Wisconsin College Atheist Group to Draw Muhammad on Campus

The problem is that Chris assumed that ‘revolutionary” islam is fundamentally different than “moderate” islam- this shows that its NOT. As long as people revere the quran and related writings, which DO support killing non-believers and all that “offend” islam, there can be no “moderates”. If one is moderate in islam, its because they don’t really follow it!

And yeah, I think its a mid-evil religious mindset that is dangerous and keeps people ignorant.

I wonder if the SSA could mirror this across the country. If these people (yep, I just used THAT line) can’t hand;e the depiction of Mohammed as a stick figure, we have a lot to be worried about.

From A.J. Jacob’s book, the main reason people prohibit drawings of Mohammed is because he didn’t want to become like Jesus, so he prohibited any likeness to make sure they would worship Allah, not his prophet.

“discuss the issue respectfully before resorting to what we feel to be rather drastic measures. No offense, but giving less than 24 hours notice seems to betray ill intentions.”

No, a veiled threat to do some undefined and possibly ominous thing doesn’t betray ill intentions. No hypocrisy to see here, run along.

“You don’t see Jews getting this upset when other people eat pork.”

Exactly the point I’ve been arguing with a shockingly high number of fellow atheists for the last few days. Tolerance does not extend to me truncating my own freedoms for the sake of someone else’s delusion. Not even a little bit.

While they chalk, they should be eating bacon cheeseburgers.

That violates the inside-baseball rules of at least four religions I can think of off the top of my head.

Just draw a whole wall full of stick figures, and make the Muslims guess which one is Mohammed, if any.

But will this promote dialog? I have a feeling it’ll just push Muslims further away. Just like the burqa ban in Belgium.

Daniel, that’s a valid example although that sort of thing is pretty rare in comparison. The only ones who do that sort of thing generally are the charedim (ultra-Orthodox). The rest aren’t as bad.

But there’s a separate reason for that, which is that at a fundamental level Jews don’t believe that non-Jews should be Jewish. There’s a set of rules for Jews and there’s a set of other rules for non-Jews (the seven Noahide laws). So there’s no theological reason for Jews to push their viewpoints on others. In the handful of religious aspects of the Noahide laws (such as the sexual restrictions) one does see some Orthodox Jewish groups joining with Christians (such as in fighting against gay marriage).

I believe he is referring to Revolution Muslim, a group that made veiled threats of violence against the South Park creators: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_Muslim

The Muslim student group was perfectly within their rights to request a sit-down and also within their rights to inform them of their reading of the campus rules. I see no behavior here that was provocative or untoward. I’m open to other interpretations however.

There is no constitutional right to not be offended! When will religious fools get this? Just because I am liberal does not mean I will bow down to religions or races and avoid offending them. This sort of bullshit never ceases to amaze me. If I were Chris, I might considering filing a police report and start a paper trail lest these fools actually carrying out their veiled threats.

The populist authoritarianism that is the downside of political correctness means that anyone, sometimes it seems like everyone, can proclaim their grief and have it acknowledged. The victim culture, every sufferer grasping for their own Holocaust, ensures that anyone who feels offended can call for moderation, for dilution, and in the end, as is all too often the case, for censorship…” ~ Jonathon Green

Now just a single stick figure is enough to raise the scorn of Muslims. Where will this stop?

Perhaps we should draw “nothing” and say it’s Allah, and then they’l be in the position of demanding we don’t draw nothing. Like my picture of Allah below?

Allah: By PrimeNumbers

What I find funny – is the VP of the MSA says “Your apology is not accepted since your act is actually offensive…”

Except Chris wasn’t apologizing (and he shouldn’t) he was just giving a heads-up.

The point of the exercise is that yes- some people are going to be offended- but that can’t stop it from being said (or drawn)

If the University should attempt to silence Chris’ freedom of expression, they will have a serious task ahead of them. One poster here mentioned the “water buffalo” fiasco as a perfect example of “political correctness” gone awry. This incident was just one of countless which were especially numerous during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s regarding free speech on universities (both public and private). The High Court has ruled again and again that limiting student speech in such ways is simply not going to fly.

Bravo Chris and the other students for standing firm in the face of such inanity.

