Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “cheek”, came with the email note, “Today Jesus and Mo have an argument about an argument.” It’s unusual for the boys to argue in this manner, and I don’t quite get the last panel, unless Mo, in light of the “turn the other cheek” dictum, counts Jesus’s self defense as retaliation.
At any rate, if you have a few spare bucks, even the price of a Starbucks latte (that’s an overpriced $5 these days), I urge you to keep Jesus and Mo going by becoming a patron (here).
Remember, in 2014 a completely innocuous panel from the strip, reproduced on a tee-shirt worn by two students, was banned from the University of London’s School of Economics “fresher’s fair”. Here’s the panel that caused such trouble (it upset Muslim students). Really blasphemous, right?
But worse—when the BBC reported on the story, it showed the panel, with judy Mo censored out! Here’s what appeared on the BBC:
As The Friendly Atheist reported at the time,
Reporter Katie Razzall, heard in the voiceover, said, “We’ve taken the decision to cover up the picture of Mohammed so we don’t cause offense to some viewers.”
Some viewers! We know who they were, and they weren’t followers of Jesus. Crikey but the BBC is censorious!
Mo is claiming he should be allowed to make whatever outrageous* statements he likes and it’s the people who dispute his claims who are causing all the trouble by starting an argument.
*in the context of the comic, claiming the crucifixion narrative is false is outrageous.
From memory, the censored cartoon was on Channel 4 News (which is not a BBC channel).
The punchline presumably derives from the (in)famous recommendation to “get your retaliation in first”, which was the attitude of the 1974 British Lions rugby tour to South Africa, in the days (before multiple TV cameras) when rugby players could get away with much more foul play.
It makes sense: Jesus ought to not fight back, so this would end the argument. But Jesus apparently did not let it end, hence he started a (new) conflict.
Another slant: Israel is always cast as the
aggressor when it dares to retaliate for the latest barrage of rockets from Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Likewise, European imperialism is always cast as the aggressor against poor, victimized Islam, as when European armies
aggressed against the peaceful followers of Sultan Mehmet IV outside Vienna in 1683.
Really strange that two of the most sagacious sages of all time seem to have the emotional maturity of children on a playground.
The religionists are the biggest snowflakes…especially Muslims.
Hmm, it’s considered taboo by some groups to speak the name of Yahweh but there’s no real restriction on others. I wonder what the difference might be?
In the group I belong to we just say, “He who must not be mentioned” .
Perhaps the BBC’s black oval where Mo should be is a subtle way of opining that Muhammad and the religion he created are dark blots upon human history?
This leaves the question: How can anyone know that a picture is of Muhammad, and therefore a sacrilege, when no one has ever seen a picture of Muhammad because it is a sacrilege to depict him?
If a drawing is sacrilegious because it is intended to represent (stand in for the original) Muhammad, then wouldn’t anything – including a black oval or blank space – be equally sacrilegious? This then leaves the question of knowing when any empty space does or doesn’t represent Muhammad. Such as this space below.
…..
The ‘censored out’ image is still an image – it just suggests that the deity depicted is merely a black blob.
rz