Yeah For Oppession Nay For Satire

In my previous post I criticized the violent reaction to the cartoon debacle on two points:

1. The satirical cartoons sought to draw a connection between Islam and the extremists who use it to justify their violent actions. Their very reaction proves the point. The defense rests.
2. Those feigning shock and horror do so under the pretense that Islam forbids the illustration of the prophet Mohammed which of course is nonsense. I argued the reason they are upset is not because the prophet was illustrated but because he was illustrated in what they deem to be a negative light.

It is a twist on point #2 that I find most interesting. Knowing very little about Islam I rely mainly on the interpretations of others including people I personally know which I supplement with the reading of the Koran myself. It is to this end that I read with great interest a column by Amir Taheri in which he refuted claims that Islam bans illustrations of Mohammed.

There is no Quranic injunction against images, whether of Muhammad or anyone else. When it spread into the Levant, Islam came into contact with a version of Christianity that was militantly iconoclastic. As a result some Muslim theologians, at a time when Islam still had an organic theology, issued "fatwas" against any depiction of the Godhead. That position was further buttressed by the fact that Islam acknowledges the Jewish Ten Commandments--which include a ban on depicting God--as part of its heritage. The issue has never been decided one way or another, and the claim that a ban on images is "an absolute principle of Islam" is purely political. Islam has only one absolute principle: the Oneness of God. Trying to invent other absolutes is, from the point of view of Islamic theology, nothing but sherk, i.e., the bestowal on the Many of the attributes of the One.

Taheri also provides several instances of art depicting the prophet which drew the wrath of no one. In case you don't know who Taheri is he is a journalist born in Iran who has worked for and/or contributed to many organizations over the years including London Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Daily Mail, International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The Washington Post, the German daily Die Welt, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, the pan-Arab daily Asharq Alawsat, Arab News, Jeune Afrique (French weekly), Kayhan (Iran's main daily) and the National Post here in Canada.

Following those lines is another piece by David R. Sands.

Lost in the furor over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad is the fact that his likeness has long been portrayed in the collections of some of the world's greatest museums and libraries without exciting alarm or comment.

While rare in the 1,400 years of Islamic art, depictions of Muhammad are found in the collections of such institutions as New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris and the Edinburgh University library.

Perhaps the thing I find most disturbing about all of this is the hypocricy of the outraged protestors. While they call for armageddon over a few silly cartoons they remain eerily silent on issues that really matter. Take for instance the plight of the Palestinians. Arafat and his cronies stole billions from the PA while his people lived in squalor. To deflect unwanted attention from himself he merely directed any outrage towards Israel. The Palestinian people themselves became pawns in a political game, one which various Arab governments were only too eager to play. Where was the outrage? Where is it now? What about Syria’s suppression of Lebanese sovereignty despite UN Resolution 1559? Where is the outrage?

If these people want the rest of the world to take them seriously perhaps they should stop acting like they still live in the middle ages.

cross-posted to Rite Turn Only.