So What’s the Big Deal With Drawing the Prophet?

I can’t understand why the media, the west and everyone else who engaged in the “Let’s Draw Muhammad” contest recently couldn’t, in all their secular intelligence, attempt to first UNDERSTAND and then to act instead of the other way round.  I am also extremely disappointed with Zapiro for simply “jumping on the bandwagon” which is very unlike him.  The Zapiro I’m used to has deep insight, sharp wit and gets to the heart of the issue at hand.  Zapiro’s cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) shows only deep ignorance… but I’ll analyse that later.

First, let’s get to the heart of the matter.  Why are Muslims going crazy when this happens?  Well, at the essence, we do not draw the Prophet Muhammad or represent him in any way or form even though we do have detailed, verified and ratified descriptions of him because it is mentioned in the Quraan not to fall into the trap of our Christian Brethren and end up worshipping the Prophet instead of God.  Secondly, Muslims believe in ALL of the prophet’s of God – Moses, Jesus, Noah, Jonah, Adam, etc. (peace be upon them all) and we don’t DRAW any of them.

But still… why is there so much passion in this issue? well look at the content.  The depictions are ignorant and horrible. There is no mistaking the intent behind them.  It more represents some Hard-line Iranian ‘Terrorist’ Mullah than have any insight into the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).  Muslims LOVE the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), I mean truly love. For Muslims he is the ultimate example of what a human being is supposed to be.  We actually implement the idea that whenever we’re faced with any situation in life the question is automatically… “Well, what did the Prophet (pbuh) do?” You can’t underestimate this point, it leads to the next point in this issue.

Let’s make it personal.  Take someone you truly love and would do anything for… say it’s your mother.  Now, if someone was talking badly (or drawing nasty pictures) of your mother but did it amongst themselves and, obviously, they have a right to say what they want. It’s all absolutely fine.  But when someone comes up to you and waves it about in your face and swears your mother to your face, what would you do?  Yes, it is the ultimate example we need to follow to hold our peace and deal with it in an intelligent and civilised manner (in fact this is what the Prophet (pbuh) himself would have done. But being realistic…  Your first move would be a punch in the gut of the offending perpetrator.  This is the line between having the freedom  to say what you want, but respecting the people around you.

Personally, this is the first time I’m writing about this because I can’t believe people’s stupidity and ignorance. In this day and age! For God’s sake (no pun intended) is everyone getting Stupider?  Why can’t anyone else see this?  Regarding the drawings themselves, I refuse to join any action AGAINST them on Facebook and shout out slogans, etc. because that only fuels the fire of the same idiots who created the group in the first place.  I’ve IGNORED them from the beginning and I implore all other Muslims to do the same, or even better, start telling these people who the Prophet (pbuh) was, his example and what he means to them.  This is the perfect opportunity.

Finally, I pray… that intelligence dawns on both sides of this conflict.  It’s a shame on humanity that BOTH sides are acting like this.  Let’s grow up.

Link to original Photo of Zapiro at launch of his book ‘Pirates of Polokwane’

Irreconcilable Differences

The Judge walks in and everybody instinctively rises. I suddenly feel like I’m back in primary school and you had to stand every time a teacher or the principal came into the class and greet them loudly, unquestioningly. I know it’s a matter of respect and it does have its place but I have this innate problem with authority, especially authority which enforces rituals instituted by archaic social conventions.

So I grudgingly stand as the judge, a very chubby man of about 50 years old, walks to his seat. His impossible to hide double-chin depresses as he lifts his head from his notes and calls the first divorce case for the day, “Case two-oh-three-four, two thousand and seven, Mr James and Ms Jackson.”

