The new Jesus and Mo strip, which the artist describes as “the waffle and dodge approach,” seems to me to parody the behavior of British Muslims when questioned about the tenets of their faith. Hamza Tzortzis, regarded in Britain as a liberal Muslim, for instance, has said that it’s okay to behead people for blasphemy and apostasy, because beheading is “painless” (listen to his statement on the Magic Sandwich Show beginning at 0:55). Throughout the conversation, Tzortzis waffles in exactly the way that the J&M artist satirizes.
And remember, you can donate to the artist through Patreon—as little as $1 month. He/she has now been pledged $659.41 per month, a pittance compared to what some people get who don’t do nearly as much. Further, the artist, unlike others, does produce his promised rewards!
h/t: Linda Grilli
A little background on this cartoon.
There was a headteacher on newsnight last week who failed to condemn stoning & amputation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JlUMY8l6bE
Also a well known islam charity IEAorg also will not publicly condemn stoning for apostasy.
The money for the patronage (well worth it) mostly goes to the cost of preventing ddos attacks. Last month was the first month I think for ages that the site has not gone down.
Yeah the guy is squirming and as to what he really believes, I found this: http://www.hurryupharry.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ibrahim-hewitt.pdf
Sadly I suppose this is what the people of Mosul can look forward to…
“Hamza Tzortzis, regarded in Britain as a liberal Muslim, for instance, has said that it’s okay to behead people for blasphemy and apostasy, because beheading is “painless”…”
Oh yeah, because THAT’s what upsets people about the issue. Nothing to do with the fact that the whole thing is about killing people who simply disagree with you, and nothing to do with the fact that blasphemy and apostasy aren’t crimes to begin with. Their pointless killings by assholes, with pseudo-ethical scruples so batshit insane they make Internet trolls look like saints and Harvard scholars, are actually “painless”.
Oh well, that makes it all right then, doesn’t it?
I look forward to his outspoken lobbying campaign to replace stoning for adultery with the more humane practice of beheading. Clearly, this compassionate aspect of beheading is something he really believes in.
I’d say he’d go join the ranks of great humanitarians like Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, but that’s unfair to the good Dr., who (naively) advocated more humane execution as an incremental step towards abolition of the death penalty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ignace_Guillotin
I really wonder how this idea that decapitation is painless got started. Evidence from when beheadings were berked (Tudor times – I think that Mary Queen of Scots was one case) suggests that getting your neck cut even partway through is extremely painful. And when you think about it, the neck is a major division of the body and well-supplied with nerves – there is absolutely no a-priori reason to believe that transecting it wouldn’t hurt, any less than cutting through a major limb would. And there were some (rather nightmarish) observations made on freshly severed heads from executions in late 19th-century France which suggest that victims of such procedures don’t lose consciousness right away but have a short period to experience this pain.
I really wonder how this idea that decapitation is painless got started.
Maybe it started with the thought that, if its relatively fast, then all other things being equal, it was less painful than other, more protracted methods.
Same thing is kinda true for the firing squad. It’s probably not painless, but honestly there’s something to be said for a minute or two of bleeding out vs. spending, what, 15-30 minutes strapped to a table in a viewing room, waiting to lose consciousness?
I’m opposed to capital punishment, but if a country’s going to have it, I think there’s something to be said for “just rip the bandage off fast” methods of doing it.
I agree, though another aspect is that decapitation does effectively eliminate the ability to express pain or distress.
Of course the mental anguish of the period between sentencing and execuation by whatever method is a significant part of the cruelty of it. There is no way other than abolition of the death penalty to address this portion of the suffering.
The NZ Māori thought the British were extremely cruel for making a condemned man wait for his execution. Their method was an unexpected blow to the head from behind, pretty much the moment after the sentence was pronounced, if it was at all. But then, their justice system lacked most of the checks and balances of ours.
Well, if you’re going to kill somebody (without the benefit of guns or anaesthetic), cutting their head off properly e.g. by guillotine is probably the quickest way to do it. So it may well have been the most humane possible method in those days.
I guess these days, death by anaesthetic (done properly, not botched) or maybe a sufficiently powerful shotgun round in the head would be the most painless I can think of (note I didn’t say the tidiest!)
Another reason to donate is that, if you give enough, you’ll get your very own clerihew written for you by the Artist. Such as:
…you might also get lessons in HTML formatting, but not necessarily from the Artist….
I had to read the first lines twice, because I automatically read your name as Gorén, which it well may have been like for one of your forefathers…
Because if you look at it straight on it is blatantly absurd and patently evil – hence the duck and dodge.
…
“Hamza Tzortzis, regarded in Britain as a liberal Muslim, for instance, has said that it’s okay to behead people for blasphemy and apostasy . . . .”
Well, I’ve always wondered if “liberal” Muslims existed.
So, if a liberal (as represented by this noble soul) has no problem with killing (by whatever means) someone for apostasy, then it seems to reasonably follow that one should not presume to expect anything from a “moderate” Muslim.
Would William Lane Craig admit to the barmaid that he is in favor of genocide if “god” commands it? Or would he waffle and dodge?
He’s on record as approving the massacre of the Midianites, so, yeah — he’d not only admit it to the Barmaid, but he’d try to get some sympathy from her for the poor soldiers who had to wade through all the blood and gore they caused.
And, no, I’m not exaggerating for effect. That’s really his position.
Cheers,
b&
You’d waffle and dodge too if to do otherwise you would have to admit that you’re such a moral cretin that you have bought into the idea that a just world is one where you would cut a hand off of a thief or murder a woman who had sex with a man to whom she wasn’t married.
I’m sure that it was just this kind of barbarity that Weinberg was thinking about when he said,
sub
Is beheading also painless for the loved ones of the one beheaded?
“. . . most Muslims within the community think of themselves as anti-extremeist because they don’t see what they do as being extremism”
I guarantee you that when Boko Haram is raiding a school, murdering the male students, kidnaping the teenaged female students only to sell them off to Jihadists like they’re live-stock, they don’t think of what they’re doing as extremism either.