17.2.06

Prophet Protests

These events came about...

Because of This:

A few days ago I saw part of a news report about a protest that happened in Makati in front of P.B. Com Tower. The protest was about the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that were published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September of last year.

I was waiting for them to show the actual drawings that caused the protest but they didn't. The next day I looked through the newspapers that my dad bought. I found articles about the protest but didn't see the drawings there either. I thought this was extremely weird. Why would they report about something and not show what caused it?

I got curious so I went on the internet coz I figured that maybe American news websites would have the cartoons but the said images were surprisingly hard to find. Usually when a story is this big, you get to see it from the first result that Google gives you. Like when that Janet Jackson Superbowl thing happened a few years ago, I was able to see a video of that and all I had to type in Google was Janet Jackson without even using quotes. Anyway, most of the results that the first of my searches gave me were just articles about what was happening around the world as a reaction to these cartoons and I figured out why these pictures were a little bit hard to find.

I get what the protests are all about. I’d be upset too if something I believed in so dearly was being equated to terrorism. I even somewhat welcome the one that occurred in Makati because no one got hurt there. This was the first rally that I heard about that I wasn’t rolling my eyes at. Gosh, finally, something other than “Hello Garci”. Sure as hell makes more sense than the “Stampede sa Ultra Kasalan ni Gloria” thing. What I don’t get is why did the whole of Denmark become the target? Wasn’t it just a single newspaper that initially published the cartoons? I mean, ok, do the protests (minus the violence, of course) and send out the message that it was extremely insensitive and disrespectful for that newpaper to publish those pictures but to call for a boycott of ALL Danish products just seems a bit excessive.

Here’s a scary question: How come our newspapers aren’t showing the cartoons when it’s causing all of this hoopla? Think about this: Religions are criticized all the time. Why are we walking on eggshells when it comes to Islam?

How come I can watch a play called “Jesus Christ Superstar”, where there is a suggestion of a “wink-wink” thing going on between Jesus (you know Jesus Christ? As in the Son of God Himself, not just a prophet) and Mary Magdalene (there’s also a movie that has sort of the same thing going on called The Last Temptation of Christ) or go to video city and rent a copy of the movie DOGMA for just 17Php but to this day, I haven’t seen a single Newspaper nor any prominent news outfits here in the Philippines re-print the cartoons when it is so relevant in presenting the story of the reactions that it has induced around the world? How come that in other parts of the World some people have referred to the publishing of a picture of Muhammad sporting a bomb-shaped turban as a “hate crime” when we all have heard the terrorists say that they can bear the thought of innocent children dying from one of their bombs because they are doing it in the service Allah (this isn’t to say that I believe them nor do I think that they even know what the heck they’re talking about).

To me it just seems like these terrorists are somewhat succeeding in what they are trying to do. They have gotten us scared. Like I said religions are criticized all the time, some are even made fun of. So why all the attempts to make nice and be “sensitive” to Islamic sentiments about their religion being linked to terrorism? Maybe it’s because you can put a plastic crucifix in a vat of your urine and photograph it and say “it’s art” and not even get excommunicated but you can die from being involved in the publishing of a book. I’m sorry I don’t believe that any of this is really about Islam but the terrorists are the ones making it sound like it is every time they scream that what they are doing is Jihad.

I think this quote from an article I found pretty much sums up my sentiments about this ugly situation:

“While all the world’s major religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Catholicism, and Hinduism – shoulder responsibility for fueling extremist factions spewing hatred, violence and intolerance, Muslims do need to drop the victimization act and realize that just as they condemn and judge others with impunity, so too must they learn to cope with being subject to criticism.

Until people stop, in Allah's name, stoning women to death, killing homosexuals, cutting the hands off children stealing food to survive, flying passenger planes into skyscrapers, car-bombing innocent people, forcing their religious convictions onto others, and other such atrocities, and until Muslims loudly and clearly reject and condemn the violence perpetrated by those who have hijacked and perverted their religion, the likelihood of cartoonists depicting Muhammad as a gentle, olive-branch carrying dove is not particularly high.”

--taken from an article on annoy.com

All this hate is getting all of us nowhere. Such a shame that after millions of years of evolution that we still have not come up with a better way to solve disagreements than "my stick is bigger that yours."

Some articles the you might find interesting:

The Story Behind The Drawings
The Editor and The 12 Cartoons
The Muhammad Drawings
Holocaust Cartoon Contest In Iran

protest photos are from foxnews.com and Michelle Malkin

posted by jeanne @ 11:40

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