From My Confined Space.
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Salem's Lot 1979 and Salem's Lot 2024
Happy Halloween everybody! Julie's working late and the boy doesn't have school tomorrow so he's heading to one of those crazy f...
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(2007) * First of all let me say that as far as I could tell there are absolutely no dead teenagers in this entire film. Every year just ...
22 comments:
That's great!
I want a "Suicide Bomber" set complete with a backpack of explosives, a copy of the Koran, and a cognitive set 1000 years behind that of modern humans.
I really like how mad Mohammed is.
Personally I think that it is an insult to The Prophet and his followers and whoever created that should be raped and beheaded in front of their families for some reason.
Seriously, that's great stuff!
we, all of us, are so dead now, thanks to julie. there's a spot for all of us on the shit list of that angry muslim dude right under bobby brown.
i thought for a second that jsp was buying himself off of that list with his last comment, but then i read the last line and, yep, he's dead too.
I don't get it.
Seems about as funny as putting out a "Dumb Nigger" set complete with a KFC add-on. Maybe a "Faggot" set?
Hysterical.
I think it's funny and very appropriate. When that poor school teacher was arrested for naming a TEDDY BEAR Mohammed there were several large protests demanding her to be executed. The Danish cartoonists have to live in constant fear of death threats because they drew a picture of the Mo-Fucking-Hammed. Theo Van Gogh gets butchered in broad daylight in Amsterdam because he made a movie that was "offensive". Where are these "moderate" Muslims protesting, saying that these fucking whackos don't represent their faith? They're nowhere to be found because they don't exist. Islam literally means "submission" and the Koran is to be taken as the literal word of god.
It's disgusting and the PC bullshit mentality only makes it worse. Mohammed should and needs to be mocked as often as humanly possible to break down that barrier that ones' religious beliefs should be respected and not questioned.
Intolerating intolerance is cowardice dammit!
I meant "tolerating intolerance". And I didn't intend to rant like that but come on - Mohammed did take a 6 year old bride. It's all there in the holy book.
I admire the balls on Landshark. To make that point on a site populated by Atheists is cool. I love when people have the courage to disagree with the room...
I myself come down on the side of humor in all cases...South Park said it best, "either everything is allowed to be funny or nothing is".
P.S.-JSP never apologize for ranting, it is one of the reasons I read Horrorthon.
Full disclosure: I'm an atheist too, miko. But I taught at a university in Morocco for 2 years, and I speak (rusty) Arabic. It wasn't weird for me to have class interrupted by the Islamic Student Union, who would politely encourage my students (all English majors) to walk out with them on strike in solidarity with some usually valid insult towards students at other universities. And I currently teach a class on "Islam and the West."
A couple years ago, I got tired of Fox News types repeating JPants' silly retort "Where are the moderate Muslims?" so I compiled the following list. It hardly scratches the surface of the world's billion Muslims, of course, but it's a start.
Major world Islamic clerics:
1) Sheik Abdulaziz al-Sheik, grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa denouncing all terrorism, including suicide bombers in Palestine.
2) Sheikh Youssef Al-Qaradawi, reaches millions each week through his own show on Qatar-based Al Jazeera television. Condemns terrorism and all suicide bombers. To be fair, he used to skirt the Palestine issue, but has been clearer in recent years. On the other hand, he has recently issued a fatwa calling for the killing of American and foreign "occupiers" in Iraq, military and civilian, so he is now drawing the ire of other moderate Muslim leaders who see this as a betrayal.
3) Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani: Iranian born, now Iraqi Shi’ite leader, regarded by some as the highest living authority in Shi'ite Islam.
4) Sheikh Mohamad Syed Tantawi, Grand Imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar university has condemned all attacks by suicide bombers and all forms of violent extremism.
Regional Muslim leaders:
1) President Aslan Maskhadov of the rebel nation of Chechnya
2) Din Syamsudin, deputy chairman of the Indonesian Ulama Council, which declared the killing of innocents and suicide bombing as against Islam.
3) Sheik Mahomed Albogachiev, supreme mufti of the Ingushetia Republic, which borders Chechnya.
4) Sheik Hisham al-Kabbani: Lebanese born, now residing in America. A major leader in Sufism, a mystical movement in Islam that fundamentalists condemn.
