Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

"In light of the recent veiled (ha!) threats aimed at the creators of the television show South Park … by bloggers on Revolution Muslim's website, we hereby deem May 20, 2010 as the first 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!' Do your part to both water down the pool of targets and, oh yeah, defend a little something our country is famous for (but maybe not for long? Comedy Central cooperated with terrorists and pulled the episode) the first amendment."

"Yeah, I want to water down the targets... as a cartoonist I just felt so much passion about what had happened I wanted to kind of counter Comedy Central's message they sent about feeling afraid."

"I make cartoons about current, cultural events. I made a cartoon of a 'poster' entitled "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" with a nonexistent group's name -- Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor -- drawn on the cartoon also. I did not intend for my cartoon to go viral. I did not intend to be the focus of any 'group'."

"I practice the first amendment by drawing what I wish."

"This particular cartoon of a 'poster' seems to have struck a gigantic nerve, something I was totally unprepared for. I am going back to the drawing table now!"

"I said that I wanted to counter fear and then I got afraid."

"It's turned into something completely different, nothing I could've imagined it morphing into. I'm happy some people are talking, because obviously this needs to be addressed."

"As a cartoon, it was mildly amusing. As a campaign, it's crass and gratuitously offensive."

"Depictions of Muhammad offend millions of Muslims who are no part of the violent threats."

"Forget the South Park dust up; forget Everybody Draw Muhammad Day. If you want to see truly shocking anti-religious cartoons, you have to go back to the sixteenth century. Near the end of Luther’s life, his propaganda campaign against Rome grew increasingly vitriolic and his language grotesquely pungent."

"The debate over cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad is often framed as a clash between free speech and religious attitudes. But it is just as much a clash between conflicting religious attitudes, and the freedom at stake is not only freedom of expression but freedom of religion. For while Luther was surely engaging in offensive speech, he was also exercising a right of freedom of conscience, which included the right to dissent from Catholic orthodoxy."

"There is power in numbers, and if you're an artist, creator, cartoonist, or basically anyone who would like to exercise your right to free speech in a way that it is actively threatened, that would be the day to do it."

"No one has a right to an audience or even to a sympathetic hearing, much less an engaged audience. But no one should be beaten or killed or imprisoned simply for speaking their mind or praying to one god as opposed to the other or none at all or getting on with the small business of living their life in peaceful fashion. If we cannot or will not defend that principle with a full throat, then we deserve to choke on whatever jihadists of all stripes can force down our throats."

"Our Draw Mohammed contest is not a frivolous exercise of hip, ironic, hoolarious sacrilege toward a minority religion in the United States (though even that deserves all the protection that the most serioso political commentary commands). It's a defense of what is at the core of a society that is painfully incompetent at delivering on its promise of freedom, tolerance, and equal rights."

"The single most important element–and the thing that ties these selections together–is that each image forces the viewer to do two things. First, they consciously call into question the nature of representation, no small matter in fights over whether it is allowed under Islamic law to depict Mohammed … Second, each of the images forces the viewer to actively participate not simply in the creation of meaning but of actually constructing the image itself."

"There is a deeper lesson here: Connect the dots and discover that we all must be Spartacus on Everybody Draw Mohammad Day. And that in a free society, every day is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."

"Theo van Gogh was murdered for making a movie critical of Islam. 'South Park' creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are threatened with the same fate. They deserve our solidarity, and I will stand with them by hosting images of Muhammad on my own website. Please stand with us."

"It is clear that some feel great satisfaction at what they see as 'sticking it to the Muslims'."

"Molly Norris proposed a 'let’s everyone draw Mohammed day' – then, apparently appalled by her own audacity, backed quickly away."

"While the suits at Comedy Central and Yale University Press have been cowed, people across the country have decided to speak up and thereby magnify the offense a thousandfold."

"Everybody Draw Mohammed Day is a chance to reinstate offense and sincerity to their proper place, freed from terror or silence."

"The proper (and, at the risk of looking jingoistic, American) way to combat bad speech is with better speech. To silence and be silenced are the refuge of cowards."

"I realize that in a free society, someone is always going to be doing or saying something that will offend somebody somewhere. I also realize that more free speech, not censorship, is the answer."

"The bottom line is that the First Amendment guarantees free speech including criticism of all peoples. We are an equal-opportunity offense country. To censor ourselves to avoid upsetting a certain group (in a cartoon no less) is un-American."

"In the South Park episode that started all this, Buddha does lines of coke and there was an episode where Cartman started a Christian rock band that sang very homo-erotic songs. Yet there is one religious figure we can't make fun of. The point of the episode that started the controversy is that celebrities wanted Muhammad's power not to be ridiculed. How come non-Muslims aren't allowed to make jokes?"

"These two camps – the Muhammad-knockers and the Muslim offence-takers – are locked in a deadly embrace. Islamic extremists need Western depictions of Muhammad as evidence that there is a new crusade against Islam, while the Muhammad-knockers need the flag-burning, street-stomping antics of the extremists as evidence that their defence of the Enlightenment is a risky, important business."

"Americans love their free speech and have had enough of those who think they can dictate the limits of that fundamental right. [...] Draw to any heart's discontent. It's a free country. For now."

"There’s something here that makes me twitch. I think it’s the 'everybody'. It’s the 'everybody' of a man at the back of a mob, trying to persuade other people to get lynching."

"If a cartoonist wants to satirise Islam by drawing Mohammed, I’m on his side all the way. But among the 13,000 pictures on the EDMD Facebook page, you have Mohammed as a dog in a veil, Mohammed as a pig and Mohammed as a monkey. That’s not resistance, but picking a fight."

"Issuing a death threat against somebody who drew a picture isn’t my thing, but this isn’t either."

"It is likely that institutions will apply more and more self-censorship. Fearing a possible threat, nothing is worse than the fear of fear."

"In a democratic society where free speech is vigilantly protected, it is perfectly reasonable to call out censorship, particularly when it springs from some form of tyrannical religious extremism."

"Whether this succeeds or not, and I have no personal interest in drawing Muhammad, I support the concept. We must join together to stop injustice."

"It defines those others—Muslims—as being outside of our culture, unworthy of the courtesy we readily accord to insiders."

"It attempts to battle religious zealotry with rudeness and sacrilege, and we can only wait to see what happens, but I fear it won’t be good."

"[A] blasphemous faux holiday … [which would] only serve to reinforce broader American misunderstandings of Islam and Muslims."