 |
| "100 lashes if you don't die laughing." |
A long history of
snark and disrespect finally doomed the editorial staff of French satirical magazine
Charlie Hebdo. Two killers shot cops, then broke into the magazine's Paris offices and
murdered the editor and other cartoonists.
Afterwards, pronouncing "the Prophet Muhammad avenged," the pair fled, pausing only to execute a wounded cop on the sidewalk. The killers are still at large.
If
Charlie Hebdo had only mocked the Amish . . .
Radical Islam's tactic of kill-the-artist-silence-the-critic really got rolling twenty-six years ago when
Salman Rushdie's novel,
The Satanic Verses cheesed off the theocrat running Iran. In fact, Rushdie continues to cheese off contemporary theocrats. According to a
Daily Mail article from last year:
"The Iranian clergy has revived Salmen Rushdie's death fatwa [Islamic religious decree] 25 years after it was issued over his blasphemous 'Satanic Verses.
On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on all Muslims to murder the award-winning author and anyone involved in the publication of his work.
This Friday, senior cleric Ahmad Khatami reminded worshippers at the Tehran Friday prayer that the 'historical fatwa' is as fresh as ever.'
Big whoop. Some crank with a beard far away said some words. Who cares?
"The religious ruling forced the award-winning writer into hiding . . . Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator, was stabbed to death in the face at work, a Norwegian publisher shot and an Italian publisher knifed."
What if Rushdie finally apologizes for causing offense? Would that be cool?
"[Cleric Khatami] added that even if Rushdie repents, it will not affect the sentence."
And, to sweeten the pot, there's a 3.3 million dollar bounty on Rusdie's head.
More recently, we had a
Danish cartoonist who drew a Muslim wearing a turban-bomb
that became linked with blaspheming Muhammad. Riots, protests, burned in effigy, you saw it all on TV—except for images of the offending cartoons. Artist Kurt Westergaard now exists under death threat, was attacked in his home by a ax-wielding Muslim seeking "revenge," and otherwise lives a far different life than he did before testing the limits of radial Islamic tolerance.
Animated TV hit
South Park ran afoul of a group calling itself Revolution Muslim after the hit series
aired a show where the characters agonize over how to bring Muhammad to town without actually showing him. A writer on the Revolution Muslim website warned show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker that for insulting the Prophet they invited the same fate as
Theo Van Gogh. A Dutch director, Van Gogh criticised Islam's treatment of woman in a film. In retaliation, a Muslim shot him down on an Amsterdam street and then slit Van Gogh's throat.
Comedy Central reacted to this threat against their employees and:
". . . added more bleeps to the episode than were in the version delivered by South Park Studios, and that it was not permitting the episode to be shown on the studio's Web site. Comedy Central did not broadcast a repeat of the new "South Park" episode at midnight as it usually does, and instead showed a previous episode from this season."
(Here is the
unbleeped segment.)
In light of Comedy Central's self-censorship, a
Seattle artist published a satirical cartoon in support of free speech and the First Amendment. The cartoon called for a 'Everybody Draw Mohammad Day.'
Molly Norris was stunned as the Internet took up her call to depict the Prophet. (Some Facebook pages had 71,000 followers.) Norris tried to walk back her remarks, but found the Islamic death threats piling up like unpaid bills.
Free speech can equal fatwa.
And even if you're sorry, die infidel.
Upon FBI advice, Molly Norris
self-disappeared, vanished from the life she'd known pre-cartoon.
Artists, writers, filmmakers, cartoonists; lives upended or ended; family and friends left behind or mourning with a hole that never fills. And our culture faces the withering away of artistic freedom as the undrawn, unwritten, unfilmed accumulate for fear of death from those who believe it good to slaughter blasphemers of their religion.
Do all Muslims hold to these views? No. Do some Muslims believe this? They sure do and today two of them acted on those beliefs.
What is the answer to this murderous evil?
To write, to film, to draw, to speak.
Especially if it cheeses off radical Islam.
