Amplify’d from newsweek.washingtonpost.com
Muslim cartoonist on “Draw Muhammad Day”
by G. Willow Wilson
This is the central tragedy of these endless cartoon scandals. No one is looking for a resolution. Drawing insulting depictions of the Prophet Muhammad has become a favorite pastime of hipster racists, whose bulbous-nosed bushy-bearded ‘satire’ resembles the anti-Semitic cartoons of the Third Reich. Thanks in no small part to the vigorous, often violent outcry from hardliners in the Muslim world, these artists are elevated to a kind of freedom-of-speech sainthood whether their work has any real merit or not. Death threats are issued, lives pointlessly imperiled, careers of pundits—never themselves in any danger—made overnight. Noted American Muslim leader Imam Zaid Shakir put it best: this isn’t the clash of civilizations. It’s the clash of the uncivilized.
What Norris failed to understand is that by creating events like “Draw Muhammad Day”, artists hurl rhetorical stones that go straight through their enemies and hit Muslims like me. Al Qaeda isn’t hurt by Draw Muhammad Day. Its entire PR campaign is built on incidents like these. Without the Molly Norrises and Jyllands Postens of the world, Al Qaeda would have to get a lot more creative with its recruitment strategies. Artists who caricature the Prophet inevitably claim, as Norris has done, that they never meant to hurt ordinary Muslims, but ordinary Muslims are the only ones who are hurt. As a Muslim in the comics industry I spend more time than is good for my mental health defending the art and the religion I love from each other. Events like the fallout from Draw Muhammad Day make me think I’m wasting my time—the hate runs too deep on both sides. My conscience won’t let me support the criminalizing of art, but neither will it let me support a parade of cartoons depicting lurid, racist stereotypes of Arab men and passing them off as satire of a holy figure.
