It is ‘Everybody Draw Muhammed Day’ today.  In the wake of South Park creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, receiving threats on their lives because of their bear-suited Muhammed, quite a few people have taken it upon themselves to all start drawing. Granted, most people draw stick-figures. However, I wanted to make something more of it this time since I already drew a stick-figure on blasphemy day. Now, if it is not obvious by my actions, I fully support the drawing of Muhammed. I support it for a very simple reason; a reason so eloquently explained by Ayaan Hirsi Ali when they interviewed her about the threats against Parker and Stone.

I have protection but there comes a time when if – not just Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone – but if the entertainment business were to take this on and just show how ridiculous this is that there’ll be too many people to threaten. And then I think, at that time, I won’t need protection and the gentlemen who made South Park will also not need protection.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

For me the key-issue here – on so many levels -  is participation. I wanted to make a cartoon that reflected that. The relationship between the hand-less Muhammed and me as a drawer is mutually participatory. I need to draw him in order to make a point, even though he might kill me for it once I’m done, and he needs me to keep drawing in order to stop me. Likewise the relationship between the Muslim extremists and all of us is mutually participatory. If we do not draw Muhammed en masse – if we let people like Parker, Stone, Hirsi Ali, Westergaard, Van Gogh, Rushdie et al. take all the heat – then we participate in the effectiveness of the threats.

However, the participation runs deeper than that. It always amazes me that Muslim extremists would be angry over a drawing. It amazes me because it shows that they must have no idea what just happened when they saw the cartoon. I’m going to do what magicians must not do – but cartoonists are free to – and reveal the hoax perpetrated upon you. A cartoon – any cartoon – is merely a completely meaningless ink-blot. Yes, like in the Rorschach test, only where Rorschach’s inkblots were designed purposely to really be meaningless, cartoons are designed to hack your brain.

This will be familiar to anyone who has ever spent time pondering Magritte’s “The Treachary of Images.” Underneath the “pipe” Magritte informs us that it is not a pipe. He is quite right. It really isn’t. It is a painting of a pipe. This one is a digital representation of a painting of a pipe. Yet that is a treachery too. Like a good magician Magritte only revealed the little trick in order to pull an even bigger one.

Any image requires the viewer’s unconditional participation. Magritte’s painting was not of a pipe simply because Magritte intended it to be. Magritte’s painting is only of a pipe as long as there is a cooperation between his intentions and our willingness to accommodate them by suspending our disbelief. If we are caught up in the illusion it is because we let ourselves be.

To return then to cartoons. In his magnificent book Understanding Comics Scott McCloud elucidates on the unique ability of a cartoon to be recognisable even when it becomes ridiculously abstract.

In light of our new-found understanding of cartoons and images, a good question – the right question – to ask is did I really draw Muhammed? Well, could I have intended to draw Muhammed given that I have no idea what the man looked like? To what degree did I manage to hack the brain-triggers conducive to making you fool yourself that a few black squiggles are Muhammed? I have heard people make the argument that when drawing Muhammed we should only draw stick-figures and under no circumstances should we include the dreaded bomb.

I disagree. The bomb is now crucial iconography. It ties what would otherwise have just been a cute, little bearded cartoon into our shared cultural background triggering the viewer to recognise my intention. “Ah! There is a bomb! Like Westergaard’s drawing. This drawing was obviously intended to be Muhammed.”

However, given that Westegaard knew as little as I about the real appearances of Muhammed one must wonder what is really being drawn here. I think the answer is that none of us are drawing Muhammed at all. We are all drawing an intricate metaphor. Muhammed in cartoon-form detaches himself ever more from his historical personhood. What he becomes is a graphic personification of collective Islam. When he has a bomb on his head it reflects the volatile temper of the extremists – it says nothing of his historical persona. When he urges me to draw his hands so he can use them to stop me from drawing him, it reflects the irony – an irony lost on the extremists – that their violent reaction toward criticism is precisely what makes us criticise them.

If these extremists had any good sense whatsoever they would rejoice at every drawing of their prophet. They would know that every iconic representation inflates our collective conscious with conventions of ‘Muhammed’ cartoonery until those conventions will make us unable to attempt a drawing of the historical prophet even if we wanted to. Moreover, they would know that their anger only proves that they accepted the drawing as Muhammed and therefore, in their participation, are just as guilty as the artist of blasphemy.

♦

Post-edit 22/05/2010:

My drawing was featured on Friendly Atheist and on the Faroese web-magazine Mess.

I think this is quite awesome.

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
But the very next day, You gave it away
This year, to save me from tears
I’ll give it to someone special

Tra-la-la special, special. Wait…hold on. Seriously? Look, Mr. Michael I appreciate the sentiment and I can sort of see what you were aiming for in this song, but you need to put that tormented metaphor out of its sordid misery!

I know what giving someone your heart means, you know what it means. Hell, everyone does. But who among us can honestly claim to get a grip on what it means to give Person C the heart you got from Person A? Does this mean that George Michael fell in love with Person A, but that Person A then somehow made George Michael fall in love with Person C instead – possibly with some sort of mystical love-transference ritual? It just doesn’t work as a metaphor.

