Where the heck have I been? Dunno. My blogging muse has been strangely absent this week. Whether or not she returns in the near future, posting here will be spotty at best for a while. I leave for Israel in a few days and there never seems to be enough time to write much while I'm there. OTOH, my mom now has broadband access so blogging won't be as frustrating as it's been in the past. So we'll see.
In the meantime, a few cartoon comments to close out the week.
(Forgive me if this has been observed elsewhere, but I haven't heard it, so maybe you haven't, either.) The general interpretation of the message behind the most well-publicized Mohammed cartoon -- the one with the bomb fuse on the turban -- seems to be that Mohammed was a terrorist, or that Muslims in general are terrorists, or that the Koran glorifies terrorism, or something along those lines. It's funny. My personal interpretation (or at least one message I've collected from considering the drawing) is quite different.
To me, it suggests that the "image" of Mohammed is being (mis)used by certain elements as a fuse to trigger violent confrontation between Muslims and "the West" and to justify the actions of extremists. Maybe I'm giving the artist too much credit. Maybe I'm reading far too much into what was intended to be simply an insulting and offensive picture. But maybe not. That cartoon can just as easily be read as an indictment of those who "hijack" Islam for their own illegitimate purposes as a condemnation of either the religion or its Prophet.
Now, I'm not actually an adherent of the "hijacking" theory. But that's entirely beside the point. When you're handed a lemon, why not make lemonade? Some of these cartoons could have served to encourage dialogue about the cynical abuse of religious doctrine and the exploitation of faith to serve aggression. Instead, the response embodies the essence of those evils.
And then there's this. Of all the possible assinine responses to the cartoon controversy, it would be hard to top Amitai Sandy, the Israeli graphic artist who's decided that the best way to fight Muslim antisemitism is to pile on some Jewish antisemitism. Way to go, Amitai. That'll show 'em.
That's it for this week. Next Shabbat in Jerusalem!
Shabbat Shalom.
