DISPLAYING all the insecurities of a pre-pubescent brat, some South African Muslims – deeply upset that their efforts to quash the publication of a “gentle” Motoon failed miserably earlier this week – are now issuing death threats.
The cartoon by Zapiro was published in the Mail & Guardian after a court ruled against the South African Muslim Judicial Council. The humourphobic Council then called on its followers to express their condemnation and disapproval of it.
The council’s website say:
The Muslim community takes this opportunity to express the deep hurt it feels  … The Muslim leadership appeals to all Muslims to express their condemnation and disapproval of this latest insult on the Muslim community in a responsible and dignified manner.
It snivels on:
Muslims in South Africa have struggled and sacrificed side by side with its fellow citizens to work for a free and democratic society based on the values of human dignity and honour to its entire people.
It is therefore extremely disappointing that the Mail & Guardian adopts this deplorable policy of complete disregard for the religious sensibilities of Muslims, a significant faith community of our country and likely a sizeable segment of the readership of the paper.
On Friday morning M&G editor-in-chief Nic Dawes and other staff were fielding a flood of angry callers, and even death threats hit the newspaper’s office.
“You’ve got to watch your back” and “This will cost him his life” were some of the remarks made.
The cartoon followed the furore surrounding the Facebook page, “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day“, which was sparked by threats by a radical Muslim group against the creators of US TV series South Park for depicting the prophet in a bear suit.
But Zapiro’s cartoon, published in Friday’s M&G, was far gentler in its satire, depicting the prophet reclining on a psychiatrist’s couch and bemoaning his followers’ lack of humour.
When Dawes first saw the cartoon he said he thought it “a gentle and irreverent poke” at the hysteria that had greeted the Facebook page.
In its application in South Gauteng High Court to have the cartoon quashed, the Council repeatedly raised the spectre of a violent backlash, saying that the timing of the cartoon was bad because of a possible threat to the Soccer World Cup.
It added that while it wouldn’t advocate violence, it couldn’t necessarily guarantee that there wouldn’t be any.
Said Dawes:
We very much saw that as a threat …
Best comment posted under the M&G report comes from Carla Bauer:
Oh good grief, the Muslims should just get over themselves …! Why should the rest of the world tip-toe around them? This is a harmless cartoon. I for one am sick of the Muslims’ nonsense, and I suspect most of the world feels the same way.
This video says it all about the Magic Carpet People – but be warned: it contains VERY profane language! Best line: Saying Muslims aren’t extremists is like saying Christians aren’t annoying.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:21 pm
The South African Muslim Judicial Council said, “Muslims in South Africa have struggled and sacrificed side by side with its fellow citizens to work for a free and democratic society”.
What a load of bollox. Be a muslim or die, and while we destroy you from within, we don’t take any shit. Am I right?
Not only has their outrage created more Motoons than ever before, people are getting tired of their squealing.
Besides, Thor kicks ass better than Mo & Allah:
http://up-ship.com/blog/wp-con.....7/thor.jpg
And here’s a “deeply offensive” pic of Mo;
http://img.villagephotos.com/p.....hammed.jpg
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Am I the only one who sees the rugbutters’ confession that they are enemies of free speech as a confession that they are enemies of the human race?
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Well, one gets the feeling that being outraged is just the core-business of these people. Not much we can do about it, apart from hoping they’ll die from high blood-pressure. I know I wouldn’t last long if I had to be rabidly stupid for 24/7.
Don’t these morons understand they’re boring us to death with their stories? Or is that what they’re aiming at? I wonder who’s boss at their house.
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Why is it that if I threatened to kill someone the police would come down on me like a ton of bricks in most countries? Whereas these tits can shout and scream threats and burn flags and get away with it? How do they manage to get hold of the appropriate country’s flag so quickly? Is there a muslim branch of ‘Flags R Us’ in every city?
May 23rd, 2010 at 10:18 pm
The muslim community is “deeply hurt”. and…
So fucking what!
May 23rd, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Here we go again:
It added that while it wouldn’t advocate violence, it couldn’t necessarily guarantee that there wouldn’t be any.
Oh, the stench of hypocrisy!
May 23rd, 2010 at 11:45 pm
I think it’s more accurate to say “the Muslim community pretends to be hurt”!
May 24th, 2010 at 12:02 am
No they’re not “deeply hurt”. That is a lie. It’s all a lie. They’re just belligerent terrorists, crying like spoiled children to get their own way.