@Miko: that water buffalo thing is such a crock of excrement! If he’d called the girls niggers or something else nasty I can see their case but since when is water buffalo a racist slur? Sheesh talk about grasping at straws!

Simon,

Great, you think it’s just swell for Muslims to create nuance suits in order to violate the rights of non-Muslims.

Well my reading of law is that the Qur’an is an illegal incitement to violence, and that it commits defamation against non-Muslims. That is much more of a reality than any legal claims being made by these Muslims.

Mohammad was an evil man. That is the reality and Muslims better get used to non-Muslims speaking the truth.

Haha. Really? Really? This thread is incredibly hypocritical. I mean come on. You guys are kidding. Right?

The AHA has a First Amendment right to carry out this speech, regardless of what the constitution of the University of Wisconsin says – as it’s a public university, it’s constitution is superceded by the First Amendment. I fully support their right to do this, however asinine their speech is.

Having said that, these Mohammed-drawing things are dickish and stupid. Pretending that there’s nothing offensive about it, because no one is bound by other people’s religious laws is pretty stupid. I agree that if you have some other, independent reason to draw Mohammed, there’s no reason that you should be deterred by the fact that some religion finds it blasphemous. But in this case, the only reason people are drawing Mohammed is to be blashphemous. It’s pretty stupid to then act like it’s not offensive, when the only point is to be offensive. There’s a difference between eating pork because I like pork, and declaring a Lets-All-Eat-Pork-This-Saturday-To-Piss-Off-The-Jews event.

Muslims are one of the most despised minorities in American today. Acting like they’re some powerful threat to free speech in America, and that you’re bravely standing up for free speech by being dickish to American Muslims in general, is pretty stupid. Of course, it’s wrong that a group of a few dozen Muslims made death threats, and that that led Comedy Central to censor itself. But it was equally wrong when a production of Corpus Christi was shut down last month due to Christian death threats – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/theater/29arts-CORPUSCHRIST_BRF.html – for some reason, there was no national hullabaloo about that. Campus hate speech laws at public universities are both a violation of the First Amendment, and morally wrong. But they’re equally wrong at the thousands of other public universities that have and use them. Acting like some Muslim group referring to campus rules that exists and are used at countless other universities is some veiled threat to do something ominous, or due to some uniquely Muslim disregard of free speech is just dumb.

Well, put Autumnal Harvest.

I was at this event in Madison, as an atheist, but in support of the Muslim Students Association. I also thought that the AHA stick figures were indeed dickish and stupid.

This event hurt and offended all the wrong people. If Revolution Islam is the intended target of AHA’s free speech critiques, they should protest to THEM, not peaceful, regular Muslim college students. If AHA would have wanted to engage in a productive, constructive conversation with the MSA about how to lessen the grip of radical Islam, or discuss free speech in the context of religion, they would have been happy to do so, and said as much at the event today. But AHA wasn’t interested in that discussion. They just wanted to make a point, in full awareness of it’s hurtful effects. Free speech is incredibly important; why do we insist on tarnishing it with this stick-figure nonsense when there are so many other ways to achieve better results in this battle against extremism?

Don’t offend people just for kicks when absolutely nothing is gained. It’s in incredibly poor taste and comes off as a stupid publicity stunt.

AHA president here.
Thanks for the coverage Hemant!

And I especially want to thank all of you who have left messages of support here. I’ve been getting flack from all directions lately – honestly, the worst of which has come from fellow atheists/agnostics who think the event was unproductive. Your words of encouragement sustain me.

I assure you that we believe in freedom of expression just as much as you purport to do.

Why even bother with such a statement, really? You’ve spent the entire previous paragraph detailing how you are going to move to prevent someone else from expressing themselves and how they better not even try, or else. Adding “oh but we love freedom of speech” frankly just drives the point of how you don’t in even harder.

If stick figures of Mo are “racist” or “hate speech” then anything and everything can be declared hate speech and freedom of speech dies. This student Muslim group had an opportunity to show their university that Muslims can be mature. They could have responded to the event by offering to discuss their views, by setting up an event of their own expressing their views, essentially by showing that Islam is compatible with our most cherished values of freedom. They might have even made the atheist group seem immature or extreme. Instead they opted to prove the point about Muslim intolerance better than any stick figure ever could.

The other option was to just chalk the campus as planned and let them discover the drawings with no warning.

