The joys of blasphemy
March 23, 2006
Amalia Nickel
When my father was an undergrad at the University of Saskatchewan he wrote a piece for the student newspaper, The Sheaf, entitled “The joys of marriage.” It was immediately replaced with a piece called “The joys of masturbation.” It appears not much has changed since 1978.
In The Sheaf’s February 23 edition, editor Will Robbins wrote a feature regarding the controversial depictions of the Islamic prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, published in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark. He claimed that The Sheaf had decided not to reprint them because “we have chosen to focus on other issues that we feel are more important,” namely, the larger debate behind the controversy. In the same issue, Ali Ibn Iqbal wrote on behalf of the Muslim Students Association that the cartoons were “inflammatory, offensive, and hateful . . . a cheap shot at Muslims.” The arguments presented by The Sheaf seemed reasonable, fair, and respectful. Then, in their very next issue, the paper printed a cartoon of Jesus performing oral sex on a capitalist pig. The joys of masturbation revisited.
It took four days for the newspaper to offer an explanation of what they call an editorial “oversight.” They did not address why some subjects, like Islamic terrorism, are examined without the “limited connection” of controversial images, while others, like Christian money lust, are presented without any real dialogue. Both topics are pertinent issues and carry with them representative images of faith: Mohammed and Jesus.
Insult to Mohammed, under Islamic Shari’a law, is punishable by death. Hadith, which are considered by Muslims to be reliable accounts of the prophet Mohammed, report that “a Jewess who was reviling the prophet and speaking ill of him was strangled to death by a man and the prophet allowed no payment to be made for her death” (Mishkat al-Masabih Book XV Chapter V). In other words, her death is deemed justifiable. Jesus, after being accused of casting out demons in the name of Beezlebub is reported in the gospels as saying, “Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven” (Matthew 12:32). There is an obvious difference in the prescribed response to blasphemy by the very symbols being defiled.
The Canadian Society of Muslims offers the following definition of blasphemy from the Kitab al-fiqh Ala’ al-Madahib al-Arba’ah: “To use sarcasm and belittling words in respect of the moral character or the way of life (religion) of the Prophet Mohammed or other prophet.” Historically, while “Muslims tended to accept some forms of satire or parody of the divine ways, they rarely tolerated insults to Mohammed (Be Careful with Mohammed!). Jesus is not considered the Son of God in Islam but is still categorized as a prophet: the “capitalist piglet” cartoon in The Sheaf falls into Muslims’ same blasphemous category as the Jyllands-Posten cartoons of Mohammed. The “capitalist piglet” image is also tied to anti-Semitism, a reference to German images of Jews “sucking on the teats of a sow, or greedily eating its excrement” (A Brief History of Blasphemy 36). There have been no reported riots over The Sheaf’s cartoons by any of the three faith groups.
The question remains as to why—Christian apathy, Islamic frustrations, and secular society aside—certain images can be perverted with little response while others cannot. The idea of violence in Mohammed’s name is not foreign, and there are in fact 17 commands to fight and kill in the Qur’an, scripture deemed infallible by Muslims. Likewise, the notion of North American Christians having perverse alliances with big business is not without its truth, although, in the gospels, Jesus offers quite the opposite instruction.
Sometimes images of perfection appear as mere copies in reality, copies that are distorted, twisted and represented as the originals. The taboo of Jesus’ image was broken long ago, and further perpetrated by books like The Da Vinci Code, while Muslims have not abandoned the defense of their revered prophet. Salman Rushdie writes, “Where there is no belief there is no blasphemy.” It appears that once again, we have chosen masturbation over marriage.
Now you go...
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