May 24th, 2010 at 12:10 am
Good point Prime Numbers. Check out this hilarious link which I’ve added to the main report
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/295289
This gem from someone called Saj was just posted on an earlier report:
You can offend all you like. Have nothing better to do with your lives than take pot shot at more than 1 billion people. You sad losers. If it wasn’t wasn’t for the muslims teaching you to bathe you would probably have all died from the plague. You lunatics even had to be tought to count. If it wasn’t for muslims you probably still be throwing Sh*t at each other.
May 24th, 2010 at 1:04 am
By pointing out that the prophet ‘mohammed’ is a paedo (Aisha) and his pathetic, dickless followers are nothing but a bunch of misogynistic, cowardly, impotent bunch of rug butters and camel shaggers – would that be deemed as offensive?
Oh, I do hope so.
May 24th, 2010 at 2:17 am
Harwood asked:
“Am I the only one who sees the rugbutters’ confession that they are enemies of free speech as a confession that they are enemies of the human race?”
No, I stand with you on this one.
Just like any street gang or drug ring, you cannot make the situation better until the residents take the streets back themselves. Telling the police when events occur, identifying suspects, and shooting their asses when they bring their issues onto your property.
If they want to make blasphemy against the pedophile prophet a beheading offense, then I think that tear gas, bean bags, and fire hoses should accompany every protest they hold (with M-16s as backup).
But, by the way, I have received a great deal of abuse from people who imagine themselves to be freethinkers. And again and again read of agnostics and humanists referred to as freethinkers. What do you say Harwood, even though I do not call myself atheist.
NeoWolfe
May 24th, 2010 at 3:13 am
BarryDuke added…
This gem from someone called Saj was just posted on an earlier report:
You can offend all you like. Have nothing better to do with your lives than take pot shot at more than 1 billion people. You sad losers. If it wasn’t wasn’t for the muslims teaching you to bathe you would probably have all died from the plague. You lunatics even had to be tought to count. If it wasn’t for muslims you probably still be throwing Sh*t at each other.
Well this Saj guy is like the xtians in that he makes schite up about history as he wishes it to be. The basic facts are correct but what he leaves out is this occurred when xtians were the ass-holes of civilization and the muslims not only were more tolerant of others BUT THEY BELIEVED SCIENCE WAS OK which is why they had the zero, medicine, optics, & azimuth. They did not teach us to bathe because europe didn’t start bathing in the way we are familiar with until the 1800s. And compared to the Romans and Crete muslims don’t bathe much either! They then became the dick heads they now are because some bat-schite crazy religious twit decided the islams were not pious enough and they shunned science and started acting like assholes.
Data above from James Burke’s Connections and from USM comparative religions class.
So Saj islam had a great start then BLEW IT AWAY in the allah delusion.
May 24th, 2010 at 3:39 am
Neowolfe,
I think you’re confusing freethinking with politeness.
Asshat
May 24th, 2010 at 6:39 am
@Neo
“But, by the way, I have received a great deal of abuse from people who imagine themselves to be freethinkers. And again and again read of agnostics and humanists referred to as freethinkers”.
Please don’t be discouraged from posting, I look forward to reading your opinions.
May 24th, 2010 at 9:00 am
James Burke’s Connections: I remember that series well! I still have the book somewhere, and a couple of others that he wrote. (The Day The World Changed is a great read if you can get hold of a copy now.)
As with the question of morality, it’s funny (well, not quite so funny, actually) to hear that the ancient Romans and Greeks, not to mention Babylonians, Egyptians, Mayans et al, couldn’t count! And of course, the concept of Zero came from India – but why let the facts get in the way of your ridiculous, myopic world-view?
May 24th, 2010 at 9:28 am
Bjohn,
The scientific advances of the Ottoman Empire were truly amazing. While Europe was in the depths of the Dark Ages, those “rug butters” were pioneering steam power and hydraulics. Much of that technology was stolen during the crusades and brought back to Europe. I’m not defending the neanderthals, I’m just keeping the record honest.
NeoWolfe
May 24th, 2010 at 9:42 am
‘They did not teach us to bathe because europe didn’t start bathing in the way we are familiar with until the 1800s.’
They didn’t teach us to bathe because the old Europeans were already washing before they’d had any contact with Muslims. Ibn Fadlan, the Islamic trader and explorer, makes comments about Vikings washing in his description of life with the Rus. Some of the old sagas refer to people in the river washing their bodies or hair. You are absolutely right in your assertion – many ancient peoples washed about once a week, Christians less frequently for some mad reason – but this a4sehole is also wrong in the far greater sense that he is pompously, and wrongly, claiming that Europeans didn’t understand that immersing their body in water cleansed it before a rug-butter first appeared on their turf.
