"Symbols and Censors" - Comics, Semiotics, and Islam

I have spent most of my day talking about comics and religion. It's been brilliant, and I am utterly exhausted.

I was invited last term by one of my professors to help him deliver a lecture on Islam and media, a lecture we both knew would need to touch on Islam and cartoons but the weight of which we couldn't fully anticipate prior to the Charlie Hebdo tragedy. The video I'm posting is the audio and slides from the lecture I delivered earlier today in the Theology & Religion Department of Durham University, and I have to say I'm rather proud of it. My ideas for this talk came together in all the right ways, and I was able to tie my portion of the lecture seamlessly into what Prof. Davies was talking about prior to me taking the podium. It went off without a hitch (except for some projector issues near the beginning, so I apologize for the slow start; it picks up around 1:20, I promise).

In this lecture I tackle first and foremost the matter of censorship, both in the lecture hall and as it pertains to depictions of Muhammad in modern media. I look at the prophet in animation and then in comics, before moving on to discuss some of the visual functions of the comics medium and connecting visual abstraction as presented by McCloud to identity as defined by religious symbols. After a brief comparison of the idea of bodily representation in Christianity and Islam I close with some thoughts on the human drive as meaning-making, cultural animals and the role of censorship as we create our history. I hope you enjoy it, hope the sound quality's alright, and I hope to hear your thoughts and questions about what I'm saying.


A couple of notes. First, I inadvertently flipped McCloud's "perceived" and "received" taxonomy. McCloud presents them as precisely the opposite of what I've presented. Something to keep in mind. Second, The 99 has nothing whatsoever to do with Marco Polo. My brain made that up and inserted it into my notes; my apologies to Dr. Naif. In the stories, the Noor Stones do indeed travel to the Far East by the Silk Road, but not by the person I have suggested.

We also had an excellent gathering of students at Josephine Butler College this evening for a "Global Voices" forum, at which I was asked to kickstart discussion around Charlie Hebdo and the matter of free speech. That conversation went in all kinds of interesting directions and I'm sorry to have not recorded it, but know that it happened, that young minds are actively, that we're trying to make sense of what it means to speak freely in a modern, global context. This event was particularly encouraging for me after chatting earlier with a friend about The Free Speech University Rankings in the UK, in which Durham received an amber traffic light (middling grade) for a diversity and equality in which the "Definition of racial harassment includes the ‘display of offensive material’." We have a tendency, it seems, to be vague about what materials we consider offensive, while our Students' Union places no restrictions on speech. Thanks, guys. For more of my thoughts on encountering (almost) censorship of cartoons in my work at Durham, take a read of this post from January on the other blog.

Reblogged: Sacred & Sequential Statement on Charlie Hebdo News

As many of you know, I work with Sacred & Sequential on matters of comics and religion. Yesterday I took part as our group crafted an official response to the horrific acts of violence against the staff of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, an event that has whipped the internet into a fervour in defense of art, satire, and free speech. We at Sacred & Sequential sought to make it clear that, as important as that conversation is to both the field of journalism and the comics/cartoon medium, just as vital is recognizing the impact that this tragedy is having on religion and the religious.

The following is a public statement by the Sacred and Sequential group:

Nothing can justify the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015. Some of the cartoons published by the magazine were offensive and at times deemed Islamophobic, but that in no way legitimates violence. Charlie Hebdo had the right to publish what it did under the protection of free speech. Just as freedom of speech did not guarantee the victims of the attack immunity to criticism, the right to dissent does not include murder.

In the aftermath of yesterday’s killings, the response has been varied. New Yorkers took to Union Square to offer their support in an impromptu vigil. Cartoonists such as Sarah McIntyre and Carlos Latuff, politicians such as Barack Obama and David Cameron, and pundits across the planet have offered their support and condolences to the victims’ loved ones. Among those who have voiced their sadness and outrage are Muslim individuals and organizations from all over the world, such as the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA.

Others’ responses have been of a more combative tenor. Internationally, and on a far too familiar pattern, an imaginary “Islam,” simplistically conceived as a monolithic, murderous, West-hating, and terrorist ideology, has been blamed for the attacks. In some places, the response has not been limited to words but has spilled over into violent acts perpetrated against a number of sacred spaces and places of worship. Several French mosques and Muslim prayer halls have been subject to attacks, placing many innocent worshipers in the line of retaliatory fire for the actions of a select few.

“Islam” did not do this; adherents to a particular, marginal, and extreme interpretation of what Islam is and what it means to be a Muslim did. They do not represent the planet’s more than one billion self-identifying Muslims. Neither the Qur’an nor the traditions attributed to the Prophet of Islam uniformly oppose illustrations nor modern comics and cartooning. Moreover, wherever and however they are published, comics as a medium has no innate aversion to religion but, instead, is a fertile site of opportunity and engagement with all faiths and beliefs. We must conclude that these events cannot be attributed to Islam as a religion nor to comics as a medium. Protecting this art and its artists is just as necessary as protecting Islam and Muslims from reduction to ideological extremism.

Art by Sarah McIntyre
(http://www.jabberworks.co.uk/)