In checking Prof. Juan Cole’s blog this morning, I noticed he had a post up from a couple of days ago about Draw Muhammad Day. Prof. Cole essentially concludes that the event was reckless (in that it repeats behavior that has in the past inspired violence) and rude, and ponders the extent to which anti-Islamic bias is masquerading as support for free speech.

The juvenile “draw Muhammad” day has generally been avoided by professional editorial cartoonists. One Islamophobic theme apparent in the writing on it is that Muslims are peculiar in their thin-skinned responses to such assaults on their religious sensibilities and that members of other religions never riot or protest. This assertion is not only bigoted but it is silly. So here are some other needlessly offensive cartoon-drawing days that could be adopted by the jerks bothering Muslims today, just to show that they are jerks toward other communities as well. All these subjects have produced vigorous protests or rioting and violence among members of other religious traditions. Me, I think when you know people have died in violence over some piece of thoughtlessness, it is the height of irresponsibility to repeat it for no good reason.

I don’t doubt for a moment that there are various Muslim-bashers who jumped on the bandwagon for DMD, but I think the necessity of engaging in such behavior is demonstrated by the same events that lead Prof. Cole to conclude it’s irresponsible; namely, that religious fanatics often respond to dissenting views with violence. Since these whackjobs seek to suppress the rights of others, they need to be opposed, period. There’s no other justification required. It’s further incumbent, I think, upon citizens of the world’s remaining superpower, an ostensibly secular state, to carry out peaceful protest and opposition to these violent idiots, since we can do so in relative safety.

If it’s become irresponsible to challenge backwards fanatics, haven’t they already won? Don’t we lose our rights when we refuse to exercise them out of fear of illegal, violent retaliation?

Professor Cole then outlines a list of other drawing-based protests he came up with to show that, as he put it, you can be a jerk to a wide variety of people, not just Muslims. I disagree with the contention that DMD was targeted at Muslims as a whole, but I’m perfectly willing to extend the idea to challenge other groups of zealots who’ve trampled on the right to free expression. That, for me, was the whole point of DMD.

Thus, I completed his challenge, with some minor variations and two omissions for cause:

Proposed Comics #9, 6, and 1 concern the same Ultra-Orthodox extremists in Jerusalem, hating on, respectively, secular government social services, gay people and parking lots being open on Saturday. I compressed this into one comic to save time.

Proposed Comic #7 is about reaction to the performance of a play which concerns, at least in part, rape and violence in a Sikh temple. I completely support the right of a theatrical company to present such a play, but rape is, morally and legally, an offensive act in and of itself, so I won’t risk trivializing it with stick figure art. Thus, the cartoon concerns a stick figure PERFORMANCE of the same play that inspired violence.

Proposed Comic #5 concerns the idea of depicting the violent murder of a Hindu teacher in India, an event that set off a firestorm of retaliatory violence on both sides of a mixed Christian-Hindu community in India. The actual, real life murder of a teacher and his students is not equivalent to the performance of play, or the drawing of a semi-mythological figure from religion. It’s a crime, and a brutal offense. People being upset by it is perfectly rational and understandable, and while violent response to violence is often unproductive, it can’t be condemned in the same way as violence over a cartoon or a doodle. If someone shot up your school, you too might take up arms and commit retaliatory violence. A cartoon on the other hand never killed anyone. For this reason, I’ve omitted #5 entirely; it’s false equivalence to compare these events to violently responding to a form of personal expression.

Proposed Comic #2 concerns a Burger King advertisement in Spain that I think is utterly hilarious. It was also found to be offensive by members of the global Hindu community, and they responded by complaining to the corporation, which pulled the ad. The article mentions no violence or threats of any kind, simply public condemnation. This is how things are SUPPOSED to work in a civilized society; dialogue and conversation with, or at, people who upset you, not oppression or violent censorship. I think this is another false equivalence; you have every right to be offended by speech. Just don’t throw a brick through a window or plant a bomb or set someone’s house on fire. I see no reason to poke fun at a religious community that apparently chose an honorable and reasonable, above all CIVIL response to something that they found offensive.

(Burger King also ran an add that offended Mexican governmental officials, and that was pulled without violence. They really should get a better handle on their PR campaigns.)

So, with two exceptions and some modifications, I’ve taken up the challenge Prof. Cole outlined. While I am a jerk, I hope this goes some way to demonstrating that I’m not specifically being a jerk to Muslims. Rather, I want to annoy anyone who’d threaten or employ violence to silence criticism or commentary on their various mythological beliefs. I think it was that way for many people participating in Draw Muhammad Day.

Without further adieu, here are the truly awful drawings in question, including the original for DMD.

Muhammad Riding a Dinosaur

Naked Hindu Goddesses Riding a Plesiosaur

Various Offensive Things for Ultra Orthodox Zealots with Pteranodon

Stick Figure Production of Play Bezhti (with T-Rex in Audience)

Pool Party with Bikini Girls and Buddha Statue (with Velociraptors)

Orangemen Parade in Northern Ireland (with Pachycephalosaurus)

Soccer Player Using Witchcraft During Game in Kinshasa, with Stegosaurus. (Note: This drawing does not indicate in any way that I believe actual witchcraft occurred)

The entire set can be viewed on a subset of my Flickr page.

