Female cartoonist's provocative work challenges Saudi society

For Saudi Arabia's lone female cartoonist drawing is more than just satire, it's "a duty."

"I think men have put women in an unfavorable position in this part of the world. They've put women in an oppressive situation," said Hana Hajjar, who works for the English-language newspaper Arab News.

"I feel it is my duty towards women to speak out on their behalf, because I have the tools and venue to do so," she told CNN.

Hajjar's drawings both challenge gender roles and critique political policy, often depicting inequality between the sexes and support for the Palestinian people, but she is careful not to push too far.

"I like to draw thought-provoking and argument-provoking caricatures. I like to see how much I can push people to think, but am mindful never to cross societal red lines," she said.

For a woman in the conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia to be dealing with such issues represents a significant break in cultural convention.

"The general attitude in Saudi about caricaturists is that women don't have the stamina and inspiration to last long in this field, unlike their male counterparts," Hajjar explained, adding that luckily her parents had always been supportive of her career.

"I think men have put women in an unfavorable position in this part of the world. They've put women in an oppressive situation.
"Caricature is regarded as a man's profession, which has discouraged women in the past from entering the field but I hope my presence is a dent in that armor and will open up the path for others."

Over the past five years, Saudi society has made some modest progress toward greater gender equality. There are now a handful of prominent women sitting in the Chamber of Commerce, working in the media and there is even a woman in government, the Deputy Minister of Education.

Hajjar has one female colleague at the newspaper where she works.

Nonetheless social change is slow and resistance is strong.

The opening of an elite new university in September caused uproar for offering mixed-gender classes and allowing women to drive on the campus.

Hajjar herself said she has never felt repercussions from the government or society in the five years she has been working professionally, but noted that since she works in an English-language newspaper she feels she is less subjected to censorship.

"People who read the newspaper I work for are either foreigners or come from the upper middle class in Saudi, and so I haven't gotten much negative reaction."

When a cartoon is rejected Hajjar typically publishes it on her personal Web site anyway: HanaHajjar.com

The youngest of nine children, Hajjar grew up constantly caricaturing everything around her. She drew her first political cartoon at the age of 12 and since then has received the support of her parents and siblings.

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Source: CNN

Bin Laden Naked - laughing at extremism

A report by Abdelai Ragad

Bin Laden Naked is a comic book that illustrates the humorous contradictions of religious extremism.

The graphic work provides insight into the religious extremism that is spreading in some Islamic countries, particularly after the rise of al-Qaeda and Bin Laden.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide was given an exclusive pre-publication look.

Algerian born Mohammed Sifaoui, a specialist in European Islam and the political Islamic groups, is the book's author.

Bin Laden Naked will be published by a Parisian publishing house on 11 September. Mr Sifaoui says it was no small feat creating Bin Laden Naked: "I had to exert a lot of effort in the few past months in order to make the book available for readers by September.

It's the comic side of those who use Islam for political ends".

Cartoon characters
The idea of resorting to cartoons when writing about al-Qaeda and Bin Laden came to Mr Sifaoui in 2003. "It was an idea that came to me while studying in Pakistan and Afghanistan, preparing to produce a documentary film and a book, both entitled The Search for Bin Laden.

The extremists I met during my trips were, I believe, like cartoon characters. My book consists of real incidents and not merely jokes about al-Qaeda and Bin Laden".

Sifaoui, who is an opponent of armed political Islamic groups, adds: "Those dark-minded people prove in every word and deed that they are comic and a source of amusement. It is this essential aspect that makes it easy for me to present the story of Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda in cartoons and pictures".

Prophet Mohammed cartoons
Mohammed Sifaoui began his work after the civil war in Algeria in the 1990s. He then fled to Paris, where he has been living for five years under the protection of the French police because of death threats. Mr Sifaoui says the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed and the subsequent reactions from radical Islamists inspired him to write the story of al-Qaeda and Bin Laden in comic form. The author believes that despite the serious and fearful face of the al-Qaeda and religious extremism issue, there is a comic byproduct of the contradictions and lack of logical reasoning seen in Islamic extremists. He also believes Bin Laden Naked is the first book of its kind.