The so-called ‘Arabic’ numerical system was also poached from India and the Indians are never given credit for this. You can clearly see the evidence of that in the shape and form of modern Hindi numerical symbols, too. Inventing algebra, yes, ok, but this myth that ‘Muslims’ invented numbers is getting old. There are a number of far more ancient and venerable civilisations than the 1400-odd year old one founded by Mohammed that had already developed sophisticated numerical systems by the time the ‘Prophet’ first married a woman twice his age and acted as her accountant.
Mind you, what with the spelling and grammar ‘issues’ of that poster, I suppose an atrocious grasp of history is par for the course.
May 24th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Teaching us to bathe eh. Long thick greasy beards come to mind.
May 24th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
I imagine if you live in an arid country where water (and its delivery) is at a premium, washing comes a little way down your list of priorities.
May 24th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
NeoWolfe: The idiot claimed that it was Muslims who taught the world to count! Perhaps if you didn’t have to disagree with practically every bloody post on this site you wouldn’t attract so much fucking criticism!!
May 24th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
A freethinker is any person who is willing to go with the evidence regardless of where it leads.
An atheist is any person who does NOT believe he is the domesticated livestock of the protagonist of a book of early iron age fairy tales. If he believes that gods do not exist, that is something extra. It is not what makes him an atheist. By rejecting the commonly accepted definition of the word and substituting his own interpretation of what it means, anyone could argue that he is not an atheist, or a primate, or a mammal (Do creationists deny that they are mammals? or primates?). But he would be arguing from an invalid perspective.
An agnostic is a person who does not know if he is the creation of the biblical god. Applying the word to any other situation, such as not knowing whether there are lifeforms somewhere in the universe so technologically advanced that we might view them as gods, is inappropriate.
I do not like being called an atheist, simply because theists pretend that it means someone as dogmatic as themselves. I prefer “nontheist”, which means exactly the same thing. But I would not pretend that I am NOT an atheist, since the only way I could make such a claim would be to accept the Alice in Wonderland reasoning that a word means whatever I want it to mean.
I do not know as a proven fact that there are not intelligent lepidopteroids on the thirteenth planet of Betelgeuse. But since the probability of an intrinsically improbable product of the human imagination having a parallel in the real universe is vanishingly small, I state with confidence that there is no such thing as a fairy. I am open to evidence falsifying that conclusion. But as Carl Sagan observed, “you do not want to keep your mind so open that your brain is likely to fall out.”
Those are my priorities. No one else is required to accept them for himself. But to argue that they are wrong is to venture into Wonderland.
May 24th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
I do not have the slightest interest in football, but every time that the world cup comes around, English pundits start going on about 1966. As time has gone on, I feel that this has become progressively more and more pathetic, England won the world cup once and only once, on their own turf, and that was now 44 years ago. How much more pathetic would they seem if they were still banging on about it in 2966? Well Saj, that is you, the world of Islam was indeed a beacon of learning a thousand years ago, it gave us a leg up with our maths, lenses, chess, kebabs and very much more. But what has the Islamic world done since? More to the point WHY has the Islamic world given so little to the world since? The western world has advanced in direct proportion to its abandonment of religion, that seems to be the lesson that you have yet to learn.
May 24th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Crap, here we go again. I thought maybe Harwood and I were orbiting back toward some common ground, but, now he says:
“An agnostic is a person who does not know if he is the creation of the biblical god.”
Bullshit!!!!! Let me quote from wiki:
“Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable.[1] Agnosticism can be defined in various ways, and is sometimes used to indicate doubt or a skeptical approach to questions. In some senses, agnosticism is a stance about the similarities or differences between belief and knowledge, rather than about any specific claim or belief.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism
At the risk of pissing off Bjohn, I will say again that the assumption of facts not yet proven is “religion”. The unprovable assumption that there was no designer of the universe (religious mythology aside) may be intuitively attractive, it is not proven fact. And there are scientific facts, laws of chemistry, laws of probability that make the assumption counter intuitive.
The most recent installment of Steven Hawking’s new series on the Discovery Channel ends with a question. (Paraphrase) Does the fact that the sun is the perfect size to last the maximum amount of years, or the fact that the earth is the perfect distance from the sun, or the presence of water in the ideal amount to create an environment that nurtures life an indication that the universe had a designer? His answer to his own question: ” Not necessarily.” AGNOSTIC!!!!
