Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

So far, the answer is clearly no. Go vote yourself on Expelled: The Movement’s website.

Twelve cartoons were drawn on September 30, 2005 by the editors of Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, to show Muhammad as they believed he should look. These cartoons drew the wrath of the entire Muslim community, and are reproduced below with commentary. The BBC notes, “It is the satirical intent of the cartoonists, and the association of the Prophet with terrorism, that is so offensive to the vast majority of Muslims.” It is up to you to decide if they are legitimate commentary or blasphemy.

Mohammed wanders the desert, leading a camel far behind him as the sun sets. I read this as an allusion to Jesus who wandered the desert for 40 days and 40 nights resisting temptation and praying, unless there is a parallel story in Islam which I don’t know about. I’ve never had the chance to read the Koran. So, by drawing the prophet in the desert, the first cartoon attempts to bridge Christianity and Islam.

Mohammed is depicted with a halo of horns made from the Islamic crescent symbol. Clearly the intent is to cast the prophet as a demon in thin disguise, which is insensitive because it does not give us a context in which to reinterpret him. OK, you tell us Islam / Mohammed is evil. Why should we believe you because you childishly draw horns on him?

In this third cartoon, the prophet Mohammed is drawn intertwined with the star & crescent. This is an obvious but necessary connection, because without Mohammed there would be no Islam. As the editor is trying to show, the two are synonymous.

It’s harder to interpret this picture of Mohammed in black with two veiled “virgins” and a short sword in his hand. It is clearly intended to contrast the so-called “promised virgins” that a Jihadist is promised in Heaven with women’s rights, terrorism, and Islam. The women are wide-eyed, indicating that either they disapprove of violence, or that they do not relish satisfying a killer in his personal heaven. The prophet’s eyes are censored–I don’t know why.

“Stop, stop, we ran out of virgins!” the fifth reads. I find this just amusing, especially given that the idea of having 72 virgins waiting for you in heaven may be a mistranslation:

Luxenberg tries to show that many obscurities of the Koran disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic. Luxenberg’s new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields “white raisins” of “crystal clarity” rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins – the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offerred [sic], and not unsullied maidens or houris.

The sixth cartoon is one of many meta-cartoons by the editors which decry their reactionary attempts to redefine Mohammed in a modern context. However, the shirt of the boy reads “the future” and the board reads “The editorial team of Jyllands-Posten is a bunch of reactionary provocateurs.” We should take this to indict any kind of overreaction by traditional Muslims.

“To draw the Prophet is to die,” thinks this scared editorial cartoonist furtively drawing Mohammed. If Islam were a religion of peace, would he look so nervous? Conversations are protected under free speech, not persecuted by charges of blasphemy.

The text, which is hard to make out, reads, “Hm… I can’t really recognize him” and “Kåre’s public relations, call and get an offer.” Apparently the editor wants to equate all world religions and all kinds of people together in a gigantic mashup.

If you remember the old bat-light they used to call batman by projecting his logo into the sky, you’ll instantly recognize this call for the people of the book with the Star of David and the Crescent and Moon prominently jutting up into the sky. Does this mean Islam needs more heroes? The text (Prophet, you crazy bloke! Keeping women under yoke) seems to indicate it needs more female ones…

Another pro-free-speech cartoon degrading the Muslim and Arabic response to religious criticism. Why should they worry about a cartoon drawn by some guy from the middle of nowhere? Their heresies are our freedoms.

The most controversial of the cartoons, this one features the Islamic creed written on the helm and a lit fuse and bomb instead of a turban. The idea is dumb–Islam brings suicide bombers. But the image itself is powerful, and the overstated fact is true. Why are there not any Christian suicide bombers? Why aren’t there any atheist suicide bombers??

Another meta-cartoon, this one is excited about all the publicity these cartoons will generate for their publication. I have no comment.

I don’t buy the religious argument that getting the HPV vaccine for young women is immoral. HPV is a nasty, prevalent virus and should be eradicated with as much expediency as possible:

Gardasil, which was approved by the FDA last June, protects against four strains of human papillomavirus (HPV). Two are believed to cause 70% of cervical cancer, which strikes about 11,000 U.S. women a year. The other two strains cause 90% of genital warts–so the vaccine is a twofer.

According to the Time article, 40% of women carry the virus 2 years after sexual maturity, say at 18 years of age. By age 50, 80% of women have it in some form or another. Let’s assume the vaccine Gardasil was 90% efficient in preventing HPV; then after 50 years just 8% of women would carry the virus. Assuming everyone in America decided to vaccinate their daughters, they would see their great-grandchildren’s generation entirely disease free:

This is simply the converging sequence population*(1 – effective rate)^n. There are other factors to take into account, like the number of people who opt to receive the vaccine, which will initially be quite low, combined with the likelyhood of them being a transmitter of the virus. Since my math is sketchy tonight I feel like modeling a markov chain, but suffice to say, preventing America’s young women from contracting HPV is a good thing.

Enlighten me where Christianity comes in, please? You could argue that educating your daughters will in the future promote their immorality because they will become erudite objects of desire, and it would be nearly parallel and equally nonsensical. Never let religion stand in the way of medicine.