your turn, Jesus

Or maybe not:

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.

The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.

In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.

Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."

Via. To reiterate from Jyllands Posten’s original editorial:

The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule.

A secular society apparently requires the holders of one superstition to be mocked, but allows the holders of another to enjoy “special consideration of their religious feelings”.

The Jesus cartoons were unsolicited, and the editor was perfectly within his rights to turn them down. They were probably crap as well. But it’s difficult to accept arguments from the same source that upholding free speech absolutely requires commissioning cartoons likely to be offensive to another religious group or to insist that others publish them as an act of solidarity in the name of secularist values.

Also at the Euro Trib, soj has an interesting theory of how the affair was escalated. Short version: Saudi Arabia dunnit to draw attention away from its annual mismanagement of the Hajj. My verdict on the whole affair: two sets of bigots playing opposite ends of the same street.

Comments

[Backword Dave]

Let's just enjoy strangling each priest with his own entrails as he comes to us.

Divide and conquer. ;-) For when they are kiddy-fiddling we shall tap them quietly on the shoulder and show them the Stanley Knife which shall rip them. For then they shall cry mightily to the God which they know does not exist. And then they shall gag on the entrails, imploring for the mercy they never ...

[rollo]

It's getting disturbingly almost cloying the way erstwhile rationalists deride both sides in this.
One side is being made war on, is dying, is being tortured, degraded etc.
The other's running the most powerful economy in the world.
Superstition may mark both, but one's suffering much more than the other.
Since most of the "pox on both their houses" crowd are in fact fed and sheltered by the crowing dominants, it might be a more honorable thing to assume at least some tacit responsibility - and speak to the injustice first, then the absurdities.

[Backword Dave]

Actually, that was kind of harsh. Though I still subscribe to a kind of "Frankie says Arm the Unemployed" philosophy. (If it can be called that.)
Of course it's Saudi Arabian misdirection! What else have they ever done? Apart from cowered behind American military strength?
First idea: fly a plane over SA: and bomb them with Diderot. Too hard? Ditto with Nietzsche. Still too hard? OK let's do it with dollar bills. And then they'll know how the world works. The bastards always win.

[rollo]

Miniature dollar bills. Half-sized, quarter-sized. Chaff in the cultural radar. Like sky-writing question marks everywhere instead of those unimaginative grids all the time.