So what the Hell, George? Did you actually hand someone your physical honest-to-goodness literal heart? Because if that’s the case, you know, I’m sure you can’t possibly blame the person for giving it away the very next day – say, for instance, giving it to a paramedic or a coroner would surely be the right thing to do!

In crossing a beach, suppose I pitched my foot against a watch, and were asked how it came to be there. I might possibly answer, that it had lain there since the beginning of time when God created it and placed it there.

But suppose I had found a grain of sand upon the beach, and it should be inquired how the grain happened to be in that place. I should hardly concede the same legitimacy to this question as to the one I had been previously asked – that this particular grain of sand somehow stood out in contrast with its peers in demand of a special explanation for its whereabouts. After all, it is all good and proper to lend oneself to the ponderance of anomalies, but an anomaly repeated a billion times over quickly becomes an expected regularity with no means to cause undue perplexity. I should therefore rightly think the question daft.

Yet why should not this objection serve for the grain of sand as well as for the watch? For this reason, that, when we come to inspect the grain of sand, we find that – unlike the watch – it has no parts put together for a purpose. We do not think that the grain attests to a creator in the same way as the watch. We presume not that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, a vast range of artificers with little grain-shops wherein they toil to assemble the best quality sand-grains for capital gain, and who designed the grain’s beachy function.

If indeed it is so, that for every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, the same might be said to exist in nature. What then – which unearthly and inexplicable lapse in judgement – would ever compel you to pick up the watch in contemplation of its anomalous placement instead of doing the exact same to every single grain of sand in the immediate vicinity?

Were there indeed an artificer of natural phenomena an accurate depiction of the situation would not be that of walking on a beach of grains containing a single watch. Rather it could be likened to walking on a heap of tiny little watches with cawing watches flying around in the watch-coloured sky occasionally to swoop down into the waves of liquid watches to catch a swimming watch to eat. In the distance you might hear the joyful laughter of playing watches and the sound of their warden-watch telling them that there is watch for dinner and they should come into the watch to sit down at the watch to eat. Remember to wash your watches before you dig in!

In a world of magic watch-making governed in its entirety by the whims of a magical watch-maker, and where nothing exists that is not a watch, why would you ever ponder the explanation of anything? It should be no more surprising to find an intricately designed laptop at the surface of one of Jupiter’s moons than it is to find a drop of water in the ocean. A living and breathing dragon or a fairy in your cup-board should hold no greater degree of strangeness to you than a lion or a zebra in Africa.

By all means the universe should be entirely devoid of wonder because anything, no matter how bizarre, could pop into existence by decree of the watch-maker at any moment. Nothing ought to merit any sort of explanatory research because a world run on say-so should have no need of causal contingency. A lamp need not be shining because it is hooked up to an electrical outlet. It might just be obeying orders. A perceived sound does not necessarily stem from anything causing it. It might as well have just spontaneously formed in your inner ear because the watch-maker designed it so.

Why did you pick up the watch? There is nothing to distinguish it from anything else. There is nothing special about a watch among a world of watches, right?

First of all let me congratulate you on a beautiful country and very nice people. But then let me get to my issue of complaint. I was on visit there recently; more specifically I was on Sicily. It was a very good vacation, until the day when I went to Etna. Etna is, as all know, a volcano, which is known throughout the world. Particularly for its kangaroos, so of course I had taken mine with me. In accordance with what my tourists brochure told me, it is very healthy to walk your kangaroos on Etna. And of course I, as any law-abiding man, was going to hold it on leash at all times, so it doesnt bite or kick anyone. Even though this is not strictly necessary. My Khaki would never do something like that. She is very well behaved. But what do I see? A sign! Oh shame! A sign I tell you! A sign strictly forbidding me to take a walk with Khaki, even though I had the leash and everything. This is an outrage! Here I had gone to Sicily specifically to do something nice for Khaki and then I find out that I cant. I accuse you of false advertising.

You are scoundrels the bunch of you. Luring kangaroo-lovers from their home-countries with the promise of utilization of what is known as the best kangaroo-resort in the world, Etna. And then when they get there, you say theyre not allowed to anyway. No doubt just to rip us off even more. Now far be it from me to whine. I could have done without. But can you even imagine the disappointment a young female kangaroo can feel? Now she had been locked up in a crummy hotel-room for days. All looking forward to her promised jump on Etna. I tried to explain it to her. But theres only so much such a kangaroo child can really understand. Shes barely a teenager. And you good sirs made her cry. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

My kangaroo is now on anti-depressants! A kangaroo on anti-depressants I tell you! Let it be known right now, that Im filing an official complaint to the consumers office, and that I am never taking Khaki or any kangaroo to your country again. Furthermore Ill be warning all of my friends against you, theyre all kangaroo-owners and lovers, and not a few of them are very respected too. I demand an official apology, if not to me, then at least to poor Khaki. She does not deserve this treatment. She has been through a lot already. Can you believe, that her father just left the pouch-hold one day?

Next time I will take my kangaroo to Ethiopia.

Yours truly,

Kangaroo-Heini