook already had a page for “Everybody Draw Muhammed Day.” Of course, the creator of that page is now also in hiding of sorts for fear of his life. Then Pakistan banned facebook and youtube in response. Seriously.

I was a little disturbed by pretty much all of these developments. I wanted to do a blog post on this issue, get my thoughts down.

First, it seems to me that you ought to try to be respectful to others and their beliefs. I’m all for criticizing religion when it ought to be criticized, but sometimes you’re just trying to get a rise out of people for no other reason than to do so (watching the entire video of the Lars Vilks makes it pretty clear that’s what he was going for).

Second, if someone tries to get a rise out of you, don’t respond. We LDS have a fair bit of experience in this matter.


Third, killing someone is never the appropriate response for either being criticized, or having been the target of someone trying to get a rise out of you. Write letters. Complain. Boycott. But do not kill.

So, what to do? I narrowed it down to the following options:

1. Just post about the issue, but don’t make a personal choice as to which side I’m on regarding Everybody Draw Muhammed Day. This, of course, is a choice itself.

2. Post about the issue, but state that I refuse to offend Muslims by posting any version, censored, ancient, or not, of a picture of the Prophet Muhammed. But this also looks like I'm giving in to the bullying demands of those who use terrorist tactics.

3. Post a picture of the Censored Bar from Southpark. This doesn’t (or shouldn’t) offend moderate Muslims. Dunno about radical ones.

4. Post a Muslim’s picture of Muhammed (he’s been portrayed in plenty of Islamic religious art, not all Muslims over the last 14 centuries have held that he could not be drawn, just check out his Wikipedia page). This would demonstrate to the radical Muslims that their interpretation of Islam isn’t universally accepted, but would offend most Muslims.

5. Draw my own picture of Muhammed. Offend most Muslims, but show the radicalists that I think they’re wrong, and that I for one am not going to stand for their bullying. Killing and death threats are NOT proper responses to being offended. And to those that are offended, but don’t want to kill over the issue, well, you’ve had ample time to distance yourself from the radical Muslims. I’m sorry.

I choose option 5. Sorry to any moderate Muslims who stumble across my little blog. Fixing and banning radical forms of Islam, like this man is doing, and as I’ve talked about before, is YOUR job.

Mine is to stand up against bullies when they show up, like these people. I really like Thunderfoot’s videos here and here.

So here you go: