Draw Mohammed Day!

Perhaps you've heard it on the news, but certain ultra-fundamentalist religious types really get their shorts in a bunch over the slightest perceived offense. No, I'm not bagging on the Christians again. This time, it's the Muslims - at least, the ones who think that it's their right to attack anybody who draws a cartoon of their prophet.

In protest of this, a Facebook group announced that today is "Draw Mohammed Day". It's a celebration of free speech, and a big "up yours" to any of these loons who think that their religion gives them the right to limit our freedom of expression.

The irony is, from what I understand, there is no specific ban on creating an image of Mohammed in the Koran. Basically, Muslims are just more keenly aware of the notion that creating images of their prophet might lead to idolatry, and they want to avoid that. I mean, there is a history of Islamic depictions of Mohammed. Of course, fundamentalists of any stripe never let things like facts and history get in the way of their world view.

If there wasn't such a huge backlash against these cartoons, then I wouldn't take the time to bother with this sort of a thing. I don't deliberately go out of my way just for the sake of offending people. Besides, I realize that a reasonable Muslim wouldn't even find my picture to be offensive in the first place. After all, I didn't try and do something deliberately provocative like put him in a dress or put a bomb on his head. I actually tried to make him look kind of cool. (How did I "draw" him? I used Hero Machine 2.5.)

I'm sure that there might be some people out there who might point out the folly of me doing this. After all, I use my real name on my blog. Maybe some crazy fundie is going to come and kill me. Well, you know what? I'd rather die than live in a world I'm afraid of offending religious nutjubs. Will some non-crazy Muslims possibly get offended by this as a result? Probably. However, being offended is the price you pay for living in a free society. Look at me. I'm offended all the time.

If you want to know more about this whole thing, which is really getting crazy - to the point where Pakistan is trying to block access to Facebook and YouTube, click Wikipedia's link.