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Chalk Mohammad Day
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Osedax
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May 21, 2010, 02:01 PM
 
My Take: Everyone chalk Mohammed? – Religion - CNN.com Blogs

The controversy:
This spring’s 200th episode of the always irreverent “South Park” included the Prophet Mohammed disguised in a bear mascot suit. A fringe website called Revolutionmuslim.com issued a warning against the “South Park” creators.
...
Comedy Central network pulled the episode after it first aired. And the network censored Part II of the episode, with audio bleeps and image blocks.


The response:
In response, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris penned a satirical cartoon calling for a national day of drawing the prophet. And groups of secular and atheist students, among others, are mobilizing to follow her lead en masse.
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Several campus groups of nonreligious students affiliated with the national Secular Student Alliance, of which I am a big supporter, have started a campaign to chalk smiling stick figures on their campus quads, labeling the figures “Mohammed.”
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This is not to say the secular students are bigots seeking to cause offense, as some have suggested. In fact they see themselves as standing up for free speech and free intellectual inquiry. They hope increasing the number of potential targets will make extremists think twice before attacking. And they earnestly believe no person should be so revered that they can not be drawn or spoken - that such reverence is simply a bad idea.

Proudly, they note that like the creators of "South Park," they are “equal opportunity critics” who would be just as harsh with bad ideas put forth by any other religion. They’ve written to their Muslim Students Association colleagues saying just that. In short they’re good, smart people, trying to do the right thing.


The authors opinion:
There is a difference between making fun of religious or other ideas on a TV show that you can turn off, and doing it out in a public square where those likely to take offense simply can’t avoid it. These chalk drawings are not a seminar on free speech; they are the atheist equivalent of the campus sidewalk preachers who used to irk me back in college. This is not even "Piss Christ," Andres Serrano's controversial 1987 photograph of a crucifix in urine. It is more like filling Dixie cups with yellow water and mini crucifixes and putting them on the ground all over town. Could you do it legally? Of course. Should you?

What's your opinion?
     
lpkmckenna
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May 21, 2010, 08:01 PM
 
I find it funny that they think only seculars and atheists are participating.
     
red rocket
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May 22, 2010, 06:33 AM
 
The way I see it, if you go around making death threats just because people dare to create visual representations of some guy, you’ve taken religious retardation to a level where you no longer deserve to be treated with kid gloves.
     
Dork.
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May 22, 2010, 08:10 AM
 
I am wondering when the right to practice your religion freely changed into the right to never be offended by what you see in public.
     
ghporter
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May 22, 2010, 11:26 AM
 
Originally Posted by red rocket View Post
The way I see it, if you go around making death threats just because people dare to create visual representations of some guy, you’ve taken religious retardation to a level where you no longer deserve to be treated with kid gloves.
While you didn't mean it this way, you're really addressing "retarding" religious practices in the more literal sense. The fundamentalist Muslims who make a big stink about people of other religions doing something the Koran forbids want to retard change-they seem to want to turn the calendar back 500-600 years and to reestablish something that was pretty much part of the downfall of Islam as a progressive and powerful society: a separation of religion and secular activities to the benefit of both. Once strict religious observance overwhelmed the science and learning of the earlier Islamic society, the Muslim world started to decline. Why would anyone want to reestablish "our society as it fell from power?" I sure don't understand that.
Originally Posted by Dork. View Post
I am wondering when the right to practice your religion freely changed into the right to never be offended by what you see in public.
The "right to practice your religion freely" is certainly not something these militant fundamentalist Muslims agree with at all. The majority of such groups have basically stated that they would like the world to be controlled by their imams (each group wanting the world controlled by their own imam, of course), and they feel that anyone believing anything other than their particular brand and spin on Islam is a threat. To me this smacks of both immaturity and insecurity.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
   
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