The veil and mobile phone
Mr Sifaoui sees the Islamic veil, 'hijab,' as one of the most important and sensitive issues in the fundamentalist Islamic thinking. He says: "The attitude of the extremists towards women is psychologically deformed, because, on the one hand, they deny her very existence, hide her behind the burque or the garment, deny her independence and deal with her as a material object, but on the other hand they marry four women. Bin Laden himself has four wives."

And the writer believes that one of the most important sources of irony is that the extremist leaders never risk their own lives. This leads to the cynical throught: Will the suicide attackers be ushered into paradise while Bin Laden and his sons will be deprived of this enjoyment?

With this book, the author wants to send a message to Muslim youths, especially in Europe, that extremism can never co-exist with modernism. He says his book is a new and unique way to understand the nature of what he calls Islamism. It is "a text that helps us laugh at those who want to terrorize us".

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Source: Radio Netherlands

UAE Blocks YouTube Cartoon Showing Muslim Boys Rejecting Dad's Efforts to Make Them Suicide Bombers for Being "Anti-Islam"

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- United Arab Emirates officials blocked a YouTube cartoon from Israel, featuring two Muslim boys who deflect their father's efforts to make them suicide bombers.

Officials said the cartoon is anti-Islam and racist toward Arabs, al-Arabiya reported.

In one episode, the two boys, Salim and Ahmed make a detour to get ice cream on their way to place an explosive on an Israeli bus. Then they put the bomb on a UAE bus.

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said it had gotten complaints about the cartoons, which are subtitled in Hebrew and English.

A spokesman for the TRA said the agency has resisted calls to block YouTube completely. Adult content on the site is automatically blocked, he said. Read more ...

Source: UPI
H/T: Weasel Zippers

Morally bankrupt multilateralism

Janet Albrechtsen | July 30, 2008

SOME stellar phrases dominated the election campaign last year. Australia faced a "fork in the road", said Kevin Rudd. As Prime Minister, he faces his own fork in the road. Rudd announced he was Multilateral Man, a modern social democrat leader who would forge a new foreign policy for Australia. Eschewing the Howard years, Rudd would apparently take us down a new, more inclusive road. He would fully embrace multilateralism as the best way to achieve global peace. But here's the thing. Multilateralism is not an inherent good. Sometimes its very inclusiveness ensures a rotten result.

That much was obvious at the confab in Durban in 2001 when a conference aimed at combating racism degenerated into a bigoted hate-fest against the US and Israel.

Non-government organisations in Durban handed out pamphlets depicting Israelis as modern-day Nazis and free T-shirts demanding the dismantling of Israel.

Even former US secretary of state Colin Powell - a good friend of the UN - walked out, declaring that "you do not combat racism by conferences that produce declarations containing hateful language".

Such was the moral bankruptcy at the Durban festival of hate, the then UN high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, refused to be part of the ceremony that tabled the forum's documents. Multilateralism, Durban-style, provided a platform, under the auspices of the international community, for anti-West Westerners and the most egregious abusers of human rights to rail against the West.

The Durban I debacle means that, if Rudd really is a sensible fusion between hardheaded realism and liberal idealism, as some have claimed, he will need to show that he can be choosy about multilateralism. And the measure of his commitment to multilateralism ought to go something like this. Meaningful multilateralism that actually achieves a common good is the aim.

Harmless multilateralism is understandable. Nothing gained, nothing lost. But oppressive multilateralism that allows repressive regimes to hijack agendas for their own cause to thwart real progress is unforgivable.

Rudd's test will be the next UN conference on racism.

Dubbed Durban II - as a follow-up to Durban I - the meeting next year in Geneva looks set to become a multilateral platform aimed at suppressing free speech in the name of preventing Islamaphobia.