5) Sheik Mohammed Nazim al-Haqqani, the grand mufti of Turkish Cyprus and head of the Naqshbandi Sufi order. Nazim has made the repudiation of terrorism a major feature of his Islamic teachings, in Cyprus and elsewhere
6) Sheik Galiulla Gabdulla, mufti of Tatarstan
7) Sher Azam, president of the Bradford Council of Mosques in England.
8) Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, a leader of the moderate Islamic association Nahdlatul Ulama,. which has more than 30 million members who emphasize modernist thinking, tolerance of other faiths, and sensitivity to gender rights.
9) Ahmad Syafi'i Maarif is a prominent Indonesian intelectual. Ahmad Syafi'i Maarif was the leader of the reformist gropu Muhammadiyah, one of the two biggest Muslim organizations in Indonesia, in 1998 - 2005. Ahmad Syafi'i Maarif was the founder of Maarif Institute.
10) Prof. Dr. HM Din Syamsuddin: current president of Muhammadiyah, reformist socioreligious organization in Indonesia with 29 million members.
11) Ayatollah Seyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, the head of the Islamic studies department at the Academy of Scientists in Iran has called for Muslim scholars to unite to agree on a moderate, tolerant interpretation of Islamic texts.
12) Sheik Abdul-Ghafour al-Samarai, of the influential Sunni group the Association of Muslim Scholars (Iraq), spoke out against Iraqi insurgent terrorism.
13) Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a theologian, philosopher and Sufi master who is a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. Editor of Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition.
14) Abdul-Moti Bayoumi, of the Islamic Research Center at Cairo's al-Azhar University, mainstream Islam's top seat of learning, condemned 9/11, but not Palestinian suicide bombers.
15) Sheik Ikrema Sabri, Jerusalem's top Muslim cleric and an appointee of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, took a similar line - bombings in Israel yes, elsewhere no.
16) Mufti Nasr Farid Wassel, Egypt's top cleric.
17) Dr. Sayyid Muhammad Syeed, Secretary General of the Islamic Society of North America, recipient of a Human Rights Leadership Award from the Church of Scientology.
Secular Intellectuals from the Muslim and/or Arab World
1) Edward Said, Palestinian born Christian, former professor of cultural studies at Columbia. Condemned 9/11 as a “horrendous, pathologically motivated suicide attack and mass slaughter by a small group of deranged militants.” Best known for his critiques of European imperialism.
2) Eqbal Ahmed, Pakistani historian who joined Fanon in the 60s to fight against French imperialism. In the late 90s he returned to Pakistan after a long teaching career in America, and wrote a weekly column in DAWN, Pakistan’s most respected weekly periodical. He used the column to attack the growth of fundamentalism, treatment of women in Islam, and what he called the “modern facism” in religo-political parties around the world.
3) Fazrul Rahman, Considered by most experts, "probably the most learned of the major Muslim thinkers in the second-half of the twentieth century, in terms of both classical Islam and Western philosophical and theological discourse." Moved to the University of Chicago in 1969 as a professor of Islamic Thought and the leader of the Near-Eastern Studies department.. Also became a proponent for democratic reform in Islamic politics and was an advisor to the U.S. State Department.
4) Fatima Mernissi, Moroccan feminist and professor Sociology at Muhammed V University in Rabat. Author of classics such as Beyond the Veil, Women and Islam, and The Veil and the Male Elite.
5) Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian doctor and former Director of Public Health (dismissed for her political views) and author. For 40 years has been speaking out against misogony in Islamic poltics. Also an early critic of female genital mutilation, which she studied as a physician and wrote about in the classic The Hidden Face of Eve.
6) Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel-Prize winning Egyptian novelist whose portrayal of Muhammed in one novel led to an attempted assassination by Islamic extremists. Defended Rushdie against Khomeni’s fatwa, saying Khomeni’s fanaticism did more damage to Islam than Rushdie ever did.
7) Azar Nafisi, Iranian professor of English who left Iran (for America) in disgust at the growing Islamization of society in 1996; later wrote Reading Lolita in Teheran. Close friends with Paul Wolfowitz and other American neocon leaders.
8) Tahar Ben Jelloun, Morrocan novelist, winner of multiple major international awards, including the recent The Blinding Absence of Light, which told of the desert concentration camps where King Hassan II of Morocco used to keep poltical agitators. Ben Jelloun spent a year imprisoned in one as a student radical in the 60s. Author of Islam Explained, which attempts to clarify modern Islam and the destructive politics of fundamentalism.
