Everybody draw Mohammed for a Day on Facebook

[Locutus]

This subject sprang out of a post I made in the God sucks thread regarding May 20th (today) being "Everybody Draw Muhammad for a Day" day on Facebook.  Apparently, a group of individuals, upset with Comedy Central's censoring of a South Park episode in which Muhammad was depicted, set up a Facebook group with the above title, and encouraged everyone to submit depictions of Muhammad today. 

I support the concept in general, because I loathe all religions equally.  No religious figures or people should be off limits for satire in a free country.  If your religion can't withstand criticism, having fun poked at it, or otherwise being the target of satire, it isn't much of a religion to begin with.  However, we've all see what some extremists have done to others who have depicted Muhammad.  They've threatened them with violence, and even carried out the brutal murder of one cartoonist who depicted Muhammad.  For those reasons alone, I am in support of the Facebook page.

However, what seems to have happened on Facebook is that the page, and the opposing page set up by the Muslims, have devolved into useless threats, meaningless discourse, and name calling.  There is some really nasty stuff on there.  Muslims are threatening to kill people before the content is removed, Christians are saying the Muslim's are worshipping the wrong God, and my camp, the atheists, telling both groups that they're 'effin stupid.  So what's happened is there are real insults and some borderline hate speech on there that's offending moderate Muslims who really don't pose any threat to anyone's free speech anyway. 

I applaud Facebook for leaving both the original page, and the counter page set up by the Muslims, up all day despite some of the filth that I've seen on there.   They've done their best to eliminate content that's over the line, but whole thing has turned into a real mess. 

My question is, where do we draw the line?  At what point does respect for others outweigh the need for freedom of expression, or does it ever?  How do we educate people that religion really is BS if we allow half the world to go off half cocked any time an image of Muhammad is depicted? 

[Locutus]

For reference, here is the link to the page so you can see what I'm talking about.  It should be open to everyone even without a Facebook account.

Everybody Draw Mohammed for a Day

Here is the counter page set up by the Muslims:

AGAINST Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

[The Troll]

  You know what would be fun.  Have our CIA to print a whole lot of nasty porno cartoons of Muhammad and take one of our drones and fly it over Iran at around 20,000 ft where no one can see it and drop the cartoons over their city's and watch them go nuts.  The would have to chew each others legs when they don't have anyone to blame.  But Satin America.

[Palehorse]

(My drawing of Mohammed is above. Pretty accurate eh? What? . . . You don't see anything? Great! A dead on representation then!) 

[kimmi]

I can't seem to get to the original facebook page.  Maybe they did take it down.

[Locutus]

Yep.  The original page appears to be offline now. 

[Locutus]

Apparently, it's been reborn.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lets-Draw-Mohammed/124115974283465?ref=search&sid=1737859323.3918168730..1