Petition fails to lobby Wikipedia to remove images of Muhammad

by corkman Sat Feb 16, 2008 20:45

What point art thou trying to make, o poet of the ages?

by ribbid Sat Feb 16, 2008 21:15

European society will move quickly to a cultural equilibrium where the long forgotten differences on representation of the human are acknowledged & internalised. In the last month the Danish press has trotted out the same images which caused so much furore 2 years ago in February 2006. Yet this time the political forces which ensured an extraordinary supply of Danish flags to be burnt throughout the "muslim world" haven't really taken up the cudgel.

The reaction against western provocative, insulting or satirical depiction of Islam's prophet may still be attributed to the last 5 nights of bus-burning in Denmark but somehow the shock factor has worn off now.

Thankfully in the process of cultural interchange occuring throughout the western world as migrants from predominantly muslims states build & integrate their communities, the conflict presented by the Bush presidency, FoxTV, "swampfascist prejudice" &c. has not yet resulted in the stage of us covering up our nudie statues.

Certainly in the last week the London transport authority removed a poster inviting commuters to visit an exhibtion at the British Royal academy of Arts of Cranach the elder's (1472- 1553) works from March 8th to June 8th. The poster had sought to whet aesthetic appetites with a reproduction of one that artist's nudes. http://www.elpais.com/fotografia/Venus/Lucas/Cranach/el.../Ies/ I considered it quite odd, given that the sight of a naked lady painted in the 16th century be described by London's transport system as likely to cause offense. No doubt the muslin shroud over the naked lady's genitals, considered a great acheivement in Cranach's time as he was only permitted use male models in his studio, is just too graphic for London prudery. Yet the same artist got past the publishing guidelines on this site in my "sunday papers geneology edition".

I hope, & I honestly reckon - we're getting to stages of sustainable inter-cultural clash on some issues of western life. I base that hope & reckoning not only in the slight interest taken in the repeated publication of the Danish cartoons (whose wikipedia article complete with illustrations never earned a petition) but also in my continuing conversations with members of the muslim community in the city where I live. The "swamp fascist" tendency in Europe can not count on such fertile ground as its equivalent in North America & pretty soon both western secularist & western practising muslim or jew (or any other religious profession of worship with similar taboos on representative art) will just see through the provocations & come to realise their identities are not so insecure nor need be a defined in terms of difference.

As many western sophisticates might have thought the British Royal Academy of Arts poster promoting Cranach the Elder as crass as anyone who pretends Virgin Galactic is really about a chance to fuck in zerogravity for four minutes before your head hits the g-force & you re-enter earth's atmosphere.

We're doing ok. We all know now, that arty farty or their close relations the advertising crew can't get a rise anymore out of the muhamud iconoclasm game. That means oxygen is taken out of both the far right of Europe's anti-migrant types as out of that muslim minority in European cities who previously had taken advantage of such provocations to promote ghettisation agenda rather than multi-ethnic society fomentation.

I hope you know what I mean. I haven't worked out how to express it in simple english yet - I'm still working my thoughts out on the iberian language side which gets translated into effin big latinesque jargon words.

at its most simple - I can write or say "muscular jesus on a cross for your sins" in any state of Europe without provoking a riot. Just like I can say "fuck" in most social situations without any women present fainting. The shock factor types will move on to something else & leave our muslim friends & neighbours alone.

by Michael Martin Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:29

Fair play to Wikipedia for upholding Freedom of Speech!

by ribbid Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:40

According to the Muslim tradition, Muhammad's wife Khadija was the first to believe he was a prophet.[56] She was soon followed by Muhammad's ten-year-old cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib, close friend Abu Bakr, and adopted son Zaid. The identity of the first male Muslim is a controversial subject.[56]

Around 613, Muhammad began to preach amongst Meccans most of whom ignored it and a few mocked him, while some others became his followers. There were three main groups of early converts to Islam: younger brothers and sons of great merchants; people who had fallen out of the first rank in their tribe or failed to attain it; and the weak, mostly unprotected foreigners..[57]

According to Ibn Sad, in this period, the Quraysh "did not criticize what he [Muhammad] said… When he passed by them as they sat in groups, they would point out to him and say "There is the youth of the clan of Abd al-Muttalib who speaks (things) from heaven."[10] According to Welch, the Qur'anic verses at this time were not "based on a dogmatic conception of monotheism but on a strong general moral and religious appeal". Its key themes include the moral responsibility of man towards his creator; the resurrection of dead, God's final judgment followed by vivid descriptions of the tortures in hell and pleasures in Paradise; use of the nature and wonders of everyday life, particularly the phenomenon of man, as signs of God to show the existence of a greater power who will take into account the greed of people and their suppression of the poor. Religious duties required of the believers at this time were few: belief in God, asking for forgiveness of sins, offering frequent prayers, assisting others particularly those in need, rejecting cheating and the love of wealth (considered to be significant in the commercial life of Mecca), being chaste and not to kill new-born girls.[58] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad#Early_years_in_Mecca

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by atheist Tue Feb 19, 2008 20:52

You could draw images of Dev, Churchill, Benedict XIV, Hitler or Stalin that would upset their fans, but do the rest of us care? You have a leader, followers with some cringeing insecurity, and a form of worship that becomes a habit after a while. Then the habit becomes more important than anything.

When you see (a minority of) Islamists whipping themselves in the street, and hear of them beheading people, and cutting off hands, you know they haven't quite got the point of it all yet.

by comment Fri Feb 29, 2008 12:32

http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=19006

by goosebumplies Fri Feb 29, 2008 12:58

my faith in the God which is Google ( c/f http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/ & the very convincing proofs of ominescience, omnipresence, etc http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/Scripture/Proof_Google....html ) were almost shaken last weekend when as a by product of the Pakistani state blocking Youtube - many of the world's internet users lost access to it.

as reported on Yahoo (the Googlists protestants) :-

"Most of the world's Internet users lost access to YouTube for several hours Sunday after an attempt by Pakistan's government to block access domestically affected other countries.
The outage highlighted yet another of the Internet's vulnerabilities, coming less than a month after broken fiber-optic cables in the Mediterranean took Egypt off line and caused communications problems from the Middle East to India.
An Internet expert likened the cause of the outage to "identity theft" by a Pakistani telecommunications company, which accidentally started advertising itself as the fastest route to YouTube. But instead of serving up videos of skateboarding dogs, it sent the traffic into oblivion.
On Friday, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered 70 Internet service providers to block access to YouTube.com, because of anti-Islamic movies on the video-sharing site, which is owned by Google Inc."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080225/ap_on_hi_te/youtube...istan

But then my faith was in fact confirmed, for all - that is every scintilating comment & copyright infringement was held on the Google cache.