Westergaard Stiftung für die Redefreiheit

EuropeNews 3 Mai 2011
Original: The Westergaard Foundation, Eticha,
Galleri Draupner, Gates of Vienna

Übersetzung von Liz/EuropeNews

(Click for a larger version)Im Zusammenhang mit der Gründung der Westergaard Stiftung rufen wir eine Kampagne für Pressefreiheit 2011 ins Leben. Die Zeichnung Redefreiheit wird in den meisten Teilen der Welt für den symbolischen Preis von 100€ (USD $150) verkauft, um die Schaffung des Fonds zu unterstützen.

Es dreht sich hierbei um den Gedanken der Meinungsfreiheit, wie er historisch gesehen wurde und wie man heute damit umgeht. Es ist die Absicht eine Diskussion in Gang zu setzen, über die Meinungsfreiheit, wie wir sie im Westen heute kennen, und wie wir ihre zukünftige Entwicklung beeinflusst durch die Globalisierung und die damit zusammenhängenden Herausforderungen, betrachten. Das Gründungskapital wird gesammelt durch den Verkauf von persönlich signierten Drucken seiner neuesten Zeichnung mit dem Titel „Redefreiheit“, durch Herrn Westergaard:

Das Konzept

„Redefreiheit 2011“ kann als Lehrmaterial oder als Konzept für Seminare genutzt werden, sowie für Diskussionen in Foren, in Organisationen, Unternehmen und Institutionen. Im Verlauf der Entwicklung wird eine Online-Hilfe eingerichtet werden mit direktem Kontakt zu Experten, wo die relevanten Fragen unter Herausarbeitung des Themas beantwortet werden.

Das Entwicklungsteam freut sich auf Ihre Vorschläge, Gedanken und natürlich auf alle Verbesserungsvorschläge. Wir sind davon überzeugt, dass die Debatte über die Meinungsfreiheit natürlich ein fortschreitender Prozess ist, der niemals enden darf, damit wir sie nicht verlieren!

Jede Zeichnung wird vom Künstler persönlich signiert und kommt zu Ihnen mit einem Zertifikat, das den Käufer zu einem Teil der Kampagne Redefreiheit 2011 macht.

Phyllis Chesler hat einen Artikel über die Westergaard Stiftung auf ihrer Webseite dem NewsReal Blog veröffentlicht. Weitere Informationen finden Sie auch auf der Seite von Hans Erling Jensen namens Eticha.

Schauen Sie auf unseren Sidebar (bei Gates of Vienna), dort finden Sie eine kleinere Version des Bildes mit den dazugehörigen PayPal Knöpfen, damit Sie Ihr eigenes Exemplar bestellen können.

Weiter unten finden Sie die Presseveröffentlichung für Redefreiheit 2011:

Kurt Westergaard gründet eine Stiftung!

Der Künstler und Karikaturist Kurt Westergaard gründet heute eine Stiftung, um die Redefreiheit zu unterstützen. Die Stiftung gründet sich auf der Ansicht, dass die Meinungsfreiheit ein Eckpfeiler der Demokratie ist, sie ist entscheidend für einen dynamischen Dialog und die Entwicklung einer Gesellschaft.

Kurt Westergaard, der zahlreiche nationale und internationale Preise für seinen Standpunkt gegenüber der Redefreiheit erhalten hat ,verkauft nun persönlich signierte Drucke seines Werks Redefreiheit, um die Finanzierung des Fonds der Westergaard Stiftung zu ermöglichen. Eine Stiftung, für diejenigen, die unter Gewalt oder Verfolgung leiden auf Grund ihrer Ansichten!

Staatsoberhäupter, Nobelpreisträger, Künstler und insbesondere normale Menschen aus vielen Teilen der Welt haben in den vergangenen Jahren Kurt Westergaard geehrt und unterstützt und so die Bedeutung seiner Beharrlichkeit und seines Glaubens erkannt.

Kurt Westergaard hat mit seiner Zeichnung Redefreiheit, die er in gewohnter Weise geradeheraus in seiner Farbgebung und Symbolik geschaffen hat, ausgedrückt, unter welch schwierigen Umständen die Redefreiheit heute existiert. Die Zeichnung regt dazu an, nachzudenken und sich seine eigenen Vorstellungen zu machen. Die Art der Vorstellung, die Kurt Westergaard mit den Worten „der unbeugsame Verteidiger der Meinungsfreiheit“ beschreibt.

