Everywhere it’s the same story: someone who says or writes something that is considered, rightly or wrongly, to be critical of Islam or (as in this case) of a group closely tied to an Islamic endeavor (in this case, the jihad against Israel), and the response from Muslims is death threats and calls for censorship. Even worse, a growing number of groups in the West support voluntary self-censorship, refraining from saying or do anything that might upset the ever-so-delicate sensibilities of Islamic supremacists.
Maybe Majida Shaheen can get out of Gaza and share an apartment with Molly Norris.
An update on this story. “Gaza political cartoonist faces censorship, death threats,” by Asmaa Al-Ghoul for al-Monitor, February 26:
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A controversy erupted Jan. 22 when artist Majida Shaheen drew and published a cartoon on her Facebook page depicting Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh trying to tame an angry dog with the name “Al-Quds Brigades” — the military wing of Islamic Jihad — written on its collar. The cartoon is an allusion to the attempts of the Gaza government to prevent resistance factions from launching rockets against Israel.
The artist was threatened and cursed on her Facebook page. When Al-Monitor sent Shaheen a message requesting an interview, she refused, saying, “I am facing threats and pressure. I cannot do any interviews.”
The majority of threats the artist faced seemed to come from angry citizens, who considered the cartoon offensive to the resistance movements, especially Islamic Jihad.
For his part, Islamic Jihad spokesperson Daoud Shehab denied that his organization threatened Shaheen.
“No one attacked her officially from the part of the movement. I followed up on the comments on Facebook, and these comments do not express our point of view. We consider her to be merely an unknown artist seeking fame,” Shehab noted.
He added that even though friends of the movement spoke in favor of filing a complaint against Shaheen with the Journalists Syndicate, they did not do so. “Every person has the right to express their convictions. Yet we were upset with the indecent approach, which is not part of freedom of expression,” Shehab added….