Am I Fatwa or Not?
I thought this light-hearted site is another good way of showing how preposterous and hypocritical are the Islamists' attacks on free speech. (At the very bottom left, the site links to my essay, which is how I found out about it).
Update: In looking at more of the cartoons, I should note that I don't like many of them -- in fact I think that some of them unnecessarily propogate false stereotypes or are offensive without any attempt at humor. But this is where the line summarizing Voltaire's views on free speech is so appropriate and crucial: "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to death your right to say it."
Update 2: See comments.
posted by Amit Ghate at 9:08 AM
4 Comments:
I hadn't expected anyone to spot the site quite as soon as several people did, or I would have password-protected it while working. :)
I started last night with the full contents of several image collections while I was still working on the site code, then spent the last couple hours whittling the collection to about one third of the original size. What's left are images I judge most germane to the comic controversy, as well as a few comedy choices (a basket full of kittens, Pac Man chasing multi-colored burka-ghosts, etc).
You can see all images being used with this special URL:
http://www.amifatwaornot.org/?showall=1
If you see images that you believe do more harm than good, I'd be glad to have the number to the left of the corresponding images. No promises on removing anything, but I'm always willing to listen to reason.
Hi Brian,
Well I'm no art critic, but the ones that I thought were pretty bad are now gone. Sorry to comment on the site before you had finished ... I only found out about it because I happened to be looking at where readers of my essay were coming from.
As an aside, and not knowing the copyright issues which might be involved, you might like to see some of the cartoons that I linked to in this post: http://amitghate.blogspot.com/2006/03/cartoons-inspired-by-cartoon-jihad.html
I particularly like the one by Kevin Siers and the one by John Trever.
I emailed artists or their syndicates as I could find them, and have received permission to use about half of the cartoons at your link. Thank you for the suggestion.
Glad to hear it Brian and thanks for putting up your site.
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