Long story short, in response to the South Park-Muhammad-Bear-Suit thing, secular groups at several universities, including here in town at UW-Madison, started drawing Muhammad in chalk. When campus Islamic groups reacted unfavorably, someone came up with the idea of ‘Draw Muhammad Day’ for May 20th. (I found out about it from the Friendly Atheist site)

I completely forgot about this all day, but fortunately, talent is not required, so I now present to the world my own personal drawing of Muhammad for Draw Muhammad Day.

I apologize to fans of dinosaur art everywhere. Heck, I even apologize to dinosaurs – they’ve been dead 65 million years and never did anything to deserve my scribbling.

I learn today through my compulsive news feed monitoring that May 6th, 2010 is the ‘National Day of Prayer’ here in the United States. I also learn that it may be the last. Hopefully.

My first inclination was naturally enough to ignore the whole thing. After all, I have chores to do, books to read, and a pleasant walk to the grocery store to make (because I forgot to buy onions last weekend). Why worry about the government poking the non-believer population with a rhetorical stick? Not like it’s the first time.

This year’s different though, and for whatever reason, there’s finally some real resistance to the most powerful government in the world leaning on its citizens to pray.

First, a Federal judge in Wisconsin is filling my transplanted heart with pride, having ruled that the government setting aside a day and telling its citizens to pray flies in the face of the First Amendment, which was supposed to leave such matters up to the individual:

In her ruling, Judge Crabb said that the NDP “serves no purpose but to encourage a religious exercise, making it difficult for a reasonable observer to see the statute as anything other than a religious endorsement.” Judge Crabb also wrote: “It bears emphasizing that a conclusion that the establishment clause prohibits the government from endorsing a religious exercise is not a judgment on the value of prayer or the millions of Americans who believe in its power. No one can doubt the important role that prayer plays in the spiritual life of a believer. . . . However, recognizing the importance of prayer to many people does not mean that the government may enact a statute in support of it, any more than the government may encourage citizens to fast during the month of Ramadan, attend a synagogue, purify themselves in a sweat lodge or practice rune magic.”

Judge Crabb also ruled that the law “does not have a secular purpose or effect” and does not “survive scrutiny under Lemon and the endorsement test. . . . The statute does not use prayer to further a secular purpose; it endorses prayer for its own sake.”

Interestingly enough, none of the mainstream press mentions I found about this controversy mention *why* it came to a head here in Wisconsin: as it turns out, this is the result of a longstanding lawsuit against the White House from the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation. It started out suing Bush and Dana Perino, and has since moved on to targeting President Obama, Robert Gibbs and others. (The reason it names the press secretary is because their office issues the annual proclamation)

The FFRF is controversial even here in ultra-liberal Madison, and can come off a bit bristly, but I’d like to offer them a hearty congratulations on this victory.

Second, beyond issues of the appropriateness of government endorsed prayer, the rather seedy nature of the people who run the National Day of Prayer has come to light. First, one of the Graham clan of creepy bible thumpers had to be disinvited to lead an NDP event at the Pentagon after objections over some of his less tolerant positions:

The Army recently rescinded its invitation to Graham to participate in the Pentagon’s Day of Prayer event after he made controversial remarks about Islam.

“True Islam cannot be practiced in this country,” he told CNN’s Campbell Brown in December. “You can’t beat your wife. You cannot murder your children if you think they’ve committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries.”

Shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Graham — son of famed evangelist Billy Graham — called Islam a “very evil and wicked religion.”

Whoever could have guessed that mixing the state and religion would lead to a struggle for religious dominance of the state, and fighting amongst the believing population? I’m shocked, shocked!

Well, not that shocked.

In all seriousness, this was especially predictable considering that the people running most of the NDP are a bunch of Grade A Whackjobs:

Yet the National Day of Prayer Task Force, a nonprofit organization founded in 1988 and led by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, limits its events to people of “Judeo-Christian” heritage. Only Christians are allowed as state coordinators.

Christians say anyone is free to organize a prayer event outside the task force’s purview.

Yes, that’s right; the National Day of Prayer is effectively a Focus on the Family/Dobson bible-thumping clan production… with an annual press release put out on White House letterhead.

Feel squicky yet?

What this ultimately boils down to is a debate over the role of government, not just in religion, but in all matters of personal conscience. Do you really want the government setting aside days for particular belief systems, then handing over its bully pulpit and microphone to whatever crazy/adherent happens to scream the loudest for attention that year? Do you think that the government of a nuclear superpower should ever be used for directly religious ends?

It is therefore also about the gradual infiltration and dismantling of a largely secular government in favor of something very different. Jeft Sharlet has written extensively on this subject, and how seemingly innocuous entanglements of church and state are in fact the vanguard for some truly unsettling movements. (The National Prayer Breakfast, for example, is run by the secretive cult known as ‘The Family’) Meanwhile, Dominionist factions work to subvert the military from within (particularly the Air Force) and turn it into a tool suitable for spreading a grand Christian empire. A recent post on FDL discussed the difficulties of rational decision making under such influences.

Blackwater CEO Erik Prince is another example of the trend, having both his own infamous mercenary army and ties to Timothy LeHaye (of Left Behind fame), James Dobson, the Family Research Council and of course the GOP.

So here we are, on May 6th, 2010, debating the merit of a National Day of Prayer. On one side you have a tiny activist group looking out for the rights of atheists and agnostics in a country that, and let’s not mince words, hates us. On the other you have, at least for the moment, the Obama Administration backing the Grahams and the Dobsons of the world, who would like nothing better than to turn the United States into a theocracy once and for all.

But who knows; maybe next year the first Thursday in May will go without the state sharing a stage with religion.