Amid all of this uproar, three simple words bear repeating: It's. A. Cartoon. Indeed, imagine if this level of indignation were directed by Muslims at those who commit atrocities at the urging of Islamic scriptures?
Note also the sense of entitlement to special treatment. "Muslims urged to react," from iAfrica, May 22 (thanks to Twostellas):
A Zapiro cartoon published in the Mail & Guardian has angered Muslims countrywide and the SA Muslim Judicial Council on Saturday called on its followers to express their condemnation and disapproval of it.
"The Muslim community takes this opportunity to express the deep hurt it feels at the caricaturing of the Prophet Muhammad in the M&G," the council's website said.
'Express condemnation'
"The Muslim leadership appeals to all Muslims to express their condemnation and disapproval of this latest insult on the Muslim community in a responsible and dignified manner."
The controversial cartoon depicts Muhammad lying on a couch and complaining to a psychologist that "other prophets have followers with a sense of humour".
"Muslims in South Africa have struggled and sacrificed side by side with its fellow citizens to work for a free and democratic society based on the values of human dignity and honour to its entire people," the website said.
Values that Sharia law would obliterate, mind you.
M&G accused of 'complete disregard'
"It is therefore extremely disappointing that the Mail & Guardian adopts this deplorable policy of complete disregard for the religious sensibilities of Muslims, a significant faith community of our country and likely a sizeable segment of the readership of the paper."...
Muslim definition of RESPONSIBLE & DIGNIFIED: Much destruction, burning, looting, bodily injury inflicted, but (maybe) no killings.
Muslim definition of EXPRESS CONDEMNATION: Much destruction, burning, looting, beheadings, crucifixions, stonings, hangings, shootings, raping of children, suicide bombings, acid attacks, deadly assaults on Jews, Christians, anyone else, everyone else, forever, inshallah.
Cavemen all.
"The Muslim leadership appeals to all Muslims to express their condemnation and disapproval of this latest insult on the Muslim community in a responsible and dignified manner."
This is probably a much better strategy for Muslims still being a minority in the land they live, because then they do not scare other groups so much as the riots over the Danish cartoons did. If Muslims can demonstrate in a dignified manner they will look like normal democratic citizens and not create som much fear and hate.
In Sweden we had one of this "dignified" demonstrations by Muslim men as a reaction against Lars Vilks "Muhammad as Dog" drawing and the police thanked them for a well executed demonstration.
http://nt.se/nyheter/artikel.aspx?articleid=6027519
This does not change the battlefield between Muslims and infidels in the long run, it just buys Muslims peace and time to get stronger before they start to push infidels out of their neighborhoods, force infidels to convert or pay taxes or to be killed. That is how I understands it.
Kudos to Zapiro and the Mail & Guardian for standing up for freedom of speech!
This is actually a very gentle cartoon, which—as Dumbledore's Army pointed out on another thread—actually gives the "Prophet" the benefit of the doubt that he would not be just as murderously intolerant as his followers.
Still, the Muslim reaction to this cartoon just goes to prove Zapiro's caption, "*Other* Prophets have Followers with a Sense of Humour" to be entirely true.
It's worth pointing out some things here, Zapiro, pen-name for Jonathan Shapiro and the M&G in South Africa are both pathologically anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian (with all that that implies). The M&G is a newspaper that perpetually gives the same deceitful and one-sided and distorted coverage of the Israel/Muslim Arab conflict as The Guardian or Independent in the UK. In fact it is vicious in its blatant anti-Israelism and its whitewashing of the Jihad against Israel. It is thus a paper (like most all liberal papers in the West) that is blatantly dhimmified and functions like the MSM in general as a useful idiot for the Jihad. It is a paper every bit as bad as any odious leftwing media outlet in Europe, the UK and North America. In fact it is very much like its British namesake, The Guardian.
Shapiro/Zapiro's cartoons on the Middle-East are so blatantly one-sided against Israel and he NEVER has criticised the Palestinians and Hezbollah in his cartoons over the years. In fact he infamously drew a cartoon of Ariel Sharon as a Nazi stormtrooper after the massacre in Jenin that never ever happened. He has drawn a cartoon blaming Israel for the '67 War, and so many other cartoons condemning Israel whenever there is a flare-up in the Middle-East, the Palestinian intifada during 2000, the war with Hezbollah in 2006. He even drew a cartoon in which he shows IAF jets bombing the White House! (the point of this cartoon was that the US would only condemn Israel for its supposed "war crimes" if the IAF attacked America, yes moronic but that's just the thing with Zapiro's anti-Israel cartoons). They are moronic and misinformed and dishonest and thus beloved by Jew-haters of all stripes.
He predictably drew vicious anti-Israel cartoons leading up to the Gaza War in 2008/2009 (and his bash-Israel-what-Jihad-against-the-Jews? who cares for the facts MO has never changed). He has NEVER drawn a single cartoon condeming the Muslim jihad against Israel and their associated crimes of terror and fascistic violence and related (Sharia Law etc). Going by Zapiro's cartoons you wouldn't know that HAMAS, Hezbollah, Syrian Baathists, the Muslim Brotherhood even existed or that Fatah, Arafat, Abbas are likewise jihadists dedicated to Israel's destruction. Zapiro in fact signed petitions with other anti-Israel so-called Jews condemning Israel during the wars initiated by her numerous Muslim jihadist enemies.