Einmal im Jahr wird das Gremium, sowie eine Beratungsgruppe, fünf Kandidaten für den Preis nominieren: Den Westergaard Preis. Der Gewinner wird im November/Dezember eines jeden Jahres bekannt gegeben und kurz darauf wird eine feierliche Zeremonie stattfinden.

Die Nominierten werden Menschen sein, die den Mut besessen haben gegen die Unterdrückung aufzubegehren. Menschen, die beispielsweise durch Gedichte, Filme, durch Bilder, Lieder, in Theaterstücken oder mit Hilfe artistischer Kreativität, Beharrlichkeit gezeigt haben, und sich zu ihrer Überzeugung bekannt haben ungeachtet von Gewalt, Verfolgung, Todesdrohungen usw.

Die Zeichnung Redefreiheit wird in den meisten Teilen der Welt für den symbolischen Preis von 100€ (USD $150) verkauft, um die Schaffung des Fonds zu unterstützen.

Eine Anbieterliste kann man finden bei: www.galleri-draupner.dk und: www.eticha.dk. In nächster Zeit kann man weitere Information bei www.westergaardfoundation.com nachlesen.

Die Stiftung besteht aus einem Vorstand sowie einem nationalen und internationalen Beratungsgremium, dessen Mitglieder auf der ganzen Welt nach Menschen suchen, auf den Gebieten Kunst und Kreativität, die durch ihre Arbeit im Widerspruch mit einem Regime, Glauben, einer Diktatur oder einer anderen Art der Macht stehen, die den Nominierten Anschlägen oder Drohungen aussetzt.

Anfangs wird das Gremium folgendermaßen zusammengesetzt sein:

• Hans Erling Jensen
• Farshad Kholghi
• Henryk M Broder

Pressekonferenz:

Am Montag, den 2. Mai um 10:00 Uhr wird eine Pressekonferenz stattfinden.

Veranstaltungsort:

Gallery Draupner
Låsbyvej 15 8660
Skanderborg

Bitte nehmen Sie zur Kenntnis, dass unter anderem aus Sicherheitsgründen, nur diejenigen Reporter, Fotografen und TV Teams zugelassen werden können, die sich vorher schriftlich angemeldet haben (der Presseausweis muss vorgezeigt werden)

Schriftliche Anmeldung:

Erik Guldager
Låsbyvej 15
8660 Skanderborg
erik@guldager.net

Fragen?
Kontaktieren Sie Erik Guldager tel +45 2467 7030

Eine Nachricht an Blogbetreiber:

Wenn Sie Interesse daran haben, mit ihrem Blog an dieser Kampagne teilzunehmen, wenden Sie sich bitte an: Erik Guldager um Details zu erfahren.

Hate Crime vs. Art

Motoons: Everybody Draw Mohammad Day

Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, is available now from Regnery Publishing, and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of the forthcoming book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon and Schuster).

With last Thursday’s “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” which began on Facebook but spread to anti-jihad sites all over the Internet, Muhammad cartoons are now everywhere — and Muslims are outraged. The government of Pakistan shut down Facebook and YouTube, but that didn’t pacify the thousands of Pakistanis who took to the streets to protest against drawings of Muhammad that they could not have seen even if they had wanted to.

One protester held a sign bearing a threat: “Facebook, do not try our patience/STOP your coward activity.” Others shared a large banner reading: “We are ready to sacrifice on [sic] our beloved holy prophet.”

So far there have been no new riots or killings to rival the immediate aftermath of the publication of the original cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper in September 2005. After the Organization of the Islamic Conference decided at its meeting in Mecca in December 2005 to use the cartoons as an object lesson in the perils of Western secularism, Islamic rage against the cartoons began to boil over all around the world. At least 139 people were killed and 823 were injured over the next few months in Muslim riots against the cartoons.

Another, perhaps even more ominous response to those cartoons was the beginning of the OIC’s anti-free speech campaign — an attempt to compel the West to criminalize criticism of Islam and accept Sharia restrictions on non-Muslims speaking about Islam. In 2008, the Secretary General of the OIC, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, issued a peremptory threat of his own: “We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed” regarding free speech about Islam and jihad terrorism.

