Quote:
Originally Posted by Lestat
I'm asking what the purpose is here. And I vehemently disagree that it's to show what should and should not be insulting!
It's one of those situations where there are several different possible reasons for doing it. The 'safe', publicly expressible reasons are 'Affirmation of free speech', 'A show of defiance against those who use violence', etc. No doubt many people will be participating for those reasons, and no doubt some will be participating just because they think it's funny, some because they think it's clever, some because they have a specific beef with Islam, and so on. You won't generally hear those reasons given, though.
I'm kind of on the fence here. On balance I suppose I have to say I don't object to it, mostly because the objection and reactions from the extremists seem disproportionate (or...
extreme, perhaps
). I find the whole thing puzzling. I'm probably going to sound like an amateur stand-up here, but what exactly
is 'a drawing of Mohammed'? No cameras back then, right? No-one knows what the guy looked like. So is it simply the act of
labeling something as being a depiction of Mohammed that's offensive?
Is that blasphemous? Fatwa-worthy? It's all the fault of the theologians, if you ask me. If they'd had the Jesuits on the case, there'd be four separate copper-bottom proofs that it wasn't actually
possible to draw Mohammed, making it a purely theoretical sin.