Welcoming Mohammed to a Beloved Tradition. by risa
“The people I’ve spoken to today said the cartoons just welcomed Muhammad to the beloved Danish tradition of satirical humour.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
Here’s an article that shows the cartoons that have enraged many Muslims (and sypathetic members of other religions) in their original context. It also offers an English translation of the editorial that accompanied the offensive material. Some of the cartoons are, like much bad cartooing, offensive. Others are simple and respectful. Some are critical of the position Islamic law seems to put women into, and some suggest that the Prophet’s message of peace and loving kindness has been hijacked by people who turn his calls for peace into calls for violence
For me, this description of the Prophet is beautiful. Here he calls for pragmatic tactics, tactics that reappear at crucial moments in countless histories, tactics that are clearly oriented towards peace and prosperity for the entire human race:
The Prophet’s most important task was to bring peace to the world. To this end, he urged people to accept the fact that, regardless of skin colour, language, lifestyle or dwelling place, they were all blood brothers and sisters. Only if they saw each other in this light could there be mutual love and respect.
To his followers he would say, “You are all Adam’s children, and Adam was made of clay,” and, asking them to live in peace, would add, “A true believer is one with whom others feel secure – one who returns love for hatred.”
It is each individual’s primary responsibility to treat all others with kindness and compassion. Period. That’s the number 1 message from Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed. Anyone who twists this into a call for murder is missing the point of religion.
And yet, I can sympathize with the intense emotion these offensive cartoons elicit. Even aside from the intense love a Prophet of peace and hope and God is bound to elicit from followers, it’s always scary to embrace diversity. It’s hard to really stand by the belief that other people have also been put here by God. It’s equally hard to stand by the democratic principle that the sum of all our differences will really be greater than our parts. It is a major personal and political struggle to allow that others- gay folks, women, shap comics or people of another religion- might bring good into the world by thinking differently, or by loving different features of the same God one feels one knows. It’s scary to let other people think for themselves when you know they probably won’t think the way you want them to, but throughout the books of these 3 interconnected faiths God tells “His” followers to believe that “He” will be the one to choose who to smite. And interestingly, when we are challenged to react peacefully to other people’s offenses and to allow them to make their own mistakes, we face the exact same scary decision religious people believe God faced. The decision “He” made is the single great, generous act of faith that we are challenged to understand: “He” gave us our own free will.
Being part of a diverse, prosperous, mutually beneficial international community will be challenging, and it will probably require everyone (Muslims, Danes, Politicians) choosing to embrace the following good childhood motto: Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
February 7th, 2006 at 10:45 am
another set of coherent and peace-oriented opinions on the offensive cartoons: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060202.wgravenimage0202/BNStory
compare this to unfortunate twisting by Iran’s leader, who\s trying to somehow make this isreal’s fault.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060207.w2proph0206/BNStory/International
February 12th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
sort of interesting bits i hadn’t heard elsewhere:
i can easily see how rumours like this would whip up fear that the world’s white and well-weaponed super powers might be dangerously rascist. and of course i think most muslims would sympathise with the terror that some in the west- especially in countries that were invaded and occupied by Hitler’s army like Denmark- might associate with any kind of control over the press. control by fear would have been a disturbing warning sign that fasicsm was coming to a nation. the elder statesmen and editors throughout Europe lived through those times and, understandably, might feel a knee jerk desire to resist anything that raised the spectre of them. after having to face what eastern and western civilization had produced, (there have been genocides on all sides) and having to stare at heaps and piles and lists and archtectures of horrifying horrifying evidence, we all should be demonstrating peacefully against statements made by any nation that attempts to distort history.
i just read this piece about the Armenian genocide so i’m all freaked out.