The lawyers constantly refer to the Judge as “Your worship…” which irritates me again but I’m just an observer here. They bow as they leave the room, the judge doesn’t notice this at all and this indicates to me how ingrained the behaviour is amongst lawyers and people in general. Is this part of the curriculum at law school? “Etiquette and behaviour in court” or something similar? I wonder…

No doubt, social convention has its place. The masses are fucking idiots… just look at the lyrical content of the top 40 hit countdown and suddenly social conventions to keep people in line and instil some sort of structure makes sense. But then again, it’s the same system purveying the culture of self-gratification and delusion anyway. Which is why, from an overall perspective, the whole thing grates against my being.

Yes we need some form of authority and structure, but I reserve my right to question it and wholeheartedly disagree with it.

The Accolade: Saudi Arabia’s All-Girl Underground Rock Band

As Taboos Ease, Saudi Girl Group Dares to Rock – NY Times
Taboo breaking takes a new form in Saudi Arabia, something that should be expected in all repressive societies. Human creativity can never be stifled.

The have the lyrics of their first song, “Pinocchio” on their Facebook page and you can hear it on their MySpace Page.  Read below for the story behind their creation. Awesome.

In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different. The prospect of female rockers clutching guitars and belting out angry lyrics about a failed relationship — the theme of “Pinocchio” — would once have been unimaginable here.
…
“The upcoming generation is different from the one before,” said Dina, the Accolade’s 21-year-old guitarist and founder. “Everything is changing. Maybe in 10 years it’s going to be O.K. to have a band with live performances.”

Dina said she first dreamed of starting a band three years ago. In September, she and her sister Dareen, 19, who plays bass, teamed up with Lamia and Amjad, the keyboardist.

They were already iconoclasts: Dina and Dareen wear their hair teased into thick manes and have pierced eyebrows. During an interview at a Starbucks here, they wore black abayas — the flowing gown that is standard attire for women — but the gowns were open, showing their jeans and T-shirts, and their hair and faces were uncovered. Women are more apt to go uncovered in Jidda than in most other parts of the country, though it is still uncommon.

“People always stare at us,” Dareen said, giggling. She and her sister are also avid ice skaters, another unusual habit in Saudi Arabia’s desert.

The band gets together to practice every weekend at the sisters’ house, where their younger brother sometimes fills in on drums. In early November, Dina, who studies art at King Abdulaziz University, began writing a song based on one of her favorite paintings, “The Accolade,” by the English pre-Raphaelite painter Edmund Blair Leighton. The painting depicts a long-haired noblewoman knighting a young warrior with a sword.

“I liked the painting because it shows a woman who is satisfied with a man,” Dina said.
…..
Dina held out her cellphone to show a video of the band practicing at home. It looked like a garage-band jam session anywhere in the world, with the sisters hunching over their instruments, their brother blasting away at the drums and Lamia clutching a microphone.

“We’re looking for a drummer,” Lamia said. “Five guys have offered, but we really want the band to be all female.”

The Accolade Facebook Page
The Accolade MySpace page

George Carlin (1937-2008)

This guy was a legend. Reading a recent interview by Democracy Now!, here’s what someone who knew him very well had to say…

“…in the late ’60s, when this country really went through a cultural revolution, you know, he was the guy, I think, who brought stand-up comedy into that cultural revolution. I mean, he was short-haired comic, sort of skinny-tie guy, who did sort of straight-laced material on the Ed Sullivan Show. He looked around in the late ’60s, and, you know, he was hanging out with musicians, he was singing with the protest movement, and he was seeing what was happening. And he decided he was doing material for the enemy. He wanted to talk to a different audience, the college audience. He wanted to go back into the coffee houses. And this was a radical thing for a guy to do with a successful career. So he started all over again, and he started doing material that really reflected the attitudes of that counterculture generation.” – Richard Zoglin

… and just one of my favourite Carlin stand-up routines…

It’s the old American double standard, you know, say one thing, do something different. And, of course, the country is founded on the double standard. That’s our history. We were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of a slave owners who wanted to be free, so they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto of this country ought to be? You give up a color, we’ll wipe it out. You got it.

