Current events
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This story continues to become more complex. I’m still of the opinion that it was wrong for the cartoons to be initially published. To my mind this has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with respect for ones fellow human beings. However, in the light of the fact the cartoons were published in Egypt without incident before any of the re-prints in Europe it is becoming increasingly clear that militant groups and the governments of certain countries have been largely responsible for stirring up feeling over the issue (As an aside – Quite why no UK papers seem to have reported on this I don’t quite know, as the information was fairly widely mentioned in various blogs yesterday).
Meanwhile a UK Christian website is trying to collect attempting to collect cartoons ‘showing how people of all nations and faiths can live in peace’. When asked upon a cartoonists forum nobody could think of anything they had done that fitted the bill, but I have, after some contemplation, come up with a contribution of sorts:
You can see a larger version here. I’ve made the cartoon available for subscribers to reprint (info) should any of you/them wish to promote world peace in this way.
Update: The Good News has posted their first positive peace-promoting cartoon.
Posted by Dave at 2:04 pm on February 10, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Current events.
7 Comments
Following my post last week (Cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad) I’m getting a lot of hits from Yahoo and an increasing number from Google (always a few days behind Yahoo) from people looking for the Prophet Muhammad Cartoons. I have made the decision not to post a link, though a lot of bloggers have and in fact there is now even a well known blog collecting the names of blogs publishing the cartoons themselves.
I think a lot of people, Western Christians being well represented amongst their number, haven’t quite realised how offensive these cartoons were to Muslims. To quote a comment on the Religion in the Media weblog ‘GetReligion‘:
The cartoons weren’t simply depictions of the Prophet Muhammad; they were cruel drawings of him with extreme racially Semetic characteristics (drawing on Europe’s prior history of anti-Jewish prejudice) inferring extremely offensive and prejudiced sentiments.
If a series of cartoons were printed denying and mocking the Holocaust or depicting Martin Luther King Jnr. in virulent anti-Black messages the world would be rightfully outraged, and media personalities would barely dare to make a peep about ‘free speech’.
The other thing that is frustrating me somewhat is the tendency of people to judge an entire race or religion on the basis of that group’s extremists. Just because some Muslims have reacted with violence doesn’t make Islam a violent religion. Tempted as I am to name and shame the sites where I’ve seen this sort of view advanced I’m not going to give them the benefits of the extra two visitors a link from my blog would provide.
Update:
Some more balanced reflections from UK bloggers:
Faithful Progressive: Michelle Malkin & Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani: Two Responses to Cartoon Issue (Link via 42)
Richard Sudworth – imagine!: To Blaspheme or Not To Blaspheme? (Link via Bigbulkyanglican)
Posted by Dave at 11:54 am on February 6, 2006 and filed under Cartooning, Cartoons, Current events.
11 Comments
What can the religious cartoonist learn from all this?
Well, who would have thought that cartoons, religious ones at that, would dominate our news reports in February 2005. I haven’t commented up until now, though I’ve been reading and thinking about it a lot.
My take on it is essentially as follows. The cartoonists in question were stupid to accept this commission and the papers were stupid to publish the cartoons knowing full well the offence they would cause. People who are upset and angry have every right to be. Like Bigbulkyanglican I wonder whether some newspapers are out to deliberately cause offence. But on the other hand I don’t think that publishing such material should be illegal, and Western governments are right not to step in. In my opinion anyone who threatens or uses violence because a cartoon has been published immediately loses the right to have their view taken seriously.
You don’t really need links as the news is everywhere, but here are a few of this evening’s reports from the BBC and the Times:
BBC: Mandelson enters row over cartoon
BBC: UK Muslims voice cartoons concern
Times: West tries to calm tensions as militants threaten kidnaps
Times: Cartoon wars and the clash of civilisations
Times Comment: Drawing the line
Ruth Gledhill has also written on the subject here:
Ruth Gledhill – Times Online: Religious hatred and Muhammad cartoon
Meanwhile in the USA another cartoon has caused controversy, this time amongst the chiefs of the US Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. The Daily Cartoonist has the story and links to this Buffalo News report: Toles’ cartoon attacked by Joint Chiefs of Staff.
