Depicting the Prophet Muhammad

*To my muslim readers, please understand that I do not mean this as an insult personally, but that I am opposed to your religion, as I am opposed to all supernatural religion. There are theologies of Islam which I consider better than others. Work by Irshad Manji, and Amina Wadud reveal Islam to have the potential to be the wonderful religion I once thought it was. If you are a muslim and I cannot persuade you to abandon all supernaturalism, then these two authors should be in your future. These wonderful women make Islam into a religion a thousand times safer for the thinking person than christianity is, and if it became the most popular religion in the world under their theological lights, I would have no complaints.
My first time to depict the prophet muhammad for the intention of ridicule was done long before the Iraq war and the tragic contreversy of the Danish cartoons of the prophet.

In fact one of the Danish cartoons makes the same exact joke as me, by having the prophets eyes blacked out like an old school tabloid news show. It was awesome.

Then Muslims went crazy and set fire to embassies and threatened world war three.

Allow me to be clear, not all Muslims did this. Just enough to make me rethink many of my ideas.

I depicted the prophet muhammad when I was a kid, in a cartoon about a retarded squirrel out maneuvering a devilish insurance salesman. The primary purpose of the cartoon was not to offend Islam, but it was just as forbidden by Islam.

I am also an apostate. When I was 25 I wanted to reject Christianity and I was opposed to the Iraq war, I am now, and have always been in support of Palestine, so I converted to Islam.

I was a muslim like so many americans are buddhists. I could never fully understand the cultural intricacies of Islam, and had a very liberal interpretation of the Q'ran.

The Q'ran has a lot of stuff about reason in it, which I like. The religion is actually less supernatural than Charismatic Christianity, which is the religion that I abandoned.

I did not last long as a muslim, and because I tried Islam and didn't stay with it muslims are supposed to kill me.

I am an apostate.

It says in my translation of the Q'ran

" Those who turn back as apostates after guidance was clearly shown to them-- The evil one has instigated them and buoyed them with false hopes. "
47:25

"Those who reject Allah, and hinder men from the path of Allah, then die rejecting Allah. Allah will not forgive them."
47:34

"Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is worse then carnage."
2:190

" The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and his messenger and strive with might and main or mischief through the land is:

execution or crucifiction,

Or the cutting off of hands
And feet from opposite sides,

Or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the hereafter."
5:33


Most explicitly:

"They but wish that ye should reject the faith as they do and thus be on the same footing (as they): So take not allies from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah. But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them."

4:88

So my situation is really fucked if Fundamentalist Islam ever gets a major political and legal foothold wherever I live.

It would be particularly bad to have one hand and one foot cut off.

Damn.

So I say that Islam should not be allowed to be practiced when it comes to my own apostasy, or the free-speech practice of drawing and depicting the prophet muhammad.

Does the freedom of religion have a limit?

I should hope so. I should hope that you are not allowed to kill, or mutilate in the name of your religion, and that includes the innocent girls who have their clitoris and vaginas slashed in Islamic countries like Somalia.

Should free speech have a limit? Perhaps, I don't know.

But there is a world of difference between a drawing of the prophet muhammad and international riots.

The truth is that the left has failed as the champions of freedom they usually are by failing to stand up for free speech for fear of defying freedom of religion.

This is a tragic failure, and a huge dissonance of the ideas that spawned both freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

We should not give Islam a pass on this one. No way!

Learn it, remember it, become it : EUPRAXSOPHY