[Unfamiliar with the latest Muhammad Cartoon Circus? Read this first.]

We may have circumnavigated the globe, split the atom, walked on the moon and cured polio, but the human race still faces its share of barriers. For example: it can be incredibly difficult to name a teddy bear or a pineapple, or to draw a cartoon.

Since the Jyllands-Posten fiasco in 2005, people have been very edgy when it comes to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. You’ll never find a cartoon of Muhammad in the news, and while this is justified as “avoiding offence” in most instances, you only need scratch the surface to find “…and we don’t want to be murdered” plays into an awful lot of the reasoning too.

One of the few sites to regularly flaunt this taboo is the brilliant, blasphemous and — in some countries — blocked webcomic Jesus and Mo. I was fortunate enough to get a short interview with the anonymous artist behind this controversial cartoon: Read the rest of this entry »

Long before Adam Ant copyrighted his face, there lived this dude called Muhammad…

In case you haven’t been following the latest Jesus and Mo circus, here’s the run-down:

In October last year, two students at the London School of Economics — Chris Moos and Abhishek Phadnis — were harassed by security at their Freshers’ Fair because of their t-shirts. Their shirts had Jesus and Mo cartoons which security considered too offensive. The cartoons are below:

Read the rest of this entry »

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

— John 3:16 (KJV)

I would say this verse is pretty much the crux of Christianity: that our souls might have salvation in the afterlife because God made the difficult decision to send His only son to earth to die for our sins. We should be eternally thankful for His sacrifice.

I have tried for years to understand and believe in Christ’s sacrifice. It’s a core belief of millions across the world, and if it’s true then the fate of my eternal soul rests on understanding it (I’m not big on blind faith), but to this day I still can’t get my head around it. As it’s Easter I’m posting this as an open letter to Christians everywhere, asking you to help me understand the core belief of your religion. To understand God.

Read the rest of this entry »

“If I believe in a peaceful version of my religion, and it’s not hurting anyone, so then why do you still think that’s bad?”

Put it another way: let’s say you believe in a peaceful interpretation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. You follow the ‘good’ bits and ignore the ‘bad’ bits. You would never dream of harming another human being or anything like that, and regard all those who do as “extremists” and people who have “taken Hitler’s writing out of context”. Thus, you proudly wear your Swastika, state your political allegiance as “Nazi Party” on the census and live a perfectly good and moral life.

You raise your children with the same beliefs and values you follow, and they too grow up to be nice, moral Nazis who assert that anyone who gases Jews is a dangerous extremist who gives your political party a bad name, and that it is wrong to judge all Nazis just on the behaviour of a few fundamentalists.

A few years down the line, a large percentage of the country regard themselves as Nazis. The vast majority of those would never dream of condoning anything bad, and if questioned on the specifics of their belief will say something along the lines of: “Oh, well I believe that to be a good Nazi you just have to be nice to people and go to the local Third Reich meetings once in a while.”

The result of this is that the Nazi Party hold serious political weight. It would be a disastrous move for a politician to publicly state that he disagrees with the Nazis. If he attempts to point out that there are some very horrible ideas in Mein Kampf and there is clear evidence that teaching people that this book is a fine example of moral fibre increases the number of those who commit atrocities directly attributable to its teachings, he is told: “Oh that’s just the extremists – MOST of us would never dream of doing that.”

So it is generally accepted that Nazism is fine, morally admirable and generally a great thing because a lot of the people who bear the flag are at heart nice people. Nazi charities are set up, and they give millions to charity. Copies of Mein Kampf are placed in every hotel room in the country, and children are raised to believe that they are ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ if they question the teachings of Hitler.

Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?

The moderates are the dangerous ones, because they make unacceptable ideas appear acceptable.