MENA: To Draw or Not to Draw Muhammed · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

May 20 has come and gone, but the fire ignited by the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day on Facebook, is still raging, fueled by discussions on freedom of expression, freedom of religion and beliefs, and the standards – or double standards – employed by Facebook.
While Pakistan is up in arms over the controversy, with a court order to block Facebook, and shut down even more sites, reactions in the Middle East have been slow. Only Saudi Arabia and the UAE have reportedly blocked the ‘offensive’ Facebook page, which calls on people around the world to draw Prophet Muhammed and post their pictures online, in a stark reminder of the Danish cartoons controversy, whose dust is yet to settle.
Israeli Yael shares her opinion on the day and writes:
So I went over to check out the Everybody Draw Mohammed Day
page and was surprised to see that there were quite a lot of muslims
taking part, arguing that just because something may offend some
people, be vulgar, in poor taste, and so forth, this is a free speech
issue and people have the right to act in poor taste, they have the
right to say, write and draw offensive things. I agree with this
position. Because others have the right to use their free speech to
condemn such acts, to call them vile or offensive etc.
She further explains:
Offensiveness, is, however, all in the eye of the beholder. Some
people find depictions of scantily clad (or totally unclad) people
offensive –should all such images be banned? Some people, for instance
here in our ultra-ultra (really really ultra) orthodox communities find
the depiction of women AT ALL offensive and so they ban all pictures of
any sort with a female in them from their newspapers and magazines and
have tried to get billboards and so forth that depict women in them
banned from gracing our highways, buses and so forth. Once you start
saying, “no you can’t say, or write, or draw, or show images of X,”
then where does it stop?
And who decides?
Global Voices Online‘s Morocco author Jillian York writes from Boston, US, adds:
Following Pakistan’s block on Facebook today, I decided to take a look at the blog to see what the reaction was.
Front and center, on the blog’s header was that now-infamous depiction of Mohammad wearing a turban-shaped bomb.  The Facebook group was full of nastiness: depictions of the Prophet as a dog, slurs about Muslims and Islam, etc.
Now, in the case of the Mohammad cartoons, four years ago when it
happened up till now, I will defend the cartoonists’ right to draw what
they please, no matter how repulsive I personally find it.  In that
same vein, I defended Iran’s Holocaust cartoon competition.
York continues:
With that in mind, I’m incredibly disappointed with this new
campaign.  Rather than calmly and peacefully defend free speech by
whimsically portraying the Prophet as a teddy bear or a toaster, the
group and blog’s admins have chosen to provoke, thus alienating plenty
of supporters of free speech who might otherwise have backed them.  The
project is a work of immature Americans who feel that asserting their
right to free speech–by any means necessary–is more important than
showing an ounce of respect (and for that matter, dignity) by finding a
middle ground.
In a comment on her post, Mahmud writes:
The bigger question is WHY ????….why at the first instance initiate an
act which has intimate feelings by another group…Im positive there are
numerous subjects available in the world which can prove freedom of
speech and liberty….JEWS all over the world react to denial of
holocaust ..a stance which is accepted by the world…so why not apply
similar format for muslims…what really is intended to be achieved from
this act or where the quality of life will improve…in actual it will
fuel anti west sentiments and make the task of moderate muslims
difficult in containing militancy….
And Tarek Amr, from Egypt, shares his ideas on the initiative in this post (Ar). He writes:
ربما الجديد هذه المرة أن فريق الأغبياء ألف قرر تخصيص يوم عشرين مايو من كل عام لرسم الرسول الكريم. و في الواقع فمن شكل دعوتهم و من كم السخافات الموجودة في قسم التعليقات هناك, فمن الواضح أنهم يودونها ان تكون رسوم مسيئة فقط.
Stupid Team A decides to draw the Prophet in an inappropriate way. Stupid Team B responds with threats, so Stupid Team A continues with its stupidity and Stupid Team B heightens the tone of its threats, and the audience continues to clap their hands and laugh.
What may be new this time, is that Stupid Team A has decided to mark the 20th of May as the annual day to draw the Prophet. In reality, from their call, and the amount of ridicule and insults in the comments section, it is obvious that they want the drawings to be insulting only.
Amr continues:
The blogger ponders on the choices bystanders have saying:
لذلك نحن أمام أحد الخيارين, إما أن ننضم لفريق الأغبياء باء, أو أن نتجاهل كلا الفريقين و نتركهم لغبائهم فهو خير عقاب لهم.
Amr, however, devises another plan:
I realise that my idea will not see the light of day and will be met with a fatwas and swear words, and this may be why I called it a crazy idea.
And crazy solution or not, others seem to embrace the thought. Khalid at The Bahyeldin Dynasty writes:
My solution? What this wise young Muslim man has said: Muslims should participate in this event, and should support a cause as well. Watch his video.
Here is another perspective from Chicago by a Muslim, Qasim Rashid.
Meanwhile, some bloggers took the high road and quit Facebook  in protest against leaving the page up. Among them is Syrian Ahmed Zaidan, who writes:
When the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority shuts Facebook, following a Pakistani court order, this is an important development – one which respects the feelings of the Muslim people, not only in Pakistan, but across the world. It is a step which the Arab and Muslim judiciary should follow, because the tensions caused by Facebook and similar sites, will only create more animosity between people.
Egyptian Engineer, who also quit Facebook, writes:
دا غير إن الفيس بوك بيآخد وقت كتير و فوائده قليلة مقابل طوفان من الكلام اللي ملوش لازمة بالنسبة لي
غير إن الفيس بوك بيستهبل و لغى كذا جروب إسلامي كنت مشترك فيهم فلقيت إن البقاء فيه تضييع وقت
Facebook takes a lot of time and its benefits are few, when compared to the flood of words which are useless to me. Also Facebook is acting up and they have deleted a number of Islamic groups I was a member in so I realised that staying there is just a waste of time.