Every now and then another angry or threatening comment will crop up because of my Muhammad piece from Muslims who miss the point, and exacerbate unfortunate western perceptions of them. A sampling:

From “Muslims community” on my original video blog post:

We Muslims from all over the world celebarating antidraw Muhammad PBUH day. Don’t do this again difficulties more for you.Go to hell shitty cartoonists

Various YouTube commenters:

thats one of ur unknown dad ,bhenchod, that ur mom dont know, u fucking bastard, he should have fucked? ur mom wearing a condom, that u would have never born.

muhamad man its you son of? the bitch where are u pal you should come now and share us our sit in gay marriage

After the second one I told him to try a translator because I couldn’t even understand how I was being insulted. He responded thus:

hay muhamad its you? son of bitch where are you fucker we suppose to meet in our set in gay marrieg

The commenter is from Egypt, so I assume that’s meant to disparage me in some way, but I can’t exactly deduce how.

Today I woke up to this in my inbox, a full 8 months after my Everybody Draw Muhammad Day post:

from:          hassan <so_what0**@*****.com>
to:                luke*****@*****.com
date:           Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 8:30 AM
subject:    (Website Mailform) ur site gona banned

remove the picture of our MUHAMMAD (Peace be upon him).otherwise ur site gona be closed.i m gona take strik action

student

I’m fairly sure this is an empty threat, but I wanted to make it public just in case he tries to hack me.

It saddens me when I get comments like this on my Muhammad piece. As I wrote in May:

Freedom of speech and belief are linchpin virtues that civilized society and discourse are dependent upon. You have every right to believe that Muhammad was a prophet and that he instructed not to be depicted, and you even have the right to be offended when people don’t follow that. You do not have the right to demand that people who don’t share those beliefs adhere to them, and you remove yourself from serious discussions of respect when you threaten censorship and violence upon other people for exercising their freedoms.

I was never trying to be overtly offensive. Sure, the face I drew was intentionally goofy (and smiling), but believe me some artists took it much further. The point of Everybody Draw Muhammad Day is that in a society that values freedom of speech it is precisely those beliefs and expressions that we find distasteful that must be protected. To threaten and exact violence on those who offend beliefs they don’t even hold is barbarous in the extreme.

Respect for a belief, authority, person, or ideology must be earned. To attempt to impose it collapses the very idea of tolerance.

Is today! So I did a little update to the earlier painting.

In response to the continued death threats and victimhood complex from radical (and increasingly ‘moderate’) Muslims towards cartoonists and animators for depicting Muhammad, May 20th has been designated by the internetz as Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.

Freedom of speech and belief are linchpin virtues that civilized society and discourse are dependent upon. You have every right to believe that Muhammad was a prophet and that he instructed not to be depicted, and you even have the right to be offended when people don’t follow that. You do not have the right to demand that people who don’t share those beliefs adhere to them and you remove yourself from serious discussions of respect when you threaten censorship and violence upon other people for exercising their freedoms.

So here he is, in all his tribalistic, superstitious, 9-year-old-wife-raping glory.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker recently received a death threat from Revolution Muslim, a New York based islamic group, for barely depicting their prophet Muhammad. In response, lots of people on YouTube are posting videos of themselves drawing Muhammad. This is my contribution.

In addition, another site has designated May 20 Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.

It’s good to see people responding to the absurdity of demanding reverence and censorship through intimidation.