I’ve been wondering whether Arabic cartoonists ever portrayed God or Jesus in cartoons.
I did a quick web search, and discovered that the satirical cartoon actually has a rich history in the Arabic press. Which makes it difficult for people to claim that Muslims simply don’t understand the purpose of satirical cartoons. Most cartoons seemed to be directed at the evil Jews and their American puppetmasters. Here are a few examples.
However, I couldn’t find many representations of God. My initial thought is that they must be out there, I just couldn’t find them in amongst all the millions of documents about the current cartoon scandal But at the same time, I wonder whether it is actually because I simply don’t understand the Islamic mindset yet when it comes to representations of God & prophets.
One explanation I found as to why there might be so few images of God in Arabic cartoons was the following in the comments section of an SFGate article:
Arab newspapers do not print anti-Judaism or anti-Christianity cartoons in any newspaper anywhere in the Middle East. Why? Because Muslims think that Jesus and Moses were prophets and they think it would be a sin to mock them. Arab newspapers do make fun of politician who happen to be Jewish or Christian but those are political not religious cartoons.
Here is the only representation of God in an Arabic cartoon I could find – by Bendib, who is actually an American cartoonist of Lebanese origin. I couldn’t tell from the article whether it was actually published in the Middle East or not. Given that it’s in English, I’d assume not, but there are some English language newspapers in the Islamic community, so I can’t tell for sure.
Unfortunately, I don’t really know enough of the Arabic press to go further with this. Does anyone out there have a better idea of how common religious images are in satirical cartoons?
Update: Harry’s Place has details of the Arab European League, which has promised to publish cartoons which will:
…systematically publish daring cartoons produced by our own AEL cartoonist “Nabucho” and breaking many taboos in Europe.
The “Hitler raping Anne Frank” cartoon might get a little play in the media but as Harry points out, by and large, they really aren’t all that shocking:
There are two points to make here. First “Jews and Nazis” is a familiar theme of Arab – and indeed many European – cartoons. And Holocaust denial is the stock in trade of Islamist politics. So this is hardly the ‘shock of the new’.
The AEL website is a little flaky, by the way, so if you have trouble accessing the cartoons, try looking on the AEL blog instead.
I’ve yet to see any satirical cartoons in the Arab world press, but then I only read the English ones.
The ‘Danish cartoons’ were commissioned and published in September 2005. The commissioner/publisher (for more about them & their Bilderberg links see here:
http://thetruthserumblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/bilderberg-and-prophet-cartoons-plot.html), not content with the ‘limited’ reaction in Denmark, decided to intensify his campaign by publishing in Norway, and then by onward publishing the issue throughout Europe & publicizing the issue in the Middle East. This re-publication was all based on the completely bogus explanation of expressing solidarity with the free speech rights of their beleaguered Danish colleagues. Of course, free speech was never the issue.
The cabal wanted to provoke the kind of violent protests in the Middle East that it felt would be useful in promoting anti-immigration policies in Europe, and in furthering their twisted political goals. They would have kept publishing until they got the response they wanted.
From http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HB07Ak03.html
Free press? How come we hear so little from the same free press about European governments helping the US ferry people for extraordinary rendition – on no fewer than 800 flights over four years, according to Amnesty International – to be tortured in places where it is legal to do so? How is it that nobody in the European free press is talking much about the fact that Iran stopped any further discussion of its nuclear program because the three EU leaders who were parleying with them reneged on their side of the bargain, by not ensuring Iran security in the event of a foreign invasion?
We hear nothing from the free press about the fact that the success of Hamas in the recent elections may have more to do with its schools and health clinics for beleaguered Palestinian communities (while the generous ‘international community’ has abandoned them) than with its purported Islamic fundamentalism.
The ‘free’ media in the West do not bother to investigate the analogous events of September 11, 2001, or allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency itself may have been involved in the Bali bombings of 2002. It does not make any demands of the Bush administration to release the more than 1,700 pictures and videos of tortures and humiliations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that the Pentagon has kept away from the public eye.
We have to hear from bloggers on the Internet about the US forces in Iraq kidnapping women and girls related to suspected insurgents. Needless to mention, no dead American soldiers are shown on the TV screens of the Western media (though there is no bar on showing those killed by suicide bombers in Baghdad). How often is it remembered, not to speak of responsibility taken for the fact, that genocidal UN sanctions prosecuted by the West killed more than a million innocent people in Iraq in the 1990s? The free media in the West keep secret from the public the fact that the US has for years given asylum to proven terrorists such as Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada, wanted by Latin American governments for blowing up planes and suchlike. They are exempt from the ‘war on terror’.
Above all, the media do little to ask for the impeachment of the consummate liars and mass-murderers who occupy elected positions in more than one Western democracy today, even as they pretend to teach lessons in political morals to less fortunate countries.
Free press? Or cowardly media eager to please the wealthy masters?
Ah. I see. Well that explains that, then.
It took me about two minutes to find Egyptian cartoons where the Star of David is turned into a Swastika. If you scroll through the cartoons, you will find several other examples.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/egpress2.html
Seems to me that these could be considered anti-judaism and downright offensive to any Jew.
Seems like a bit of hypocrisy.