Religions > Atheism > The Ayatollah Joke Book So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar …
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"stoney" |
| Date: |
11 Feb 2006 11:06:06 PM |
| Object: |
The Ayatollah Joke Book So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar … |
http://www.slate.com/id/2135917/?nav=tap3
Policy made plain
The Ayatollah Joke Book
So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar …
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, Feb. 10, 2006, at 6:12 AM ET
Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, the noted wit, expert on freedom, and unelected
religious leader—the leader who counts—of Iran, observed the other day
that in the West, "casting doubt or negating the genocide of the Jews is
banned but insulting the beliefs of 1.5 billion Muslims is allowed." He
apparently thought this was a devastating point. Touché, Ayatollah
Khamanei.
The worldwide fuss over 12 cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed (some
mocking, some benign) that ran in a Danish newspaper has already killed
at least 10 people. Many self-styled voices of Islam have made the
bizarre comparison between showing pictures of the Prophet Mohammed and
expressing doubt about the Holocaust. A government-controlled Tehran
newspaper announced a contest for cartoons about the Holocaust, asking
"whether freedom of expression" applies to "the crimes committed by the
United States and Israel." In a spirit of "see how you like it," a
European Muslim group posted on the Web a cartoon of Anne Frank in bed
with Hitler.
Muslim complaints about a Western double standard would be more telling
if the factual premise was accurate. But it is not. In fact, it is
nearly the opposite of the truth. Nothing is easier and more common in
the West, including the United States, than criticizing the United
States—except for criticizing Israel. A few Western countries have
stupid laws, erratically enforced, against denying the Holocaust, but
that hasn't stopped Holocaust denial from becoming a literary industry
and cultural phenomenon. This is distressing to many Jews and others
because making sure that the world remembers the Holocaust has become
the main strategy for trying to prevent another one. The willingness of
so many people to disbelieve the reality of a historical event as
relatively recent and well-documented as the Holocaust leads you to
despair of the human capacity for reason, along with more or less every
advance in human affairs since the Dark Ages. Nevertheless, there has
been no rioting about the historical reality of the Holocaust. No one
has died over it.
Meanwhile, whatever point these European Muslims were making with their
cartoon of Hitler and Anne Frank is more or less disproved by their very
exercise. No one tried to stop them from putting the cartoon on the Web.
The notion that jokes about Anne Frank are beyond the pale is provably
false. There's a play running in New York right now called "25 Questions
for a Jewish Mother." It's a monologue written and acted by stand-up
comic Judy Gold, who says on stage every night that her mother used to
read to her from a pop-up version of Anne Frank's diary and would say,
"Pull the tab, Judith. Alive. Pull it again. Dead." Maybe you had to be
there. But the New York Times reviewer called the play "fiercely funny,
honest and moving" and did not demand that the author be executed, or
even admonished.
By contrast, in a spectacular exercise of self-censorship, almost every
major newspaper in this country is refraining from publishing the
controversial Danish cartoons, even though they are at the center of a
major news story that these papers cover at length every day. The Danish
paper that originally published the 12 cartoons has apologized and
editors in France and Jordan who published some of them have been fired.
In tomorrow's paper, you're more likely to see a picture of Anne Frank
or Hitler or both in bed with Eleanor Roosevelt, all three of them naked
and performing unconventional sex acts, than you are to see a perfectly
respectful picture of the Prophet Mohammed. An editorial in the Times on
Wednesday said that not publishing the cartoons was "a reasonable
choice" since they would offend many people and "are so easy to describe
in words." I am looking at a front page photo in today's Times (as I
write on Thursday) of Mariah Carey singing into a microphone. Words do
it justice, I think.
Of course it is not Western values that are trampling freedom of
expression: It is the ayatollah's own values, combined with the threat
of violence. The other problem with his little joke about double
standards, and with the whole supposedly mordant comparison between
denying the Holocaust and portraying the prophet, is that the offended
Muslims do not want a world where people are free to do both. They don't
even want a world where people are not free to do either, which would at
least be consistent. They want a world where you may not portray the
Prophet Mohammed (even flatteringly, slaying infidels or whatnot) but
you may deny the Holocaust all day long.
The bewildered prime minister of Denmark, trying to calm the whirlwind
that has descended on his innocent, unsuspecting country, gets it
spectacularly wrong when he reassures disgruntled Muslims that Denmark
supports "freedom of religion" and is "one of the world's most tolerant
and open societies." Tolerance, openness, and freedom of religion are
not what they have in mind.
A lively debate is going on about whether Islam really does forbid any
portrayal of the prophet, however benign, or whether that is a recent
innovation of some subset of the faithful with possible ulterior
motives. This debate misses the point. Some Christians believe they are
required to wear particular sorts of clothing. Some Jews and Muslims
don't eat pork. They don't claim that their religion requires other
people to wear special clothing or avoid eating pork. Tolerance and
ecumenism can only do so much. They have nothing to offer a Muslim in
Afghanistan who is personally insulted and enraged about an image that
appears in a newspaper in Denmark.
The shameful American position on all this is boilerplate endorsement of
free expression combined with denunciation of the cartoons as an
"unacceptable" insult. When three protesters died this week in a
confrontation at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, an American
spokesman there said that Afghans "should judge us on what we're doing
here, not on what some cartoonist is doing somewhere else." But the
limits of free expression cannot be set by the sensitivities of people
who don't believe in it. How can President Bush continue to ask young
Americans to sacrifice their lives for freedom in the Muslim world, if
he won't even defend freedom verbally when forces from that world are
suppressing it in our own?
