Sunday, February 05, 2006
Where is the outrage?Muslims throughout the world are protesting those cartoons that depict the prophet Mohammed. But to our great surprise, there haven't been any complaints (so far) about the U.S. Supreme Court. What are we talking about? A while back - maybe 15 years ago - there was a bit of a ruckus over the depiction of Mohammed at the Supreme Court. Inside the building are several friezes. From Snopes: The friezes which adorn the north and south walls of the courtroom in the Supreme Court building (also designed by Adolph Weinman) depict a procession of 18 great lawgivers: Menes, Hammurabi, Moses, Solomon, Lycurgus, Solon, Draco, Confucius and Octavian (south wall); Justinian, Mohammed, Charlemagne, King John, Louis IX, Hugo Grotius, Sir William Blackstone, John Marshall and Napoleon (north wall): Here's the part of the frieze that depicts Mohammed: 
Back then one of the complaints, besides the depiction of the prophet, was that he was shown with a sword in his right hand (no problem there), but in his left hand, he's holding the Koran. And using the left hand was deemed offensive. Yet in all the furor over the Danish cartoons, this old grudge about the Supreme Court frieze has been forgotten. C'mon guys, start protesting in front of Justice Roberts! NOTE: For those who think the Internet has everything, just try to find a good image of the north frieze inside the Supreme Court. Amazingly, the only image we could find was at a personal geocities web page.
posted by Quiddity at 2/05/2006 09:09:00 AM
7 comments
For those who think the Internet has everything...
WWW is very weak on anything published before circa 1994.
Here's one. (Google Images search for [supreme court muhammad].)
Hey, Q, your inbox is full, according to mailer-daemon. Here's what I wanted to send you:
Hi, Q,
Pharyngula just linked to this:
link
which reminded me a lot of the diagrams I used to see on your blog.
Thought you'd like it, if you haven't seen it already.
Peace,
--Carl
--
blog
pix
I think it is a good question, why are you taunting people? It really is disrespectful and immature to write "C'mon guys, start protesting in front of Justice Roberts!"
You should ask yourself if you are here on Earth helping people or just crapping on everything and creating pain for others.
http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/
There's a better pic about halfway down the page, along with some related links. That particular page currently has many many other depictions throughout history....
Depiction of Mohammed in and of itself is not problem for Shiites.
Only the Sunni's have a problem with images (even reverent ones) of the prophet. There is a lot of Persian (Shiites) that depict Mohammed but usually wearing a veil to cover his face.
Is is always offensive to hold the Koran in your left hand? Do you have to read it with one hand?
What do you do with the other one?
This whole episode opens up a lot of possiblities as to how to retaliate for terrorist attacks. After the next terrorist attack, we fire a missle at Mecca, it air bursts 100 meters over the city, dropping thousands of charicatures of Mohammed with pig ears and snout or maybe Mohammed fucking a pig or how about both?
The cartoons "ran in a newspaper that is repeatedly described as right-leaning, with ties to neocons. ... Most telling may be the cartoon in which a figure stands in front of a blackboard with Arabic writing, translated in the caption: “Jyllands-Posten’s journalists are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs.” In another, a Western man in a turban — most likely the cartoonist — holds up a crude stick figure drawing, as an orange with the label “P.R. stunt” lands on his head. ... the meaning of both these cartoons is clear — this was a deliberately provocative stunt, and the newspaper knew it." - Tom Tomorrow
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