Yet while the government and media elites in America and Europe have generally rushed to show how willing, even eager, they are to show that they will not cross those red lines, their supine response to this assault on free speech has created a backlash among free people. It is worth bearing in mind the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” would never have aroused much interest among anyone if cartoons of Muhammad didn’t arouse Muslims worldwide to homicidal rage and attempts to restrict the freedom of speech.

While it may in other circumstances simply be obnoxious, or legitimately (not to say to an extent justifying murder) offensive to lampoon someone else’s cherished religious leader, the Muslim reaction to Infidel cartoons of Muhammad is entirely itself responsible for the interest Infidels have in lampooning the Islamic prophet in the first place. If Christians had reacted to Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ or Chris Ofili’s dung-encrusted portrait of the Virgin Mary with the same murderous outrage with which Muslims greeted the cartoons of Muhammad, the West would be experiencing a glut of pictures blaspheming Christ and Christianity.

It is, in the first place, an irresistible human impulse to tweak the humorless and self-important; it can in many cases also be a healthy safeguard against tyranny. The figure that cannot be mocked or ridiculed is the one that holds all the cards, all the power. Opposition, dissent, free exchange of ideas depend upon the ability to cause offense without taking one’s life in one’s hands. That’s why the Muhammad cartoons published last week all over the Internet were not an exercise in obnoxiousness or gratuitous offense. They are, rather, the foremost battleground in the defense of the freedom of speech today. Every newspaper in the country should be printing them today, to show they are not cowed and will defend free speech.

It is useful to recall some of the earliest reactions to Cartoon Rage: Carsten Juste, the editor-in-chief of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published the original Muhammad cartoons, refused to apologize for publishing them: “We live in a democracy. That’s why we can use all the journalistic methods we want to. Satire is accepted in this country, and you can make caricatures. Religion shouldn’t set any barriers on that sort of expression. This doesn’t mean that we wish to insult any Muslims.” Cultural editor Flemming Rose concurred: “Religious feelings,” he declared, “cannot demand special treatment in a secular society. In a democracy one must from time to time accept criticism or becoming a laughingstock.”

And so now with “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” the prophet of Islam has indeed become a laughingstock – albeit those who mocked him last week did so with what was ultimately a very serious purpose. The Muslims who fulminated against the cartoons have only themselves to thank – or curse.

FrontpageMag

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

by Baron Bodissey

Public Square has invited me to take part in an Everybody Draw Mohammed Day debate about the ethical implications of needlessly offending one-third of the world’s population. I was given the opportunity to write the first post. I’ve cross-posted my essay below.

I’m told that the ethicist Jack Marshall will offer his views on the same topic. Keep an eye on the Public Square blog to see the debate as it unfolds.

It seems they allow comments over there. If any of our regular readers decide to pay Public Square a visit, please wash behind your ears and put on a clean shirt before you knock on the door. And play nice — we don’t want to leave a bad impression, now, do we?

Everyone Draw Mohammed Day

Greetings to all the readers of Bloggerheads at Public Square.

The owners of this site have invited me to debate the ethical implications of what so many people will be doing today: drawing Mohammed.

Some of these drawings may be respectful of Allah’s messenger. Some will be neutral in content. Others will insult or mock Mohammed. But all are likely to offend Muslims.

As the Danish Mohammed cartoon crisis of 2005-2006 demonstrated, “insulting” images of Mohammed are used as an excuse for mass rioting and violence. Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who created the iconic “Turban Bomb” cartoon, was later the subject of at least two plots on his life.

Comedy Central’s recent suppression of South Park over material that mentioned Mohammed — which is what inspired the woman who initiated Everybody Draw Mohammed Day — brought the issue to the attention of the general public. In the weeks since the South Park kerfuffle, more incidents of “Muslim Cartoon Rage” have been featured in the news. Last week the Swedish artist Lars Vilks was physically attacked in Uppsala while giving a seminar on freedom of speech — illustrating his lecture with a video containing sexually provocative images involving Mohammed. A few days later his home in Skåne was vandalized and firebombed by two young Muslim men.

The case of Lars Vilks is an interesting one, because the Danish cartoon crisis prompted Mr. Vilks to find out how far he could go before Sweden’s regime of political correctness stifled him. He knew that he could be as “transgressive” as he liked with the sacred symbols of Christianity, or even Judaism. But it was obvious that the same tolerant rules would not extend to the mocking of Islam.

