Art is a tricky subject. Everyone’s a critic and some react a little more strongly than others. Just ask Molly Norris. Art critics in the Muslim world have put her on a hit list for some of her work.

Ms. Norris is a cartoonist who stood up for freedom of speech…for awhile. After the animated show “South Park” bowed to pressure and threats and removed a piece from a show showing the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit, Ms. Norris started a movement called “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.” The idea took off and groups both left and right got behind the idea of standing up for freedom of expression.

Radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki

Some liberal cowards like Atlanta Journal Constitution “political cartoonist” Mike Luckovich didn’t join in because they were already aware of the way Islamic critics give a bad review. As were the folks at one of my favorite shows “The Simpsons.” After the “South Park” incident they had Bart do his punishment on the chalk board by writing, “South Park – We’d stand beside you if we weren’t so scared.”

I’m not sure of Molly Norris’ political leanings but after her crusade for freedom took off, she backed away. She apologized to Muslims for offending them. She was honest as to why she was backing away when she drew a cartoon with herself saying, “I said that I wanted to counter fear and then I got afraid.” (more…)

Dhimmitude: an attitude of concession, surrender and appeasement towards Islamic demands.

South Park, equal opportunity satirists, have finally met their match.

No, not the Islamist barbarians who have issued an indirect fatwa against South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the unforgivable crime of satirizing the notion of Muhammed’s appearance.

The veiled threat posted on a jihadist website, is, I’m afraid, totally expected.

It is Hollywood itself that has betrayed Parker and Stone. 

In the episode—I viewed the original before it was censored—Muhammed was shown inside a U-haul, inside a mascot’s uniform, and finally as a child’s stick figure drawing.

It was hilarious.

And deadly. (more…)

“We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.”

That was the arrogant declaration of victory from the Organization of the Islamic Conference nearly two years ago, regarding the shrewdly orchestrated Muslim mayhem around the world protesting such infidel abominations as the Danish Muhammad cartoons and Geert Wilders’ short film Fitna.

“Red lines” indeed – a phrase chillingly reminiscent of Samuel Huntington’s famous observation that “Islam has bloody borders.” Except that the red lines the OIC is referring to aren’t geographical – they are the ever-tightening limits that Muslim fundamentalists are imposing to choke off our freedoms.

The influential OIC is the world’s largest Muslim assembly, consisting of 57 member states (you know, the same number of U.S. states candidate Obama campaigned in). Its primary aim is “conducting a large-scale worldwide effort to confront Islamophobia.” (As I’ve written here before, Islamophobia is a mythical beast that the OIC and collusive groups like CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, use to intimidate us into craven appeasement.) Their goal is to abridge our free speech by making criticism of Islam an international crime; their strategy works because the West has been so emasculated by multiculturalism that we’d rather embrace cultural suicide than offend the tender sensibilities of such violent barbarians as the Danish cartoon rioters. (more…)

Give Comedy Central an anal probe. Not because of Jon Stewart’s ongoing tiff with Bernard Goldberg and Fox News, which is just polite, interesting fun. Rather, it has to do with the disturbing news that the creators of the animated sitcom “South Park” were threatened by an apparent jihadist organization called Revolution Muslim over an episode that contains some (mildly) irreverent material about Mohammed – and the cable network caved.

They bent over and censored the show. According to the New York Times arts blog posted this morning, the episode in question, a follow-up to the one that showed the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bear costume, was edited by Comedy Central to avoid further offense. The version that aired Wednesday contained audio bleeps and image blocks (“CENSORED”), apparently inserted by the network, after the Muslim group warned on its website that show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will probably end up like Theo Van Gogh.” This is a reference to the Dutch film maker who was murdered – shot eight times then stabbed, with a note pinned to the knife, like in an Eric Ambler story — on an Amsterdam street after he made a documentary critical of Islam’s treatment of women. Fearing for her safety, Van Gogh’s collaborator, Somalia-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was forced to flee the country, and the Dutch Parliament engaged in vigorous debate on the subject of banning certain kinds of speech as “blasphemy.” In other words, they unheroically blamed the victim. (more…)

Chris Morris is a phenomenally brilliant British comedian responsible for some of the most viciously funny programs I’ve ever seen (Check out “Brass Eye” or “The Day Today,” if you don’t believe me).

But now he’s coming out with a new film, called Four Lions, a comedy about suicide bombers.

Check out the trailer, here.

Now, I haven’t seen the flick, but I did read a rare interview with Morris in the London Times about the comedy, and a few things bugged me.

As far as I can tell, his movie is based on the premise that nearly all terrorists are buffoons – and from there he makes an attempt to “humanize” these “Keystone Kops.” He’s probably right that most terrorists are useless tools – but he overlooks the fact that buffoons need only succeed once to kill dozens, hundreds, or thousands. (more…)

So Roland Emmerich’s new movie is called “2012,” but it should be titled “Dude, Where’s my Balls.”

In the flick, the director enlists every CGI trick in the book to destroy various religious icons– including the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica and the Christ the Redeemer statue. And for those of you who worship at the altar of Obama, the White House gets nailed as well.

But there was one thing missing among the carnage: an Islamic target.

Emmerich at his London home.

According to Sci Fi Wire, by way of Cinematical.com, this was no accident. In an interview, the director said he hoped to destroy the Kaaba, an Islamic holy site, but his fellow screenwriter Harald Kloser persuaded him not to.

Here’s what the hack had to say about crushing the Kaaba:

“Well, I wanted to do that… but my co-writer Harald said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right. … We have to all … in the Western world … think about this. You can actually … let … Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have … a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is. So it’s just something which I kind of didn’t [think] was [an] important element anyway in the film, so I kind of left it out.” (more…)