Actual cartoons responsible for embassy fires?

February 5, 2006 6:40 AM

Some Danish & Norwegian embassies in Syria were just torched over some caricatures of Mohammed...

...but none of the news articles I can find even offer glimpses of the cartoony drawings themselves. Any idea where I can find them? Can it really be that bad?

posted by vanoakenfold to media & arts (8 comments total)

Well, it's not just that they were offensive, I believe it's illegal in Muslim law to draw ANY pictures of Mohammed. (Because that could lead to idol-worship)
posted by dagnyscott at 6:44 AM on February 5, 2006

Wikipedia has a link to them: click
posted by Boo! at 6:48 AM on February 5, 2006

I think this was discussed a few days ago, are those the caricatures you're talking about?
posted by jessamyn at 6:48 AM on February 5, 2006

I am pretty sure this is the cartoon. I don't see what the big deal is, not worth killing people over.
posted by MrBobaFett at 6:53 AM on February 5, 2006

There is a certain delicious irony in this whole thing. Religious law intended to prevent idolatry being used to justify the carrying of banners that say "Death to all those that insult the Prophet"

Incidentally, the whole prohibition of graven images thing is more complex than people seem to realise.
Some interpretations claim that any images of man or beast are prohibited. This is why much traditional art of the Islamic world (such as Persian carpets) is geometric.
There are a number of more or less liberal interpretations; in Iran for example, tradition allows images of Mohammed before he became the prophet.

It's also not strictly correct to say that these cartoons are offensive just because they portray the Prophet, those prohibitions apply to muslims only.
posted by atrazine at 7:55 AM on February 5, 2006

It is just plain WRONG to state that one can not draw pictures of the Prophet--even Muslims have done so historically, as indicated, with pictures HERE
posted by Postroad at 11:10 AM on February 5, 2006

An important point is that apparently the newspaper cartoons were "augmented" by far more offensive images in a booklet distributed in the Mideast. (To see them, search the zombietime.com page from Postroad's link for "Furthermore".) These depict Mohammed as a pig, as a man being sodomized by a dog, and as a child molester.

The violence was deliberately provoked.
posted by dhartung at 3:33 PM on February 5, 2006

I'm a doofus for not searching it first, although I did think about it ;-P Perhaps on first preview of the question (of the words from the headline rather than the text), there could be a listing of recommended answers like most service ticket systems always suggest?
posted by vanoakenfold at 8:53 PM on February 5, 2006