9) Mushirul Hassan, Vice Chancellor of the Jamia Millia university in India, historian by training. Probably the leading scholar on the topic of communal (religio-poltical) violence in India and Pakistan, especially as related to the trauma of Partition.
10) Ray Hanania, Chicago journalist and radio host, son of Palestinian immigrants. Advisor to the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism.
11) Walid Kassiha, Chair of Political Science Department, American University of Cairo
12) Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egyptian-American sociologist, jailed in Egypt for political views. Currently member of the neocon Benador Associates.
13) Albert Hourani, British son of Lebanese immigrants, historian and author of the seminal A History of the Arab Peoples.
14) Youssef Choueiri, professor at Exeter University, author of Islamic Fundamentalism.
Btw, I meant to preface that list by saying that these are all people who have been vocal in condemning terrorism and Islamofascism.
Obviously, Fox News, CNN, etc. aren't interested in an accurate and nuanced picture of the Islamic worlds. (There's no one Islamic world). These guys don't play well in soundbites.
For example, when the girl's school in Saudi Arabia caught fire a few years ago, and the Saudi religious police showed up and wouldn't let the girls leave because they weren't veiled--that's a tailor made story for simplistic and self-congratulatory jingoism in the Western press. So that's what we got--Aaron Sorkin even did a "bit" on in on West Wing, complete with CJ Craig shouting "They hate women!"
Of course, the truth is that there was a national uproar within Saudi Arabia over the conduct of the relgious police. Civil right activists, lawyers, journalists, women's groups all hammered the government to conduct an inquiry. An accurate picture of the story would have been how a populace is being controlled by a religio-fascist government and ally of the U.S., and yet even so are trying to fight back anyway they can.
Interesting list.
One of my oldest friends is a liberal Muslim. I think I got my introduction to Islam from her.
I still think it's funny, and not on par with racism, which I would find offensive. I think all holy books are fair game for humor, since all of them contain a bunch of wacko stuff.
And somehow, Legos just make things funny.
I gotta motor over to this dinner, but I wonder if this would seem so offensive pre 911. No one likes to see all Muslims lumped together with extremists. Sure, personally, I think all religion is bunk, but I get it that there are liberal Muslims, and characterizations like this hit a nerve. But if we weren't living in such a nervy world, wouldn't this picture just be like making fun of any religious text? The Brick testament does it.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/
Damn, I really am the retard of Horrorthon. Is there anyone on here that isn't a Professor of something or other?
Landshark, why should the press be nuanced about religion, they aren't nuanced about anything. We have become a nation of extremes on all regards.
My liberal friends think I am a gun nut for owning them, my gun-nut friends think there should be no restrictions on weapons at all and I'm a liberal for favoring them...
I voted for Clinton while in the military, so everyone I knew then considered me a hippie-liberal. I voted for Bush the 1st go around, so my liberal friends consider me a crazed neo-con. Their ain't no middle ground anymore, press, religion or otherwise.
Just want to say I'm not accusing anyone of being racist for finding the image funny. Julie's right, Legos do make things funny. And we all have different levels of sensitivity to stuff like this.
But, I will have to disagree that the image isn't racist. It's blatantly based on an Orientalist stereotype of the violently sexual Muslim male. It also plays on the misleading myth about his 6 year old bride and the famous exoticized misconception about what harems actually were (just a collective term for all the women of a household: daughters, moms, aunts, wives, etc).
miko, good point re: lack of nuance in the American media. But it's never wrong to complain about it!
And pardon, JPX for taking your blog off-topic for a bit. Where are the damn hobbits?
I didn't know there was a stereotype about the violently sexual Muslim male. I just thought it was funny that the Lego dude has a mad face. But if I had known that was a stereotype, I probably would have been a little peeved at this image, too.
But wasn't there a child bride? Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks about this.
Well, here I am, coming late to the party as usual.
I liked the picture because it was Lego, natch, and it's a decent way to lampoon all kinds of things. I spotted this post back when there were only four comments about it and honestly wasn't sure what to say about the religious/political aspects of it, so I demured and went back to work.
I remember when that episode of West Wing aired and Landshark expressed his ire about it (Landshark is my brother, in case any of you have lost track of that with all these silly names. "Octopunk," honestly...). Since then I've always been quite grateful that I know someone who's got an informed and sympathetic perspective on all things Islamic.
