The most notable public objection to the use of Jesus and Mo on UCL’s Atheist, Secular and Humanist Society’s Facebook page came from the Ahmadiyya group at UCL. Despite finding the material offensive, they acknowledged ASH’s right to use it, and members have apparently repeated this important point in conversations with their fellow students from ASH. Apart from using (in my opinion) some rather poor arguments, I have no problem with the Ahmadiyya Muslims’ approach.
However I do have a problem with the Guardian, which is not even allowing readers to link to Jesus and Mo cartoons in the comments which follow this article. Someone pointed out that all such links were being deleted. I tested this assertion with an innocuous and on topic comment which included a link to this cartoon. (I made it clear what I was linking to, which meant that anyone who thought they might be offended could avoid following the link, as can you.) Sure enough –it disappeared within half an hour. This was only my second ever CIF deletion – the first was a link to CIFWatch.
But although ‘Mohammed Jones’ (the cartoonist’s pseudonym) is apparently persona non grata even in the comments– Carlos Latuff is feted in the paper itself.
Update: Blogger Alex Gabriel has published a piece commenting on the latest developments in the Jesus and Mo saga. He points out that although ASH seems to have won this battle, there is still a threat of action against them on grounds of bullying/discrimination which might apparently lead to the society’s disaffiliation from the Union.
