I understand why Muslims wouldn't want to draw Mohammed but insisting that non Muslims shouldn't draw Mohammed is insane. This would be like Buddhists insisting that since to them, meat eating is abhorrent, they ( or a "small minority" ) would feel offended enough to kill someone who did.
Now I am going to draw a Mohammed stick figure and put it up on my website. It is "Everybody draw Mohammed" day after all, no matter what the cowards at Facebook think. Lots of people don't friggin believe in the sanctity of this "prophet" or his religion so why should they abide by his mandates? All Religion should die and be some kind of fringe cult so the rest of us can live in peace. Hopefully in a few centuries.
If you have something worthwhile to say about Mohammed and his teachings (be it for or against) and a depiction of him will help, go ahead and draw him. If however, you're doing it just because you can, then you're doing nothing to help reduce inter-religion tension and, in fact, are exhibiting some of the same sort of dogmatic insistence that everyone conform to your views that you are railing against.
(NB speculation as i am not a muslim, i know only a small number of muslims personally and obviously haven't surveyed the world's muslim population for this). The subset of muslims who will threaten to kill you over this is VERY small and the proportion of that group who would actually ever attempt to do anything about it is miniscule. However, the number of muslims who would find your gesture unfriendly or just straight offensive is quite large. Net result: you've upset a large body of people with whom you have no real quarrel and the people whom you have a real beef with have 'proof' that the non-muslim world wants to undermine Islam.
In my opinion, if the picture on your website has no context (and a link to Facebook group isn't a proper context), then you haven't really helped matters and have probably hindered them.
Agreed. But I think individual rights triumph the need for harmony with people who seek to rule our minds and tongues.
> in fact, are exhibiting some of the same sort of dogmatic insistence that everyone conform to your views that you are railing against.
How so? I'm not trying to change how anyone else thinks, or what they say.
What is the issue is when people use depictions of Mohammad as a way of insulting Muslims. Stick figures don't do that. Pictures of Mohammad as a terrorist do. That's what triggered riots. Note that out of a billion Muslims, the only people complaining about the recent Southpark episode were a tiny nutball group in NYC founded by a former Jew.
But hey! By all means, put a stupid drawing on your website. That'll change the world! Muslims that see it will just assume that you're an ignorant bigot who hates Muslims, but I'm sure you'll feel better, and isn't that what this is all about? Having an excuse for self-righteous moral preening? Feeling smug and superior without actually doing anything to improve the world?
You're not standing up for any rights. You're not challenging a power structure and you're not risking anything. You're mocking a tiny powerless religious minority. That's it. The only standing that you're doing is with bigots.
Think for a moment and explain to me how this "coordinated" action makes the world a better place. Explain what change you expect to happen and how you plan to effect it.
Edited to add: Why do you believe a group that murders and threatens people with death (fundamentalist muslims) are powerless?
Many many groups murder and threaten people with death (some of these we call "governments"). The US started a war that exterminated a million people for no reason. We didn't just threaten people, we actually killed a lot of them. And yet many Americans are perfectly reasonable people who are very friendly. What a paradox.
Having actually studied Islamist movements a bit, I know something you don't. Most of them don't care about you. You are not important, and no matter how many pictures of Mohammad you draw, you will never be important. Their priority is some local and often nationalist issue. They. Just. Don't. Care. About. You.
A small number of Islamist groups might care about "Americans" in a broader sense. But these groups generally lack both capabilities and competence. Smart people consider capabilities when analyzing threats. People that hate you but are powerless don't count when it comes to rational threat analysis. A few nutjobs in New York are not a real threat.
I tell you what: why don't you list for me the many acts of horrific violence that have come about because of the giant frieze of Mohammad on the Supreme Court building and I'll seriously consider the danger you face. Deal?
Regardless of the stance on free speech, pictures of Mohammed are offensive to Muslims.
Given their previous policy, I don't think this is any surprise or should get any analysis beyond the attention paid to prior examples . . .
There are groups who will threaten violence against neo-nazis. That does not justify allowing neo-nazi stuff because there are still millions offended by it.
The same holds true here, IMO. Of course, I am very biased. But that also means that I am part of the OVERWHELMING group who feels offended but isn't threatening anyone.
Examples of religion causing meaningful offense: Talk to your local gay marriage activist.
If it amounts to hate speech it's a violation of their TOS and gets pulled, so I'm curious what was actually being posted in the discourse that warranted this.
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=1227378910...
Join it! Promote it!
I can certainly see why they pulled this page.
Public corporations in the United States are licensed for the purpose of maximizing shareholder value. This alone is not prima facie lassez faire, but the balancing regulatory framework for corporations is reasonably asserted as mostly lassez faire. (There really aren't any examples of 100% anything goes capitalism in the world.)
When Facebook makes a decision, it is to maximize business value, as in shareholder value. If a person makes a case for public corporation free will, I think it's pretty reasonable to respond with assumptions based on the actual nature of the entity we are talking about.
Which part is damaging to my credibility? Unpopular, perhaps, but lacking credibility?
Are you switching into attack mode, tptacek?
[Edit: Oops, I thought Facebook is public already. My bad, thanks philwelch for the catch, now that is damaging to my credibility ;-]
When did they IPO?
I once discussed this with a US Attorney. Shareholder value is actually a fairly nebulous concept. All sorts of corporate actions that promote goodwill in the community can be cast as improving shareholder value, even if they are not profitable. Shareholder value requires a great deal more subjective assessment than one might think. So I don't think it makes sense to speak about corporate motivations exclusively in terms of narrow short term profit motive.
(There really aren't any examples of 100% anything goes capitalism in the world.)
Somalia?
Facebook is enough of a utility / sticky service that banning free speech that is not clearly against TOS (and this is NOT a hate group!) is unethical.
Facebook is a website to post some crap on. There are thousands of such sites, they weren't granted a monopoly, and they didn't build infrastructure.
I'm all for freedom of speech, and I think that the picture of Mohammad day is a celebration of that, and not wrong (do not liken making fun of crazy people to racism, it's not the same thing, and the draw Mohammad day event is specifically a protest against violent reprisals towards those who expressed their freedom of speech). However, Facebook is not a public forum, it's not government property, and it's not a utility. It is a privately owned website, and they can remove whatever they damn well please.
I guess I should say everyone flag it then. But who am I to tell people what to do?
- there's an historical archive here: http://zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/
You get an error: "Warning: This Message Contains Blocked Content. Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users."
This appears to be true only for publicly facing pages.
Funny note: Lots of people who accuse Facebook and others of cencsorships have no problem directorating their own blog.
Yes, surely that is the way to make all our lives better. How could it possibly go wrong?
That may be an excellent point for why Facebook (and similar services) need to be distributed to protect the Internet's free speech prerogative. It may be important to have free speech, but it also can be stupid to risk harm to innocent programmers, businessmen, and the like. Maybe as a whole if they decide they want to promote such a thing - fine, but they are not going against free speech if they don't want to take the risk of promoting that topic.
If free speech is only possible in anonymity, then you don't really have free speech.
That is why I'm saying: If you are on a distributed system where no select group of individuals are responsible for the system, you will have more free speech.