NeoWolfe2
May 25th, 2010 at 12:31 am
Why drag me into this argument? I didn’t even mention the subject – I only commented on what Saj was reported to have said!
May 25th, 2010 at 12:36 am
He probably gets his “facts” from this site!
http://www.thekeytoislam.com/e.....ions.shtml
May 25th, 2010 at 1:30 am
On EDMD, I had some religiot post in response to my comment about free speech. Can’t find it now (the page, and hence my comment, keep disappearing and reappearing at odd intervals). Suffice to say, it was a link to a site about how atheists were supposedly easier to convert to islam than others (an argument based on “there is no god”, which the atheist would be trained to follow with “but Allah”). Other than showing her evident lack of understanding for scientific atheism, the mullah in the article went on to explain how the scientific revelations (I kid you not) of the koran were staggering for their time, including that the earth was sperical, moonlight was reflected light, and the human body was made of water. I politely replied that to think nobody suspected, knew, or even had proven these things before the koran was written revealed a lack of knowledge of history (even giving her the benefit of the doubt by not pointing out that the body is made only MOSTLY of water, with many other molecules), she failed to respond. Just goes to show, these fundies don’t want a discussion, don’t want to learn, don’t want anything but to increase those who believe their crap and mark those who actually think for themselves and learn facts.
May 25th, 2010 at 5:16 am
I find it quite ironic, that after reading this page for the first time, that the website is called freethinkers. To simply insult people blindly is in no way to be a free-thinking individual, it is in fact to be just as rabidly fundamentalist as the Muslims who you so scorn for their dogmatism.
Perhaps, one should step back and look at the situation as a whole, rather then counting specifics.
May 25th, 2010 at 6:09 am
Wow, this is so sad. I think liberal Middle Easterners are definitely the ones stuck with the fuzzy end of this lollipop. We have hypocritical Islamic fundamentalists who want to take us back to the Dark Ages and cut our throats if we speak up on one end and fascist neo-imperialists calling us rug-butters and camel-shaggers and beating us up in the streets on the other. Meanwhile the banks and oil companies are robbing the masses blind. Nice work, men behind the curtain.
May 25th, 2010 at 8:25 am
Well said, blabla,
While I do believe the elimination of religion is a huge step toward the survival of humanity, it is not the ultimate solution. We must also eliminate our greed.
But, it seems to me that it is your culture who is playing “street gang” saying, “respect us and let us live our culture in your civilization, or we will murder you en mass”. Well, I see that as a declaration of war. And for all your posturing, I really don’t think you want to go there. Given provokation, we can and will, really fuck you up.
NeoWolfe
May 25th, 2010 at 9:04 am
Well said Neo
http://xexyz.com/temp/DealingWithMuslims.jpg
May 25th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Thomas Huxley, who coined the word, wrote in 1889, “Agnosticism is not a creed but a method … do not pretend conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable.”
Clearly I made a mistake in paraphrasing a secondary source instead of going to the original.
May 26th, 2010 at 4:37 am
Evan, I’ve had some really nice conversations with a Muslim man I used to work with. He had been in the military (US), and was a pretty intelligent guy. We had a great conversation in Japan where he tried to explain the wonders of the koran, and I said that I thought mo was just making most of it up. He never threatened me once. Many liberal Muslims are okay people, though religiosity itself is a bit odd to me, but when somebody tells me “convert or shut up until we get around to killing the infidels,” I don’t think it inappropriate to respond with ridicule to their beliefs, and certainly not inappropriate to defend myself should they actually attempt to carry out those beliefs.
May 26th, 2010 at 9:42 am
Trust me, if these fundamentalist ‘street gangs’ take to murdering en mass, they will start with liberal and ex-Muslims first. The average Mo wants nothing to do with these people. Look at the protests that have been going on in Iran in the past year. There are plenty of people in various parts of the world who are fed up with these bloated clergymen preaching to them left and right and then selling them (and their oil) out. Religious fundamentalists are not ‘our culture.’ They infest our culture. Culture is comprised of music, art, literature and language. Things that religious extremists despise and censor (and that’s everywhere not just within Islam.) I just hope people remember to draw lines between culture and religion, as well as between religion and extremism. And that includes my own people.
May 31st, 2010 at 1:07 pm
All religions have their extremists and intollerant ones including christians, jews, muslims, hindus and so on. bigtory unfortunately is a common human theme. Don’t forget all the hoohahs we had over the Monty Pyton’s Life of Brian. TV in England did not lift the ban until 1991 ! We have not progressed that much as some of you think we have.