So, what does the religious cartoonist respond to all of this? Avoid causing offence at all costs? Well, no. But one does have to recognise that there is a right and wrong way to use a cartoon. There are legitimate targets and non-legitimate ones and if you’re not careful you can hit the wrong ones. As my fellow Church Times cartoonist Noel Ford put it today on a forum I follow; “Cartoons should be used in the manner of a sniper’s precision rifle, not like an indiscriminate blunderbuss”. You have to consider your readers, the message that you are trying to get across, along with (controversially I know) whether the joke is funny or not.
A lot of the work I do is about as uncontroversial as it gets. Talking vacuum cleaners and observations on the shape of various pews probably aren’t going to upset many people. Then there are some pictures where there is the chance that someone could be mildly bothered by the cartoon, though most people aren’t. Take my recent Itch cartoon, which, had it been drawn immediately after a church service and had the preacher had been aware of the fact could have caused them to think their 12 hours of preparation had not been appreciated. Or ‘They’re not drunk‘, which could be seen to be making light of a remarkable Biblical event.
I do sometimes draw when I’m angry, but usually have the sense not to immediately publish what I’ve drawn. It often isn’t my best work anyway. The employees of the DVLA in Swansea were very nearly on the recieving end of a most stinging portrayal this week, but escaped owing to the fact I read the small print on their forms and realised that the information contained therein was only mildly misleading rather than a blatant lie.
I have been tempted to make some of my Anglican work rather more critical then it has been. I was very careful with the Windsor Report series to make it so that both sides would enjoy it rather than slanting it with my views. It just felt the right thing to do at the time and in hindsight I’m glad I did it that way. It was an unexpectedly popular piece and hopefully lightened what was otherwise a dark few days for many Anglicans. I do wonder though whether I play it safe a little too often, not wanting to offend anybody. After all the readers are the people who buy my work, so I have a lot to lose. But perhaps, if you’re not sure that you can hit the target accurately it is best to be quite selective about the targets you choose to aim at.
(Update: See also ‘Why I’m not linking to the Prophet Muhammad Cartoons‘)
Posted by Dave at 12:16 am on February 3, 2006 and filed under Cartooning, Cartoons, Current events.
6 Comments
As far as drawing cartoons goes at least. See these links which explain how our government lost its vote because of an inability to do counting:
Independent Online Edition > Blair’s no-show causes defeat on hatred Bill
BBC NEWS | Politics | Ministers lose religious bill bid
The Times: Rowan Atkinson celebrates Government defeat
(By Ruth Gledhill)
and… ahem…
Mirror.co.uk – News – RELIGIOUS BILL BLOW
(That last one included solely for the line “One Labour MP said: “The Chief Whip will carry the can. She is toast.”” Mixed metaphors just appeal to me for some reason.)
In order to stay legal though I must now dash to the post office to get a tax disc for my campervan which currently lies rotting in the driveway. There’s still the slimmest chance it might see the open road again, who knows.
Update: Kerron Cross, interesting blogger with a Houses of Parliament pass supported this bill. There’s a thing.
Update 2: Don’t even begin to talk to me about the DVLA or Rayleigh post office. Pah.
Posted by Dave at 9:27 am on February 1, 2006 and filed under Campervans, Current events.
6 Comments
The religious hatred bill is being voted on today, and thousands of people are expected to protest outside parliament. Rowan Atkinson gave a superb speech explaining why, from the comedians’ (and therefore cartoonists’) point of view it is a bad thing and that the government should back down. See also this ‘debate‘ with a Home Office minister. In fact, based on a brief wander around the internet just about everyone seems to be against the law, apart from some Muslim groups and the government.
