Available on campus, around the Eugene community and in a prison near you, the latest edition of The Insurgent student newspaper was intended to “provoke dialogue,” according to the subscription’s editorial. In the same vein as the Oregon Commentator’s decision to print the 12 Danish cartoons that recently stirred global rioting and violence over depictions of Islam, The Insurgent decided to shock the community with the publication of 12 hand-drawn comics insulting Christianity.
Arousing dialogue is an admirable goal for any newspaper, yet The Insurgent staff is mistaken in many of their premises in printing these anti-Christian cartoons.
The Insurgent editorial indicates a desire to show Americans why the original cartoons were so offensive to the Muslim world. According to the editorial, “What is ‘not a big deal’ in the US (sic) is apparently a humongous big deal to others. Why should we assume it would not be?”
However, printing home-grown cartoons depicting Jesus on a cross/pogo stick or Jesus on a cross/hangliding apparatus are not inflammatory in the same manner as the anti-Islam cartoons, and therefore fail to produce the intended empathy from Christians to Muslims.
The comics printed in Europe (and later reprinted by the Oregon Commentator) were offensive and riot-producing because they touched on relevant religious and social issues, such as the notion that all men in turbans are terrorists and the very real problem of European discrimination and violence toward the Muslim community.
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.
Interestingly, The Insurgent was not the only publication to respond to Danish cartoons by printing cartoons intended to provoke Christians. A student newspaper at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada published a comic involving Jesus and bestiality.
As The Insurgent itself has stated, promoting dialogue is one of the most important jobs of a newspaper. Nevertheless, rather than encouraging readers to discuss the shock value of publication decisions, the media should strive for an educated, civil dialogue concerning significant ideas and current events. If sparking outrage is truly a publication’s goal, that newspaper ought to keep in mind that poking fun at the religious beliefs of the majority is inherently different from attacking an already oppressed minority.