(Oh No Not Another) Infamous Jesus Cartoon Controversy
Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars, an Oregon student newspaper entitled The Insurgent has printed 12 anti-Christian cartoons, apparently as a response to the Danish publication of 12 cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims earlier this year. The paper (and image) in question is available in .PDF form at the Oregon Commentator.
The cartoons have drawn fire from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a group which has previously mounted campaigns against South Park and the Da Vinci Code movie.
The University of Oregon paper the Daily Emerald comments:
The cartoons created by The Insurgent were not only irrelevantly offensive (why should a Christian care that an amateur liberal cartoonist has drawn Jesus listening to an iPod?), they were printed in a nation where many citizens identify with some sect of Christianity and rarely experience the kind of widespread oppression felt by Muslims around the world. Trying to make an equal comparison between the Muslim anger toward European cartoons and potential Christian anger toward homoerotic Jesus cartoons printed in The Insurgent is a careless dismissal of why Islamic communities felt under attack because of the offensive comics. Unlike the Danish cartoons, The Insurgent drawings seem intended to simply incite controversy for controversy’s sake rather than making specific social commentaries.According to the Emerald, this isn't the first time a student newspaper has printed images offensive to Christians in response to the Danish cartoons. University of Saskatchewan paper The Sheaf published the following cartoon in March:
|