Would the sort of humour I do be affected? Well, probably not, but it seems to me that in the bill’s present form one couldn’t be 100% sure. Cartoons do sometimes attract extreme criticism from religious groups. As Andii says:
No, it’s bad law and the assurances about intent are worthless since they are not actually in the legislation.
Update: Ruth Gledhill makes some further points:
Unless one of the Lords amendments is successful, and I doubt it will be, it will not be a defence to claim that there was no intention on my part to stir up religious hatred. All that will have to be proved, to send me to prison for up to seven years, will be that my words did incite hatred. Even if I didn’t mean them to.
She also mentions the ‘Is the Bible true?’ story, which, if you remember, inspired my cartoon.
Recently, I wrote a couple of stories that generated enormous vitriol against me in the blogosphere. One was about a research paper challenging the benevolent effects of religious belief on society, the other about a document of the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales that threw new light on biblical interpretation.
I was attacked without mercy in blogs, mainly in the US. Some of the attacks were astonishing in their vitriol and certainly defamatory. This was even though my reports were devoid of comment and simply summarising and reporting what other people had written and said. Yet I had clearly, inadvertently, simply by doing my job in a professional manner, incited hatred in these people, and it was clearly religious hatred. Their hatred was directed at me. Yet they would probably argue that I had incited hatred of their religious beliefs.
Posted by Dave at 12:55 pm on January 31, 2006 and filed under Cartooning, Current events.
3 Comments
BBC NEWS | England | London | Whale spotted in central London
Good heavens.
Update: Londoners learn how to rescue a whale. Though I saw Terry Nutkins on the television who said that if anything is going to harm the whale it is the number of boats following it.
If you really want to help ‘save the whale’ you could do worse than looking at the Save the Whales – 10 Ways You Can Help Marine Life Every Day page.
In fact, did you know that Norway will kill 1,052 whales in 2006 (30% more than last year), whilst Japan will kill nearly that number. All in the name of ‘research’ apparently. Greenpeace has been attempt to disrupt Japanese whaling but has had to pull out owing to lack of resources.
As far as I can understand from various internet searches Japan wants to resume commercial whaling. Japans own foreign policy website attempts to justify it’s ‘research’ but what they say seems to be entirely at odds with what they are doing.
Posted by Dave at 3:09 pm on January 20, 2006 and filed under Current events.
3 Comments
Tenants to picket Archbishop of Canterbury over homes sale – news from ekklesia
24dash: Residents mount protest over housing fears
Waterloo residents in Lambeth Palace candlelit vigil < News < London SE1
Well, OK, not quite under siege. But there have been protesters outside Lambeth Palace this evening. The BBC London news had it as their main story this evening (their website is usually a few days behind) and to be honest the report didn’t make the CofE look great. Lambeth Palace media department – you have some work to do.
Posted by Dave at 11:38 pm on January 18, 2006 and filed under Anglican goings-on, Church, Current events.
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The Salvation Army are currently in the process of appointing a new international leader
And then comes the time when the doors of the council chamber are thrown open, and out towards the waiting cameras strides the next General of The Salvation Army – a moment which these days is seen live on the internet by thousands of Salvationists around the world. The General in office heads the group of wellwishers waiting outside and welcomes his or her successor.
The Salvation Army: High Council 2006
The process involves a mixture of prayerful consideration and going into little rooms and writing down names on pieces of paper.
Supported by The International Staff Band and Massed Songsters
Tickets available from Salvation Army Special Events at £3 each
Posted by Dave at 9:52 am on January 18, 2006 and filed under Church, Current events.
1 Comment
I keep on finding things to talk about which aren’t particularly funny but which interest me. This is a problem for the writer of a humour weblog, but I’ve decided just to write and try not to draw too much attention to the non-amusing nature of the pieces. Tonight, two screen-related links of interest:
1. A tale of two kitties
We went to see the Narnia film and I have to say I did really enjoy it. I think it works well on the big screen and if you haven’t seen it it might be worth trying to see it in the cinema soonish as I suspect it will finish before long.
