[Reader-list] The Slimes of India's Patna edition, reprints, Danishcartoon

[Koen Martens]

> Would YOU make and publish a cartoon like that? I'm not asking
> whether
> you should be 'allowed' to, but would you? In other words, we are
> completely missing the religious, cultural and political aspects
> of
> the specific case of the publication of an offensive (so obviously
> offensive) 'cartoon' (the trivial being used to heighten the
> impact of
> mocking at what the mocked-at takes very seriously) depicting
> Mohammed in a European newspaper in a post-9/11 world.

Yes, i would make and publish such a cartoon, because it is a way
over here to deal with serious issues like this. We have a little
laugh about things, to put things in perspective. And that is the
context in which the cartoons are published. The intent never was to
hurt people, because simply that isn't the intent of cartoons at all.

Take for example train drivers, who have to cope with people who
commit suicide by jumping in front of a 120 kilometer/hour train.
This is a horrible experience for these train drivers. Yet, they
make jokes about these events, they laugh about it. Not to hurt the
relatives of the deceased, but to relieve their stress.

A lot of people (over here at least) feel stress in what comes their
way from the islamic world (whatever that may be, and whatever
subculture i mean). A way to deal with it is humour, and that is
where the cartoons came from.

What i still don't understand is, why all this hype now, when the
cartoons got published in september last year? Why did it take 3 to
4 months? And why were there imams showing cartoons that were fake,
worse than the original and never made nor published in Denmark or
Europe?

Gr,

Koen

-- 
K.F.J. Martens, Sonologic, http://www.sonologic.nl/
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