Zapiro, South Africa's premier cartoonist, known for his controversial style in picking on politicians and commenting on social inequalities, has come into the limelight in South Africa for jumping on the “Draw Muhammad Day” bandwagon. “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” is a drawing event inspired by a comment by Seattle cartoonist, Molly Norris in a radio interview about Comedy Central's decision to censor a South Park episode that had depictions of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Here's two articles from South Africa's premier newspaper, the Mail and Guardian on the issue:The cartoon, the prophet and suburban radicals and Uproar over M&G Prophet Muhammad cartoon. From the Blogosphere, as you can imagine, two camps distinctly emerge… those in support and those against. First, let's examine arguments against the cartoon simply because arguments in support have already been well represented in the mainstream media. To set the scene, we'll begin with a piece I posted on my own blog, Waiting in Transit: I can’t understand why the media, the west and everyone else who engaged in the “Let’s Draw Muhammad” contest recently couldn’t, in all their secular intelligence, attempt to first UNDERSTAND and then to act instead of the other way round. I am also extremely disappointed with Zapiro for simply “jumping on the bandwagon” which is very unlike him. The Zapiro I’m used to has deep insight, sharp wit and gets to the heart of the issue at hand. Zapiro’s cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) shows only deep ignorance… but I’ll analyse that later. First, let’s get to the heart of the matter. Why are Muslims going crazy when this happens? Well, at the essence, we do not draw the Prophet Muhammad or represent him in any way or form even though we do have detailed, verified and ratified descriptions of him because it is mentioned in the Quraan not to fall into the trap of our Christian Brethren and end up worshipping the Prophet instead of God. Secondly, Muslims believe in ALL of the prophet’s of God – Moses, Jesus, Noah, Jonah, Adam, etc. (peace be upon them all) and we don’t DRAW any of them. But still… why is there so much passion in this issue? well look at the content. The depictions are ignorant and horrible. There is no mistaking the intent behind them. It more represents some Hard-line Iranian ‘Terrorist’ Mullah than have any insight into the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Muslims LOVE the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), I mean truly love. For Muslims he is the ultimate example of what a human being is supposed to be. We actually implement the idea that whenever we’re faced with any situation in life the question is automatically… “Well, what did the Prophet (pbuh) do?” You can’t underestimate this point, it leads to the next point in this issue. Let’s make it personal. Take someone you truly love and would do anything for… say it’s your mother. Now, if someone was talking badly (or drawing nasty pictures) of your mother but did it amongst themselves and, obviously, they have a right to say what they want. It’s all absolutely fine. But when someone comes up to you and waves it about in your face and swears your mother to your face, what would you do? Yes, it is the ultimate example we need to follow to hold our peace and deal with it in an intelligent and civilised manner (in fact this is what the Prophet (pbuh) himself would have done. But being realistic… Your first move would be a punch in the gut of the offending perpetrator. This is the line between having the freedom to say what you want, but respecting the people around you. A blog post written by Khadija Patel has garnered some media attention. Khadija is an editor of Al Huda, a community newspaper in South Africa. She appropriately entitled her post “Lest we become caricatures of ourselves”: That message plays into the victim mentality so many in this community are handicapped by and it is disappointing that most Muslims, myself included, don’t batter an eyelash when other religions are made the butt of the cartoonist’s pencil. There certainly is a duplicity of values that needs to be addressed. It is interesting too that on the two occasions publishing cartoons of the Prophet has been made an issue in South Africa, both times the judges deciding the matter were Muslims. A clear indication of how much more integrated Muslims in South Africa are. In the first case of the infamous Danish cartoon, the late Judge Mohamed Jajbhay decided that publishing it would amounted to hate speech. A reminder that even the most liberal constitution recognises limits to free speech but the ruling came under great scrutiny as it was felt the judge was ill qualified to hold an objective perspective in matters pertaining to his namesake.