I am not a fan of South Park, but I enjoyed episodes 200 and 201 enormously. What they show, like the Danish cartoons did, is that unthinking Muslims are all too ready to take offence and behave like spoilt children wanting special treatment. The South Park episodes and the cartoons are nothing more than a mirror held up to an ugly face.
Let me carefully explain to readers why the cartoon competition was launched. It is simply that people are fed up with death threats and being told what to do by a group of humorless fanatics.
The prohibition on depictions of Muhammad (which equally applies to all Prophets) is to stop iconography – making images which themselves become objects of worship.
Cartoons are not going to be worshipped – just ignored or laughed at depending on whether or not you agree with their message.
A handful of brave people were prepared to express their views about Islam and the political fascism which acts in its name and to suffer the isolation and disruption to their lives that resulted. Some died for their pains.
Now, those who believe that freedom of thought and expression is the only way in which our species can advance have stood up to join them.
Those who live in the United States value the most precious thing in their Constitution — the First Amendment.
Those whose parents and grandparents fought against the evil of fascism in World War II treasure the Declaration of Human Rights that was their parents’ hope for a future free of repression.
And now, like Gandhi, they say they will resist — freedom is too important to lose.
If enough draw cartoons then the enemies of freedom will not be able to find and threaten or kill all the artists and sooner or later they will give up their murderous threats.
I cannot draw and I do not wish to join the Facebook community. I have no wish to participate in the competition; mostly because I see no point in cartoons about a leader so long dead, any more than there would be any point in making fun of Genghis Khan or Hitler.
If I want to see something truly ludicrous, all I have to do is to look at the news images of the angry protesters. They make excellent fun of themselves.
Rafiq Mahmood
Bogor, West Java