However, also worth considering is this piece on the Christianity today site thinking about how Narnia has been marketed and comparing it to the non-commercial approach by comic book artist Bill Watterson, creator of ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ (who I wrote about here).
If you’re a fan of Narnia, comparing Aslan to Hobbes may seem incongruous, if not sacrilegious. After all, Aslan is the Creator and ruler of Narnia, an obvious Christ-figure who sacrifices his life to save the undeserving Edmund. Hobbes is a stuffed tiger with a weakness for tummy rubs. As feline characters go, Aslan is far more serious than Hobbes.
Or so you would think.
Thanks to John Carney’s Lake Neuron site for the link.
2. Sinfully bad TV
You may remember that the other day I mentioned ‘the Book of Daniel’, a TV on in the USA at the moment. Well, it isn’t on over here so I have nothing constructive to say about it, but I must pass on this piece by top blogger ‘Real Live Preacher’. He’s writing it on the Salon.com site which means that to read it all you do have to click on an advert briefly, but it is fairly painless.
Pardon me for a moment; I need to talk to my people.
Yo, brothers and sisters in Christ. They weren’t making fun of you. It’s much worse than that. The folks at NBC don’t care about you enough to make fun of you. They don’t even know you exist. You are not a part of their world. They want to make money, that’s all. This is no great mystery or secret. They’re not hypocrites; they’re capitalists.
This particular Christian church is simply a setting in which the TV people are playing out yet another dramatic comedy series. They use the same exaggeration and distortion when the shows are about police stations, hospitals, legal offices and entire ZIP codes like 90210. They don’t care about you. They really don’t care about anything except ratings.
Stop taking things so personally. You’re giving the rest of us Christians a bad name. Learn to laugh at yourself, or do what I did. Just turn off your TV, look at the person next to you, and say, “Well, that sucked!”
In case anyone doesn’t know about it the Real Live Preacher’s blog is here. A must-read if blogs blogging from a Christian sort of a point of view are of interest to you.
Posted by Dave at 11:40 pm on January 9, 2006 and filed under Current events.
1 Comment
Two ‘religion on the TV’ stories:
Silent monks are surprise TV hit
A three hour almost silent documentry following a monastery of Carthusian monks has filled cinemas in Germany, reports the BBC. The website of the film is here and Chris Iddon (via whom this story came) has offered some thoughts on it.
The book of Daniel
Meanwhile in the USA there is a kerfuffle over a new TV drama, ‘The book of Daniel’. Conservative Christians don’t like it (See these responses on Blogs4God), meaning that a lot of people who would have ignored it are taking an interest, as Bene Diction reports. Father Jake has what seems to me to be a balanced response, including a link to a post by the show’s creator explaining his motivation.
Over here in the UK we just have ‘Celebrity Big Brother’, a reason to give up TV for life if ever there was one.
Posted by Dave at 3:31 pm on January 6, 2006 and filed under Current events.
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A Christian Comic has been banned by the police, reports the BBC London news.
I’m telling you this because the story fits rather nicely within the ‘Christianity and cartoons’ remit of my internet column rather then because I have any profound pronouncement to make upon the subject. It’s a tricky one. I know that many prisoners have their lives positively affected by the Christian message whilst in prison, but on the other hand I don’t think Christians need have anything to fear from other people being able to produce comic books with their message either.
I’m going to let “Commander Alf Hitchcock, of the Metropolitan Police, said:” go uncommented upon, but I will mention that you can now ‘Adopt a cop’ on the Christian Police Association website.
Posted by Dave at 6:32 pm on January 3, 2006 and filed under Cartooning, Current events.
2 Comments
The not- quite- daily internet column of Dave Walker. Dave is a freelance cartoonist who draws for the Church Times and Youthwork Magazine, among others. (
