After reading the article I thought “WTF?” and felt like banging my head on the keyboard.

Jesse wrote “… but if you said ‘Wow, those black churches sure are full of silly fools…'”. Are you serious or was this some sort of bad joke? I’ve never heard anything remotely like that said in the multi-cultural UK or in any country/nation that I’ve visited during my travels — nobody I’ve ever met in my entire life would make such an ignorant remark.

Using logic alone, if one starts with the premise that racism may perhaps play a part in situation X or event X then then the rest of the premises (even if they are just a thought experiment) will be geared towards supporting a conclusion that racism plays a part in X. A type of argument that is unworthy of consideration because it is not even wrong.

Please clarify for us: Are you seriously defending as morally just and defensible a positive right, as asserted by some people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to proscribe any and all depictions of Mohammed? Or, do you contend only that this proscription ought to be respected out a deference for the feelings of Muslims and a polite duty not to risk offending any of them?

My point was certainly never to try to deny that, indeed, people do assert that depictions of Mohammed are proscribed “under,” “by,” “Islam.” Instead, my point was to contend that there is neither any clear and unambiguous scriptural authority (i.e. in the text of the Quran) for that claim nor, for that matter, any human authority which rises above the level of mere scholarly opinion–which is divided on this issue.

What’s “true”? That people claim that the proscription is founded in scriptural doctrine?–because, no, that is not true and, again, you’ve presented nothing here to indicate that it isn’t false–or that, since “people claim it” it thus ” is “true” that people claim it and that, therefore, pointing out that it is not an authoritative part of the Quran’s prescriptions and proscriptions “doesn’t make it [that people say otherwise] go away” ? To that being a fact, I say, “So what?” Many people claim lots of erroneous things. Should we respect Creationists’ beliefs because, if we do not, they demonstrably take offence at being corrected or mocked for their opinions? Is that a candidate for another such thought experiment in racism or intolerance?

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“The Quran, the Islamic holy book, does not explicitly prohibit the depiction of human figures; it merely condemns idolatry.[1][2] Interdictions of figurative representation are present in the hadith, among a dozen of the hadith recorded during the latter part of the period when they were being written down. Because these hadith are tied to particular events in the life of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, they need to be interpreted in order to be applied in any general manner.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Islam#Theological_views
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad

And you really, rally don’t understand what people are saying about this, do you? What :earned scholars” said that racism has nothing to do with critiquing Islam?

Saying “Islam has some problems and religiously run governments are wrong for X” is NOT the same as “We shouldn’t allow Muslims in to the country” or “All Muslims support terrorism unless they explicitly say otherwise”. Do you see the difference?

And no, critiquing creationism doesn’t always have racist undertones, but if you said “Wow, those black churches sure are full of silly fools with all their singing and dancing and praying” now you skate rather closer to that. Again, do you see the difference?

It is as ignorant as suggesting that satirizing creationism has racist undertones.

Jesse wrote: “Somehow Muslims all over the place were able to deal with South Park”. Really? Perhaps the threats of Jihad against South Park are only malicious rumours. Here’s just one example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Adam_Chesser

The murders of the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo was a horrible act.

Sometimes the “satire” at Charlie Hebdo could degenerate into racist caricature. Whether the guy who drew it was a Muslim or a Moroccan or whatever doesn’t really matter at that point.

I don’t see how these things are mutually exclusive.

I want to add something about satire and all that: there’s an old comedian’s saying about punching up and punching down. In the Case of Charlie Hebdo which they were doing wasn’t always clear. I don’t think it was always clear to the cartoonists either, being humans.

(Tyler Perry may be black but he is still making movies all about retrograde depictions of women. Being a member of an oppressed group doesn’t prevent someone from falling into those traps).

You know, I remember when South Park did the “Super Best Friends” episode (it was originally aired in July 2001). There’s a depiction of Mohammed in it. And you know what? Nobody cared. Comedy Central withdrew it after the flap with the cartoons in Denmark, but what’s interesting is at the time nobody cared.

Somehow Muslims all over the place were able to deal with South Park. (I assume that in 2001 someone, somewhere in North Africa, Central Asia, India, Pakistan, or any of several million people of the Islamic faith in the west had some access to Comedy Central).

I do think that too often westerners of a more “freethinking” bent tend to place a lot of value on transgressive acts for their own sake. That tends to color one’s perceptions a bit. It’s why some people like “un PC” humor. Just because something is transgressive to someone doesn’t make it funny or even particularly incisive. Being an outsider to “respectable” culture doesn’t seamlessly translate into the ability to always write (or draw) satire that’s any good.

And again saying this (I don’t think) is the same as saying that it was OK for people at Charlie Hebdo to be murdered. If they had run a Neo-Nazi publication and been shot by radical Orthodox Jews it would still be terrible.

But if you want stuff like this to not happen again it’s important to think through why anyone would do it in the first place. I mean, if I wrote about the rise of right wing extremism int he US and chose to ignore the economic dislocations and marginalization that affect white working class people in rural areas, you’d all say that was pretty stupid. And you’d be right.

So the rise of right-wing radicals in the Islamic world (and that is what they are) can’t be understood as some innate problem of Islam any more than Tim McVeigh can be understood as some innate problem with Christianity.

But apply this kind of analysis and all of a sudden I see “OMG you support the murderers.” Ya know, when Tim McVeigh or Anders Brevik killed a bunch of children nobody said that Christianity was a problem.

And I don’t recall anyone getting into the free speech implications when the NAACP was bombed here in the US recently. I don’t see anyone calling for burning white churches or increased scrutiny of white people from the Southern Baptist Convention.

Racism isn’t something you are. It’s about stuff you do. While we often use the shorthand “he’s a racist” a lot of the time that isn’t helpful, because it gets into issues of intent rather than result.

And I will post this link, to a cartoon that I think brings out the very issues Greg is articulating here:

http://www.sadlyno.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/joesaccoonsatire1200.jpg

Perhaps your thought experiment is not worthy of consideration or perhaps it is flawed.

I’m not sure what you mean by projecting racism onto a morbid satirical joke, could you be more specific?

That comparison between “Asians” and “Islam” is clumsy and inaccurate. The vast, vast majority of Muslims are Asians, and I’m talking about the middle east as well as Indonesia, etc. You will have to refine your comment to reflect geographic and ethnic reality before I can deal with it.

Asians do not go around trying to impose the rules of their religions on others. In fact, most of us have no idea what their religions’ (Buddhist, Shinto, Confucian) rules even are.
Islam, though is different, we all seem to be very aware what Islam’s rules are.

Is the difference the fault of Western civilisation, or of the minority culture that imagines its rules are relevant to non-adherents?