So, anyway, about eighty years after the Constitution is ratified, eighty years later, the slaves are freed. Not so you’d really notice it, of course. Just sort of on paper. And that was, of course, during the Civil War. Now, there’s another phrase I dearly love. That is a true oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one: civil war. Do you think any country could really have a civil war? “Say, pardon me” [gun shots]—“I’m awfully sorry. I’m awfully sorry.” Now, of course, the Civil War has been over for about 120 years, but not so you’d really notice it, because we still have these people called Civil War buffs, people who thought it was a really keen war, and they study the battles carefully, and they try to improve on the strategies and the tactics to increase the body count, in case we have to go through it again sometime. In fact, some of these people actually get dressed up in uniform once a year and go out and refight these battles. You know what I say? Use live ammunition, [bleep], would you please? You might just raise the intelligence level of the American gene pool.

But what do you expect? Hey, come on, this is a warlike country. We come from that northern European, basically the northern European genes, the blue eyes. Those blue eyes. Boy everybody in the world learned real quick, didn’t they? When those blue eyes sail out of the north, you better nail everything down [bleep]. Nail it down, strap it down, or they’ll grab it. If they can’t take it home, they’ll burn it. If they can’t burn it, they’ll [bleep]. That’s what happened to us. And it’s a warlike country. C’mon, I mean, forget foreign policy. Even the domestic rhetoric is warlike. Everything about our domestic policy invokes the thought of war. We don’t like something in this country, we declare war on it. The war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on AIDS, the war on cancer. We’ve got the only national anthem that mentions [bleep] rockets and bombs in the [bleep] thing. You know what I mean?

RIP… he said it like it was and is.
: George Carlin, Comedian, Legend, RIP

How to Design a Logo: Beijing 2008

I got this on e-mail and made an animation from it. I totally support the Reporters Sans Frontieres in their boycott of the Beijing Olympics. Such an oppressive regime doesn’t deserve to be given such an honour or any economic benefit.

Technorati Tags: Beijing, Olympics, 2008, Oppression, Animation, Logo

TwitterSnooze: Pull the Plug on Verbose Twitters

Now this is a brilliant twist to the over-saturation of social media input into our lives. TwitterSnooze allows you to silence any member of your twitter community for a number of days. So when your friend has a bout of recurrent verbosity, and you don’t really feel like deleting them from your list, simply silence them with TwitterSnooze.

It’s amazing the amount of needs which spring up from our newly defined social habits in the Web 2.0 era, and the amount of web apps available to satisfy each need.

Maybe Web 3.0 will be a filtering of Social Media and provide all things relevant.

Twitter, Banned in Dubai?

Just got his bit of news from Techtree.

The message reads: “We apologise the site you are trying to visit
has been blocked due to its content being inconsistent with the
religious, cultural, political, and moral values of the United Arab
Emirates.”

Apparently Dubai has blocked the Twitter site, but there’s no indication as to why. There is speculation over governments seeing Twitter as a threat to their sovereignty, but come on. Firstly, this is Dubai, one of the most liberal places in the UAE, also, which self-respecting internet user won’t figure out all the anonymous browsing websites there are out there to get hold of twitter anyway?

This story is seriously dodgy.

Access Denied: A Global Study of Internet Censorship

Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering is a new book which is hitting the shelves, providing the first rigorous look at Internet Censorship and filtering practices in over three dozen countries world-wide. It’s always been known that many countries censor all types of sites on the net covering political, sexual, cultural and religious issues but this is the first study to give us a clear sense of the nature Internet Censorship.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Internet, Censorship, Access Denied, Study

UAE is the new China?

Buzz 2.0 tells of his recent bump up against the UAE’s new initiative to censor certain websites in the UAE free zones.

I logged onto blogger this morning to post some thoughts on twitter business models, read the first blog entry from blogger about a staff member leaving. Clicked the blog link and was served up with the dreaded message.

For anyone in the UAE, if you have been to a legitimate website and found that your access was denied, you can log a complaint here: safesurf@du.ae

Technorati Tags: Censorship, UAE, Internet, Blogging, Blogs