And the reason I'm grateful is that I often feel the exact same rage that JSP expresses above. What I remember from the coverage of the whole Danish cartoon fiasco were the enraged mobs, not the Islamic leaders who were trying to calm the thing down. I do remember hearing that a lot of the furor was deliberately whipped up by extremists, but still... enraged mobs, people getting killed, all over principles that I myself regard as complete fiction -- it's scary stuff. I resent having to live in the same world as it and I resent the notion that tolerance and rational dialogue are the answer when the other side look like a bunch of screaming maniacs.
So it warms my heart to know someone with the knowledge and savvy to reconfigure rational dialogue and tolerance as the answer, and I feel like the dialogue on this page is a perfect example.
Polarizing the world seems to profit a number of institutions with (at best) questionable motives: politicians, religious leaders, media conglomerates, etc. I like to believe that most people, really -- even the stupid ones -- just want everybody to get along with each other.
One of my favorite examples of this idea happened over the holidays, when Julie's cousin Frank made it to a party at my other brother's house. All I knew about Frank was his right-wing stance taken during many on line discussions with Julie's extended family, but when the guy was there talking to us he was totally, totally cool. Really nice guy. And that's how it should be, we should be able to table that other stuff and just hang out.
And even with the hot words today, I feel like we're doing that right here.
Now I'm going to post some crazy Legofied images from the Bible. Woo hoo!
Landshark, I had no idea that you teach Islamic studies and I have the utmost respect for that. You must have some interesting stories. However, your lengthy list of apologetic Sheiks didn't address my point that it's ok to mock Mohammed and religion. People should be forced to think about and justify their silly beliefs rather than playing the hurt feelings card. I don't get offended by anything because getting offended is a complete waste of time. I also can't sympathize with anyone who gets offended and I won't apologize for that. Your list also doesn't approach the heart of the matter which is that there were huge organized protests demanding that the teacher be beheaded but I didn't see an organized protest of moderate Muslims demanding that she be set free. Ditto for the Danish cartoons. Where were the moderates for freedom of speech?
Furthermore, apologizing for terror doesn't change the fact that Islam is a particularly barbaric belief system. With Christianity, the Bible can be interpreted in millions of different ways and the nasty bits can be dismissed as "symbolic". The Koran is the literal word of god and therefore no leeway is allowed. Pretending that honor killing and female genital mutilation rarely occurs (not only in the poor countries but in many parts of Europe) doesn't make the problem go away. So if you're going to defend Mohammed and the Koran, please be more specific.
The fact that you likened the Lego Mohammed picture to KKK-style racism and homophobia is unfair and frankly insulting.
Lately I've begun to question whether or not I'm a liberal or conservative. Is there some kind of test I can take?
Do you like Rush Limbaugh? That's probably the litmus test!
I had no idea the Lego Mohammed would be so controversial!
I can see that if it is playing on a racial stereotype, even one that I didn't know about, it's dicey humor and the kind of thing we should be sensitive about. It's not cool to have "funny" images in the world that perpetuate false notions and keep the hate and fear going strong. So uh, I wasn't aware that I might even be doing that a little when I posted this picture.
As far as religion, yeah, I'm all for mocking it, and when people claim it must be respected, I have to say, well then, it should make sense first. So as far as I knew, this image was mocking the Koran, not male Muslims in general, moderate Muslims at all, or anyone real and alive, for that matter. It was between a dead guy and some plastic toys.
So thanks for the heads up that I was passing on a potentially racist message--that's not what I wanted to do. But I guess in a way that's like saying in total ignorance, "Look, this little black guy eating a watermelon is just so hilarious!" And then having the context of that image pointed out to you--um, ooops!
I mean, you can banter all day about the subjective meaning of the image to different viewers, but in the end, if there is a historical context that suggests a background of divisive messages, then it's good to be aware of it, which I wasn't.
One possible answer to "Where are the liberal Muslim crowds"--um hiding from the mobs, perhaps? Sticking your neck out to defend those Danish cartoons would not have seemed so wise, if you were interested in maintaining your health.
Well I found what seems like a good liberal/conservative litmus test:
http://madrabbit.net/webrabbit/quizshow.html
I got a 15 out of 40 which makes me a Bill Clinton liberal (as opposed to Hillary who's more).
I guess I AM middle of the road, 21 out of 40. Me and Colin Powell.
13 out of 40 - right between Hillary and Bill.
Cool link!
Running Freak got 15 as well. JPX got 16 for those still reading...
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