The cartoon controversy has educated us about the exquisite religious and aesthetic sensibilities of the head-choppers and their friends, and for that we are grateful. We shall endeavor to be more sensitive in the future ourselves. (We are a little disturbed, however, by the three counterfeit cartoons created by these fellows, particularly the one with the dog.) Before we leave the subject, hopefully once and for all, we thought we’d reprise a few of the examples from the Islamic cartoon world. Our sources include ynet, Tom Gross, and Matthew Diamond’s No Laughing Matter, all of which contain many more entertaining cartoons and family fun.

First, here’s Touka Nayestani of the Iranian Nowrooz Daily with an OBL/ Clark Kent motif.

Here’s a nice one from Qatari daily al-Sharaq, featuring Ariel Sharon, and quite a few tiny skulls.

Here’s Sharon in more energetic days, with Palestinian children, via Arab News.

And for a delicate religious theme, Nik Kowsar in Iran News helpfully points out how President Bush has crucified the Afghan people (with a double message since apparently OBL is attending the founding act of Christianity).

Unfortunately, in all of our quest for sensitivity and understanding, we can’t seem to find some of the equivalencies we sought out between things offensive to us and to the Islamic world. For example, we have been unable to locate the equivalent of the “Palestinian gunmen [who] surrounded European Union offices in the Gaza Strip demanding an apology for the cartoons,” nor an equivalent of the murder of Theo van Gogh, nor the equivalent of recruitment videos like the beheading of Eugene Armstrong. But we’ll keep looking; we want to be appropriately sensitive, after all.

UPDATE

In keeping with our new policy of sensitivity, we alert you that we disapprove of all these photos.

UPDATE II

We have linked this before, but we do so again — the great collection of historical (and other) images of Mohammed from Zombietime, including the works of well known artists. Will we soon see a call for their removal from the museums and churches that house them? Of course, we will.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 5:38 pm and is filed under art, culture, General, Left of Left, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.