From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Sat 11 Feb 2006 - 20:52:36 GMT
At 02:05 PM 2/11/2006 +0000, Wade Allsopp wrote:
>I think the comedy side of this whole story has not received much
>attention to date. The Muslim reaction to the cartoons
>has generally been that because they are cartoons they are there to
>"ridicule" and perhaps humiliate Muslims. In fact I would say that this
>is to mistake the nature of comedy and cartoons, at least in British
>society. Comedy is there to bring us down to earth in a non violent, non
>threatening way, to prevent us from taking ourselves too seriously.
Marvin Minsky humor in Google will lead into interesting places.
>When successful it is perhaps the most effective form of criticism, which
>is presumably why in just about all of the major world dictatorships, from
>Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein to the current Islamic
>theocracies, making fun of the leader and regime in public was something
>that could rapidly lead to prison or in many cases death.
One of the saying about the scientology cult is that they amputate your
sense of humor. They even have policies where "jokers and degraders" are
punished.
>Most discussion of the cartoons has centred on the one with Muhammad with
>a bomb in his turban, which is really just making the point of the link
>between Islam and terrorism. I think most people have said that the only
>one of the cartoons which is actually funny is the one with Muhammad
>sitting on a cloud being approached by a line of suicide bombers saying
>"sorry we've run out of virgins". This is the one (or something like it)
>which should be on posters all over Gaza, Baghdad, Kabul and Bradford,
>because there is a very dangerous meme out there which needs to be doused
>and the traditional forms of argument simply don't work against it.
While I agree with you about the need to douse, I hope you have some idea
of how to do it.
The craziness in Northern Ireland was doused, but it was the decision of
women a generation ago to have fewer kids that did it.
Keith Henson
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