Exactly. This would definitely be a test to see just how tolerant and peaceful the majority of Muslims really are.

I bet that the majority would be pissed off, which would refute the claim that the majority are reasonable people.

Here’s the next episode (from the AHA blog): http://wiscatheists.blogspot.com/2010/05/confusing-stick-figures-descend-on-uw.html

The deed is done… kinda.

Immediately upon arriving at our agreed upon meeting spot, we were somewhat surprised to see a large gathering of MSA students – also armed with chalk. After a brief discussion, and another explanation of the purpose of the event, the MSA informed us that they would not try to prevent us from drawing anything or attempt to censor our work, rather, they would merely be expressing their own freedom of expression by “adding to” our drawings.

Thus, Muhammad (the Prophet) became Muhammad Ali (the Boxer)!

You’ve got to hand it to them, it was a creative and non-confrontational way to minimize the intolerable offense of seeing stick figures labeled Muhammad. It was a celebration of free speech for everyone! AHA students were outnumbered at least 4:1, so it was rather easy for the MSA to follow us around and make modifications to nearly all of our 50-100 drawings.

Mind you the above is the opinion of the secular student group. I stand by my assessment that the MSA at this school has done nothing untoward and responded appropriately to an also legitimate action by the AHA.

You’ve got to hand it to them, it was a creative and non-confrontational way to minimize the intolerable offense of seeing stick figures labeled Muhammad. It was a celebration of free speech for everyone!

Paging George Orwell.

I cannot agree that altering someone else’s drawings to change their intent is celebrating free speech for everyone. the MSA students should be free to make their own drawing, but interfering with someone else’s free speech is not celebrating free speech.

I stand by my assessment that the MSA at this school has done nothing untoward

I stand by my assessment that you are a poopyhead.

people dont become radical for fun….its a response to being shit on for hundreds of years…..u dont draw mohamed out of respect for an oppressed people regardless of whether u “can” or not. would u write nigger on the sidewalk because u can? u have no sense of history

and if u dont get why its rascist ill explain it to u. it is in the arbitrary choice to go after muslims. u perpetuate the fox news myth the muslims are radical and not the truth which is that their are radical muslims. whether or not that was ur intension thats what effect it has. its like showing terrorist footage over and over on fox news. ill bet if u drew jesus jerking off ud get some radical christians to respond. ur choice only perpetuates fox news agenda that islam is radical. most muslims i know drink, smoke dope and dont really care about god just like everybody else.

I believe “individuals” are protected against discrimination, not their “beliefs”

u need to understand its not about U or ME as u emphasized. who gives a shit if U can draw mohammed. its not about U. how about some compation for the millions of women treated as property by thier “in reliogon rules” just think u guys need to be a bit wiser about ur events and not just jump on the latest headline grabbers. i understand and agree w ur premise they cant apply their religous rules on others (i am agnostic). this one is just so dumb and u clearly chose it as its in the news alot. how about protesting missionaries

Justin,

Ah, I see. Until we solve all the Big Problems we must ignore everything else. I happen to not think this is a petty issue, and it’s not like doing this is somehow adversely affecting other causes.

Andrew,

Of course I’m annoyed by people reading the bible and praying in public, but I don’t threaten them and they are certainly legally protected in their actions. (If you are talking about government owned crosses or government sponsored prayer, then that’s completely different.)

Hmm, following up on my earlier remark, I think that the equivalent for Jews might be repeated drawings of the four letter name of God. I’m not sure how violent such reactions would be. But I suspect the answer is “not very” given that the name has been used a fair bit in artwork and the like without Jews making much of a fuss.

@Andrew *sigh* Yes you are missing the point otherwise you wouldn’t see anything hypocritical or even funny. They aren’t trying to piss people off, that’s been explained clearly. I’m not sure how you’re missing this but it’s about freedom of speech not being stifled by threats. That’s it. Whether people get offended or not is not the point nor should it stop anybody. People don’t have a right not to be offended.

@Alexrkr7
You’re right. They weren’t purposefully trying to piss people off at all. They were just doing something they knew would offend them. Big difference. Thanks for clarifying. By the way if you would realize I was talking about the comments by people on the thread about how the muslims should get over themselves instead of being offended you would probably see the irony.

@Brett H
Agreed. Again talking about other commenters not the event.