Today is: International Everyone Draw Mohammed Day

May 20, 2010 at 3:30 pm

As covered last month here on AllSeeingEye and covered everywhere else today – except on the BBC – today is International Everyone Draw Mohammed Day. Their Facebook page is here and blog is here.

Oh, and also strangely missed by Google’s search prediction algorithm. Not for the first time. They have form for this sort of thing, though.

For those who don’t recall, this was inspired by a jihadist death threat against the creators of South Park and was originally suggested by Seattle artist Molly Norris. South Park had this dialogue:




Freedom of speech is at stake here, don’t you all see? If anything, we should all make cartoons of Mohammed and show the terrorists and the extremists that we are all united in the belief that every person has a right to say what they want. Look people, it’s been really easy for us to stand up for free speech lately. For the past few decades, we haven’t had to risk anything to defend it. One of those times is right now. And if we aren’t willing to risk what we have now, then we just believe in free speech, but won’t defend it.

(Later censored) dialogue on South Park

From the rationale behind the effort:

Freedom of speech has been under attack for much of my life. It started with Salmon Rushdie. He dared to write a book in which a fictional character said something bad about Mohammed, and for that they put a fatwah, a decree that he should be murdered. And many people died bravely to bring that book to market. It continued when Theo Van Gogh made a movie critiquing how Islamic culture treated women. They killed him for that. Then the Danish created cartoons and we didn’t stand with them. Finally, South Park made a two part episode in which they took on the controversy, and Comedy Central censored the image of Mohammed, explicitly citing the fear of violence. And for their 200th and 201st episodes, the guys at South Park did it again, and under threat from a bunch of idiots called Revolution Islam, Comedy Central censored them again. They even censored a speech about the need for courage.

This has got to stop. Someone has to stand up for freedom of speech.

So, there is is. Go to their blog as see some of the cartoon attempts. Show some solidarity with what they are trying to do.

Remember, folks: no actual prophets or people were harmed in the creation or publication of this cartoon. So lighten and stop being so sensitive.

UPDATE: Reader ‘Katabasis’ has already been getting involved. Any more contributions from readers?