In the summer of 2007 he created a little test of the system: when invited to contribute images of animals for display in an art exhibit, he drew several free-form line drawings of a dog shape with a human-looking head that sported a beard and a turban. He titled his works, “Profeten som rondellhund” — “The Prophet as a Roundabout Dog”. A rondellhund is a Swedish folk custom, a statue of a dog made of wood or metal that is placed in the center of a roundabout or traffic circle.

Mr. Vilks was very careful in what he drew. The dog in the drawing did not represent a real dog, but a statue made of wood or metal. And as, he stated in the early interviews, the prophet whose visage adorned the rondellhund was non-specific: it was some prophet or other, but he declined to say which one.

As he expected, the committee in charge of the gallery hastily took down his drawings when they realized the potential problem. Mr. Vilks responded indignantly that there no longer seemed to be any right to free speech in Sweden. He proceeded to draw more roundabout dogs in various styles, and added a few other variations such as “The Prophet Visits a Gay Bar.” He took a picture of two lawn chairs and titled it “Two Prophets”. He drew a crude face on a shoe and labeled it a “prophet”.

His doings caused only a minor stir until a month later, when the editor of the local newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published the first mainstream media depiction of the Prophet as a Roundabout Dog. Then the trouble started in earnest: death threats, directed both at him and at the newspaper editor; condemnation by prominent political figures; outrage and demands for apologies from Muslim organizations. The brouhaha continued for months, and through it all the artist continued to draw more dogs.

The fuss gradually died down, and the issue lay dormant until early this year, when several Muslim terrorists — including the notorious American “Jihad Jane” — were arrested for plotting to kill Lars Vilks. His name returned to the newspaper headlines, and not just in Scandinavia, but all over the world. From the Muslim world came a rising drumbeat of calls for his death, matching in intensity the fatwas and threats against Kurt Westergaard. Unlike Mr. Westergaard, however, Mr. Vilks lacks any bodyguards or state protection at his home. His only defense against murderous intruders is an axe.

The case of Lars Vilks has demonstrated — as he fully intended from the very beginning — that there is no such thing as free speech in Sweden, if that speech offends Muslims. His drawings depicted neither Mohammed nor a dog, but the perception that they did assigned him a permanent descriptive label as “the Swedish artist who drew a cartoon of Mohammed as a dog”.

Reality played no part in what happened to Lars Vilks. Only perception mattered, especially what was perceived by Muslims.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Lars Vilks and the creators of South Park share something in common: they all set out deliberately to demonstrate that free speech does not apply to anything that might offend Muslims. They also proved that actual government censorship is not necessary: private foundations and media companies are eager to suppress anything that carries the possibility of causing offense to Muslims. When editors and publishers and producers and gallery owners see any work that involves Mohammed or Islam, they smell the burning cars in the street and hear the glass breaking their building lobbies. Nobody wants to lose his life or his career for the sake of creative principle, so almost everyone caves in and self-censors.
– – – – – – – – –
In the United States we have the First Amendment, which assures of us the right to create controversial and unpleasant material, even if it offends someone else. Most European countries don’t afford their citizens the same protections; many have laws against blasphemy and incitement to racial hatred that limit speech. The latter principle — in Sweden the crime is known as hets mot folkgrupp, “incitement against an ethnic group” — has been extended to cover religious belief, so that laws against racism are used to crack down on anyone who defames a religious group. Needless to say, the religion in question is invariably Islam — no one gets arrested in Europe or the United States for defecating on a crucifix or depicting the Virgin Mary as a bondage queen.

The remarkable thing, however, is that the force of law rarely needs to be applied in cases that cause offense to Islam. Internalized social controls do the job better than the police ever could. Schoolteachers, pastors, office managers, business owners, minor municipal bureaucrats, editors, bookshop managers — all play a part in making sure that Muslims are never, ever offended.

Theo Van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam in 2004 for making a movie that insulted Muslims. He was the first martyr for the right to offend Islam, and there will undoubtedly be more. The list of artists and writers who have been harassed, threatened, intimidated, attacked, and prosecuted for offending Islam includes Lars Vilks, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Gregorius Nekschot, Kurt Westergaard, Salman Rushdie, Jussi Halla-aho, Paul Ray, and others too numerous to mention.