/end
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
.
|
|
| User: "M Dunne" |
|
| Title: Re: The Ayatollah Joke Book So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar . |
12 Feb 2006 10:18:40 AM |
|
|
"stoney" <stoney@the.net> wrote in message
news:o9gtu1l0d4nh2md3qodiqvghppssfaekpg@4ax.com...
http://www.slate.com/id/2135917/?nav=tap3
Policy made plain
The Ayatollah Joke Book
So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar .
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, Feb. 10, 2006, at 6:12 AM ET
Can someone please tell me what 'slate.com' is meant to be, and who is
supposed to read it? The article Stoney posted contains perhaps more wrong,
malicious and misleading assertions, and more sheerly dishonest
argumentation, than I think I've ever seen in a reputable, mainstream
publication. Surely 'slate.com' isn't either of these things...? Is it some
sort of loony blog with delusions of grandeur?
M.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Colin Day" |
|
| Title: Re: The Ayatollah Joke Book So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into abar . |
12 Feb 2006 10:58:07 AM |
|
|
M Dunne wrote:
"stoney" <stoney@the.net> wrote in message
news:o9gtu1l0d4nh2md3qodiqvghppssfaekpg@4ax.com...
http://www.slate.com/id/2135917/?nav=tap3
Policy made plain
The Ayatollah Joke Book
So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar .
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, Feb. 10, 2006, at 6:12 AM ET
Can someone please tell me what 'slate.com' is meant to be, and who is
supposed to read it? The article Stoney posted contains perhaps more wrong,
malicious and misleading assertions, and more sheerly dishonest
argumentation, than I think I've ever seen in a reputable, mainstream
publication. Surely 'slate.com' isn't either of these things...? Is it some
sort of loony blog with delusions of grandeur?
M.
And why do you say that the article's assertions are wrong, malicious
and misleading?
Or that the argumentation is dishonest? For example, Holocaust denial is
legal in the
US, and most major US papers did not print the cartoons.
Colin Day aa #1500
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: The Ayatollah Joke Book So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar . |
13 Feb 2006 12:10:00 PM |
|
|
On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 16:18:40 GMT, "M Dunne" <MaDunn@home.com> wrote in
alt.atheism
"stoney" <stoney@the.net> wrote in message
news:o9gtu1l0d4nh2md3qodiqvghppssfaekpg@4ax.com...
http://www.slate.com/id/2135917/?nav=tap3
Policy made plain
The Ayatollah Joke Book
So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar .
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, Feb. 10, 2006, at 6:12 AM ET
Can someone please tell me what 'slate.com' is meant to be, and who is
supposed to read it? The article Stoney posted contains perhaps more wrong,
malicious and misleading assertions, and more sheerly dishonest
argumentation, than I think I've ever seen in a reputable, mainstream
publication. Surely 'slate.com' isn't either of these things...? Is it some
sort of loony blog with delusions of grandeur?
It's no blog. The bottom of the slate.com website has this:
©2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
I posted the article as I thought folks might find it of interest.
I'm curious as to why you've described the article as you did.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
.
|
|
|
| User: "" |
|
| Title: Re: The Ayatollah Joke Book So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into abar . |
20 Feb 2006 12:14:37 PM |
|
|
stoney wrote:
On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 16:18:40 GMT, "M Dunne" <MaDunn@home.com> wrote in
alt.atheism
"stoney" <stoney@the.net> wrote in message
news:o9gtu1l0d4nh2md3qodiqvghppssfaekpg@4ax.com...
http://www.slate.com/id/2135917/?nav=tap3
Policy made plain
The Ayatollah Joke Book
So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar .
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, Feb. 10, 2006, at 6:12 AM ET
Can someone please tell me what 'slate.com' is meant to be, and who is
supposed to read it? The article Stoney posted contains perhaps more wrong,
malicious and misleading assertions, and more sheerly dishonest
argumentation, than I think I've ever seen in a reputable, mainstream
publication. Surely 'slate.com' isn't either of these things...? Is it some
sort of loony blog with delusions of grandeur?
It's no blog. The bottom of the slate.com website has this:
©2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
I posted the article as I thought folks might find it of interest.
I'm curious as to why you've described the article as you did.
I guess we will never know...
j.m.
#1491
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "Les Hemmings" |
|
| Title: Re: The Ayatollah Joke Book So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar . |
12 Feb 2006 08:08:04 AM |
|
|
stoney wrote:
The Ayatollah Joke Book
So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar .
...and say's "You can't take a Shi'ite in a Sunni Ba'ath room... ;o)
--
Remove Frontal Lobes to reply direct.
http://armsofmorpheus.blogspot.com/
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
His name shall be The Flying Spaghetti Monster!
http://www.venganza.org/index.htm
Epicurus
Les Hemmings a.a #2251 SA
.
|
|
|
| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: The Ayatollah Joke Book So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar . |
12 Feb 2006 05:22:55 PM |
|
|
On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 14:08:04 -0000, "Les Hemmings"
<les.frontalclaire@lobesvirgin.net> wrote in alt.atheism
stoney wrote:
The Ayatollah Joke Book
So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar .
...and say's "You can't take a Shi'ite in a Sunni Ba'ath room... ;o)
Nice shot!
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