How do we know? Let's start with who's in charge. That would be the UN's premier Human Rights Council which, as the preparatory committee for Durban II, elected Libya as its chair and includes Cuba, Pakistan and Iran. In multilateral land at the UN, Iran - a country whose leadership is openly committed to the destruction of Israel - will be involved in setting the agenda for the next global conference on racism.

The HRC was meant to be the answer to the UN's discredited former Human Rights Commission. Nothing has changed.

Next consider what's being said in the lead-up to Durban II. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference represents the most powerful voting bloc at the UN and many of its members happily sit on the Human Rights Council. In June, OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said "mere condemnation or distancing from the acts of the perpetrators of Islamophobia" is not enough. He wants Western nations to tighten basic freedoms of speech so there are no more cartoons or documentaries critical of Islam.

Other OIC members such as Pakistan and Indonesia, and of course Iran, also have free speech squarely within their sights.

Reasonable people agree that hate speech is abhorrent. But if hate speech were the real target of DurbanII, we should expect to hear denunciations of Holocaust inversion, where Israelis are treated as the new Nazis. Instead, under the cloak of hate speech and Islamophobia, the real agenda of many of the countries responsible for Durban II is stomping on criticism of Islam.

As hard-nosed realists, the OIC bloc knows how to exploit the multilateral idealists in the West.

Through sheer numbers they can and do throw around their weight to hijack agendas. One need only track the anti-Israel bias at Turtle Bay headquarters and the UN's other multilateral minions. At the HRC each year, special agenda item No8 is devoted to scrutinising one country: Israel. No other country. Just Israel.

Australia's former ambassador to the UN, Mike Smith, has denounced the "singling out of one country for criticism under a unique agenda item". But with other democracies silent on the issue, the unequal targeting of Israel prevails.

Gritty realism explains why OIC members adore UN conferences. It provides them with the perfect platform to invite anti-West Westerners to help promote their cause, ensuring worldwide media coverage on the evils of Islamophobia.

For them, multilateralism is a highly effective way to do business. And why wouldn't they rail against free speech?

The West has shown itself to be a faint-hearted supporter of its most cherished freedoms. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported on the latest supine surrender in The Netherlands, the home of tolerance. "On a sunny May morning, six plainclothes police officers, two uniformed policemen and a trio of functionaries from the state prosecutor's office closed in on a small apartment in Amsterdam. Their quarry: a skinny Dutch cartoonist with a rude sense of humour. Informed that he was suspected of sketching offensive drawings of Muslims and other minorities, the Dutchman surrendered without a struggle."

If charged, the cartoonist who uses a nom de plume - Gregorius Nekschot - faces two years in prison.

This is precisely what many OIC members have in mind. And they have worked out that multilateralism is their best way to push their agenda against freedom of expression using the cloak of Islamophobia and the apparent legitimacy of the UN.

They prevailed at Durban I in 2001. Next year in Geneva they get another shot. Canada has already refused to be part of Durban II. So has Israel. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said: "France will not allow a repetition of the excesses and abuses of 2001." As European Union President, he has promised to withdraw if the hate-fest is repeated. The question is, what will other democracies do?

The US will have a new president in the lead-up to Durban II. If it is Barack Obama, he faces the same dilemma that confronts our Prime Minister. Both pitch themselves as a new generation of modern social democrats committed to multilateralism. If they are realists, they will reject Durban II as oppressive multilateralism. Being part of Durban II will give legitimacy to an agenda that looks destined to attack basic democratic freedoms. Dewy-eyed human rights activists, international lawyers and those on the jetsetting gravy train of multilateral shindigs will never admit it. But multilateralism for the heck of it is a one heck of a mistake.

Source: The Australian

Danish library to exhibit Mohammed cartoons

Denmark's Royal Library is risking the wrath of Muslims with plans to display controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that sparked violent protest throughout the Islamic world two years ago.

The 12 caricatures of Islam's founder were published in Danish newspapers in September 2005 triggering riots and violence which claimed the lives of over 50 people. Read more ...

Source: Telegraph
H/T: Dhimmi Watch