Freedom of speech in is being eroded in Western countries, and it is being eroded selectively. Causing offense to Islam — or even behavior that might lead to situations that offend Islam — is stamped out by social, political, and legal means. This is a result of creeping Islamization, and in Western Europe Islamization is no longer creeping, but has stood up and is starting to gallop.

This is why Everybody Draw Mohammed Day took off and spread virally at such an astonishing rate — it was an idea whose time had come. It was spread from computer to computer, from blog to blog, by ordinary people who were willing to do what famous and powerful people are unwilling to do: shake a fist at Muslim bullies and say, “Enough is enough!”

To draw Mohammed is to assert that one’s right to free speech is God-given and unalienable. It is not granted by the State nor permitted by law, but is inherent, and its suppression constitutes tyranny.

Today is the day when everybody draws Mohammed. And when they do, they are saying, “This is our right, and it cannot be taken away from us!”

Does this offend you? Very well, then — it offends you!

Deal with it.

Why Everyone in the Civilized World Must Support ‘Everybody Draw Muhammad Day’

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bthor/2010/05/19/why-everyone-in-the-civilized-world-must-support-everybody-draw-muhammad-day/

by Brad Thor

Many people have asked if I am supporting “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” tomorrow, May 20th.  I am and two of the most moving arguments of why you should too come from the Huffington Post and Reason Magazine.

In response to Islamic reaction over the movie Fitna, which juxtaposes images of Muslim violence with passages from the Qur’an (the same passages Islamic terrorists cite as justification for their violence), writer Sam Harris at the Huffington Post penned one of the best critiques of Islam (and our refusal to engage it) I have ever read: Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks.  In it, Harris rightly points out:

The controversy over Fitna, like all such controversies, renders one fact about our world especially salient: Muslims appear to be far more concerned about perceived slights to their religion than about the atrocities committed daily in its name. Our accommodation of this psychopathic skewing of priorities has, more and more, taken the form of craven and blinkered acquiescence.

There is an uncanny irony here that many have noticed. The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for “racism” and “Islamophobia.”

Our capitulations in the face of these threats have had what is often called “a chilling effect” on our exercise of free speech.

In Mark Goldblatt’s Reason Magazine article this week The Poet Versus the Prophet he expands on many of Harris’ arguments and states:

[O]ur tip-toeing around Islamic sensibilities is nothing more than plain, old-fashioned cowardice….  We lack the moral courage to walk the walk, to put our individual lives on the line in order to defend the principles of free thought and free expression—the very principles that allowed the Judeo-Christian West to leave the Islamic East in the dust, literally and figuratively, three centuries ago.

Goldblatt makes multiple excellent points throughout his piece and closes with:

Since 2001, many Americans have asked how they can contribute in a direct way to the war against totalitarian Islam. Now we have an answer. If it’s legal, and likely to offend the radicals, just do it. That seems straightforward enough. But how many of us will have the nerve to stand up to a million or so Muslim dirtbags, and to scores of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of their fellow travelers and psychic enablers, and say in unison, “You want to kill the Enlightenment, you’re going to have to come through me.

Islam is not above question, criticism, critique, or examination.  In fact, Islam is fourteen centuries overdue for some serious questioning, criticism, critiquing, and examination.  People the world over need to be reminded that the freedom of speech most certainly includes the freedom to offend.  The right of non-Muslims to draw pictures of Muhammad is equaled by a right just as powerful, the right of Muslims to ignore pictures they find offensive.

Though I can’t believe I am going to quote Captain Jean Luc- Picard, there is no better way to express why tomorrow’s world-wide event is so important:

“We’ve made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no farther!”

While Picard goes on to say that he will “make them [the Borg] pay,” that’s not our job.  Our job is to stand and defend free speech.  No more outrageous outrage and Muslim grievance theater over cartoons, operas, and videos.

We will no longer retreat.  We will no longer fall back.  We will no longer demand from every other community on the face of the planet that they meet us on the playing field of civilized, rational discourse, yet carve out a special, protected, no-holds-barred zone for Islam.

It’s over.  This far and no farther. No more special treatment.  It is time for Islam to come into the 21st century.

This is why I support “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.”

H/T Atlas Shrugs