Zapiro is thus a "Jew" like that other South African "Jew" Richard Golstone, and too many to mention in the US, Canada, UK etc. Zapiro is just anti-religion so he knocks Islam over this cartoon crisis, so what. In every other respect given his cartoon propaganda against Israel in the service of her Jihadist enemies motivated by the dogma of Islam (of which Zapiro knows nothing), he is a useful dhimmi propogandist for Islam and thus religious fascism. He is beloved by anti-Semites precisely because his cartoons are so useful to them when it comes to the Muslim war against Israel.
So this cartoon of Zapiro's that JW praises actually just shows up Zapiro's and the M&G's hypocrisy. These same SA Muslims just love Zapiro for his pro-Islamic anti-Israel Mid-East cartoons as they love the M&G for their anti-Semitism passed off as Mid-East reporting and analysis, but they cry foul when he makes fun of their intolerance - this has nothing to do with Israel (or even America) after all, if it did Zapiro would be drawing cartoon SA Muslims would be endorsing. Normally SA Muslims and dhimmi Leftists love Zapiro and the M&G for this very reason, ie their respective anti-Israelism and love affair with the Palestinians. Just google Zapiro and Israel on google images for his odious cartoons not out of place in the most horrific anti-Semitic quarters. In fact a search for Zapiro and Israel on the web sees him praised from the usual assorted anti-Semitic suspects including Jew-hating Muslims around the world.
So they get upset now when he points fingers at their superstitions, like I said - so what, it only exacerbates his rank hypocrisy. Zapiro doesn't have a clue as to the life and actual teachings of the so-called prophet Mohammed, and an irony lost on him is that he is in fact a useful idiot propagandist for the mad bloodthirsty prophet of Islam, Islam and the Jihad itself, given his Mid-East cartoons. JW should be condemning Zapiro for his hypocritical double-think and his propagandist contradictions, not praising him. In other words, do more research on those you are so quick to shower praise on.
Klute
All of that is true. I didn't know most of it before I looked, but a quick squiz at the M & G website, and a read of the latest editorial, told me a great deal. Grovelling dhimmitude. A most degrading and embarrassing spectacle.
Nevertheless: the fact remains that on this particular occasion Zapiro - and his editor - failed to play the dhimmi quite sufficiently grovellingly, and the Muslims are proposing to punish them.
Zapiro and his editor are discovering, with a nasty jolt, that for Muslims 'freedom of speech' means the freedom to to flatter Muslims extravagantly, to parrot the Muslim line, and to heap criticism and ridicule upon those whom Muslims tell you to hate; but that there is *no* possibility of criticising or questioning Muslims or Islam.
And in a typical use of 'lawfare' the Muslims attempted to use South African law to silence the newspaper, the moment it proposed to publish something the least bit offensive to Muslims; but luckily for *other* South Africans who may have occasion to want to criticise Islam in the future, this lawfare was thwarted. Irrespective of what you think of Zapiro et al, that court's decision set a healthy precedent.
The spectacle of the Muslims' turning viciously on their M & G dhimmis and janissaries, is most instructive.
It can be used to show everyone else that *no matter what you do* and *no matter how fully and enthusiastically, for the most part, you submit* to Muslim demands and toe the party line, the tiniest little perceived flicker of rebellion - in this case, Zapiro's decision to take part in 'Let's Draw Muhammad Day' - will be greeted with screams of rage and threats of violence.
As for Mr Zapiro and his editor: I propose shock treatment.
Send them a copy of *this* article by a New Yorker, Mark Goldblatt. Suggest to them that they contact Mr Goldblatt and his publisher, with a view to reprinting the article in their paper - in English, and in Afrikaans and Zulu translation (parts of it would, I suspect, translate very well indeed into Afrikaans and Zulu).
'The Poet Versus the Prophet: Standing Up to Totalitarian Islam'
http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/14/the-poet-versus-the-prophet
And send them printouts of these two articles by 'David Thompson', on the subject of Muslim grievance theatre and the pantomime of victimhood.
1. It's OK to Dislike Islam
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2007/03/intimidation_re.html
and 2. 'The Passive-Aggressive Jihad'
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2007/03/the_passiveaggr.html
And if the M & G won't reprint Mr Goldblatt's piece, or Mr Thompson's pieces, these can surely still be reproduced and circulated, samizdat fashion, for the amusement and instruction of others.
Thanx Klute for the info, I knew thimgs where noy quite right about Schapiro, as I have seen his stuff before, but could not remember.
Anyway here is more from this despicable jewish, jew hating cartoonist Zapiro
http://supernatural.blogs.com/weblog/images/dsc00585.JPG
http://supernatural.blogs.com/weblog/images/dsc00584.JPG
http://radioislam.org/islam/english/toread/080408-kasrils-zapiro.jpg
http://www.timeslive.co.za/multimedia/dynamic/00068/91316_516563_jpg_68557b.jpg
http://www.zapiro.com/Zapiro/images/cartoons/m_060723st.jpg
Klute wrote:
It's worth pointing out some things here, Zapiro, pen-name for Jonathan Shapiro and the M&G in South Africa are both pathologically anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian (with all that that implies). The M&G is a newspaper that perpetually gives the same deceitful and one-sided and distorted coverage of the Israel/Muslim Arab conflict as The Guardian or Independent in the UK. In fact it is vicious in its blatant anti-Israelism and its whitewashing of the Jihad against Israel...
..................
Thanks for the information, Klute. This is dispiriting, but hardly surprising.
I think it just goes to show that no amount of cringing dhimmitude—*or even taking of pro-Jihad positions*—is *ever enough* for most Muslims. In the end, Zapiro and the Mail & Guardian staffers are just filthy Kaffirs, and are subject to Jihad "lawfare" and death threats every bit as much as staunch anti-Jihadists are.
I only wish that more Infidels—including the current American president—understood this simple fact.