After the South Park debacle in which Trey Parker and Matt Stone were not allowed to show an image of Muhammad — or even say his name — the Atheists, Agnostics & Freethinkers group at the University of Illinois wanted to show their support for free speech.
So they went around campus with chalk and drew images of Muhammad on the ground:
There’s Muhammad in the upper left.
Is that offensive? I say no. If you get offended by that, no one should be taking you seriously, anyway.
AAF justifies what they did like this:
… AAF has wrestled with its collective conscience. It has weighed the dangers, it has been assaulted by the wielders of white guilt, and in the end it has decided that standing up against the enemies of freedom is worth the discomfort of a few who are innocent and our friends. Silencing anyone, including Matt Stone and Trey Parker, via threats and aggression is intolerable; and it will never stop until all of us agree that no one’s sacred cow unwrites basic human rights. You can cater to the whims of fundamentalists, or you can cater to fundamental rights, but you can’t do both.
More power to them.
That’s why I’m also a fan of the Facebook groups that are supporting a Draw Muhammad Day. You don’t have to draw him in some evil way (though you’re more than welcome to). The point is that the rest of us don’t have to abide by Islamic law. We have the freedom to draw whatever we want, whenever we want, and if there are people out there who want to stop us, we can fight back by banding together and drawing the image and having them take notice.

150 images of Muhammad were drawn.
That’s more than enough to get the point across, even if some were erased.
You can see more of their chalkings here.
My respect to the AAF students who made this happen. The drawings were simple and inoffensive. It was a creative and powerful thing to do.
(Thanks to Clint for the link!)
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