Democratic Underground - His view on cartoons, jokes about Islam, religions.....

A call to all intellectuals: "Make Jokes about Islam!"
("Maak grappen over Islam!")
Volkskrant, 6th November 2004

The author and film director Theo van Gogh had made a film about Muslim women's rights called Submission Part 1 together with member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He was murdered on 2nd November by a Moroccan-Dutch Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri, who is referred to in the Dutch media as "Mohammed B." and recently received a life sentence. A few days after the murder, Afshin Ellian called upon all intellectuals and lawmakers to discuss Islam more openly, arguing that genuine tolerance has its origins in the possibility to criticize religion.

The first poet whom Mohammed A. (ibn Abdollah) had declared the enemy of Islam was called K'ab ibn al-Ashraf. The prophet gave the order to murder the poet with a knife. (…)
The prophet Mohammed A. was an example to Mohammed B, who slaughtered Theo van Gogh as the enemy of Islam. Welcome to the Middle East. But aren't we in Europe? The artistic, philosophic and judicial critique of religion is an essential aspect of European culture. (…) Yet here there seems to be a kind of self-censorship when it comes to Islam. (…) Dutch Muslims have learnt that no one is permitted to express critical thoughts about their religion. For this reason Islam is being strongly discriminated against. Dutch culture treats Islam as forbidden territory for critical inquiry, and in this respect, the Netherlands resembles the backward cultures of the Middle East. (…)

Hereby I call upon all artists, writers and academics to stop discriminating against Islam. When on television and in hundreds of theatres jokes are being made about Islam, and when academics will start treating Islam more critically, then Muslims will learn tolerance. The terrorists can intimidate and eliminate a handful of critics of Islam, but they can never kill hundreds of critical minds.

Come on friends, and enter the brothels and torture chambers of Mohammed A. and Allah, you will find great inspiration there. Come on, fellow academics, put Islam on the operating table of philosophy. Otherwise it will remain a question of how many murders our society can deal with.

http://afshinellian.blogspot.com/

I believe that this is what is called for in the fight to defend our democracies of protected civil rights.

DemEx

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