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January 14th, 2015
Now lets go down the pub and spook the barmaid.
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What they're saying...
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible.
Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true.
Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts.
Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think.
Kenan Malik
...a philosophical confrère.
Jerry Coyne
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ...
Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world.
Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available...
Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper.
Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming.
New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet..
JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics.
Mano Singham
...wonderfully brilliant and witty.
Miranda Celeste Hale
Too good for words.
Maryam Namazie
The Eric and Ernie of monotheism.
Tom Holland
The most impious double act since Sodom and Gomorrah.
Andrew Copson, Chief Executive, BHA
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp!
Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour.
Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist...
Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly
Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious...
Council of Ex-Muslims
Jesus & Mo is my go to example of how to do tasteful, beautiful religious satire.
Eiynah, Polite Conversations
...humor is humor and this cartoonist doesn't have it. Karl Giberson
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- NICE T-SHIRT (Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lust). Currently unavailable.
A succinct commentary on recent events, with a lovely punchline! Bonus punchline about the barmaid too – excellent!
MO. “Je suis Tinkerbell”
JESUS. “Et moi aussi”.
The reality is that both J C and Muhammad are mythological creations. See the ‘Jesus Puzzle’ and “Early Islam’ (ed by Karl-Heinz Ohlig)
This is well worth reading as well: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt/dp/1909697494/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421240051&sr=1-1&keywords=richard+carrier+on+the+historicity+of+jesus
Spot on!
Hmmm. A caricature of Mohammed holding a caricature of Mohammed. A blasphception?
simply Brilliant
Ah, wonderfully and succinct author.
Now that you’re slaughtered, “Mohammed” forgives you for resisting jihad and insulting him. The little tear is because he still has some butthurt. He is a Muslim, after all. No, wait, Obama, by reference to Islamic violence, said he wasn’t. Maybe his iPod broke.
Holy ghosts, Barmaid!
regarding charlie hebdo, iranian foreign minister urged “respect for each other’s values” today; was he on his way to the public hanging of an adolescent homosexual?
Hats off, Author. Beautifully done, maybe your best ever. I was grinning by the second frame.
Bravo, Author. Is anybody in love with anything BUT an idea? I doubt it. I’m in love with the idea of reality, but reality itself is almost completely unknowable. Did I just admit to being as off the wall as the fundamentalists? No, because the idea I’m in love with is far better than the idea they are in love with. We can test my conclusions.
Darwin+, quite correct. I’ve said often that the spookiest thing in existence is existence. Yet, it is far easier to believe in the existence of an eternal energy field (brane?) than an eternal sentient being. We know the energy field exists because we are a part of it.
Now now boys. Spooking the barmaid is one thing but as soon as you think about following her into the ladies, you’ve over stepped the mark.
Not “an idea” J&M! Hundreds of millions of “ideas”, notions, illusions or whatever you wish to call them, and which (who can tell?) may differ from one “believer” to another – and may be continually changing.
More, please.
Think about it, Iqbal Sacranie. Think hard.
P.S. Brilliant, Author – I’m always struggling to express satisfactorily that thought that the hyperbolic “love” of Mo is for what the French call an imaginaire – that last panel does it BETTER THAN WORDS dammit.
Love the inclusion of the Charlie cover.
As usual the Islamic defensive
Its a crime to do something offensive
If something is read
Then off with his head
For Muslim’s feeling are very sensitive.
Nicely done, Author.
Supposedly the reason why many Muslims aren’t supposed to make images of Mohammed is to keep from idolatry. However the draconian responses to “insulting the Prophet” shows that certain Muslims do worship him.
It’s arguable that all historical figures are myths. Look at Churchill.
Wonderfully done.
And the gradually disappearing Mo was genius
There’s an irony somewhere that Author decides to express their freedom of expression by removing Mohammad from a cartoon.
Bravo. Wonderful. Long may you continue.
Why is there no button to easily post the cartoon on Facebook? There’s just a like button but it does not post. 🙁 This would help distributing J&M a lot!
Andreas – it’s under the Share button.
Another cartoon that’s “not offending anyone now” is at http://www.gocomics.com/bobgorrell/2015/01/13
But Author’s cartoon is much better!
AoS
Tinkerbell.
+alot
Two cents’ worth, the link you provided also included a link to an article where, apparently, a Saudi cleric has issued a fatwa against snowmen….. I thought I’d seen it all. Obviously not.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/saudi-arabia-snowmen-winter-fatwa
This is just wonderful. Thanks for your funny engaging work. Stay safe.
C’est parfait 🙂 xo
Prediction of the next hot sales item in the islamic world?
“Je Suis Charlie Sheen” anger management T-shirts!
Well done, Author. My imaginary invisible friend is still laughing.
After Pope Frankie saying that if someone insulted his mother he’d punch him in the nose I’m wondering if there isn’t some secret line of communication going on here.
We should be told!
J&M was indirectly mentioned yesterday in the USA on the NPR radio program Fresh Air 🙂 . The program blurb says, At age 16, Maajid Nawaz joined the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. But after four years in prison, he decided to leave the group. He co-founded the think tank Quilliam, which is dedicated to countering extremist beliefs, and he’s now running for Parliament in England.
You can listen to a recording of the program at
http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2015/01/15/377490518/fresh-air-for-january-15-2015?showDate=2015-01-15
An atheist’s conundrum; all references to jesus and mohammed disappear from the planet, but they can’t say that their prayers were answered.
Macha:
What Francis actually said:
“You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others… There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity … in freedom of expression there are limits.”
He just doesn’t get it. Free speech is for people who disagree with you; even Stalin was in favour of freedom of expression for people who agreed with his ‘limits’. The right to free speech and the toleration of dissent are indivisible; indeed they are the same thing.
When Voltaire wrote, ‘I detest with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it.’, he didn’t see the need to add, ‘Unless you diss my Mum, and then it’s OK punch to you in the mouth.’
Given that faith is no more than puerile wish-thinking elevated to indefensible certainty, I would contend that so far from respecting its ‘dignity’ – wherever that might come from – we have an obligation to mock it, as a standing insult to morality, reason and common sense.
But you won’t catch me saying that within earshot of any ‘person of faith’, because they are ipso facto too credulous, unreasonable and unpredictable to be trusted with the knowledge that I disagree with them, and on that basis I can understand any organisation not wishing to republish the cartoons.
Funny this one, i like it 🙂
ok, hotrats forget about the pope and ‘faith’ for a minute. So, what if you hang a poster at your front door that says “my neighbor such and such is a stupid moronic retard”. Do you think he will come and tell you he will defend with his life your right to blah blah blah or he will suckerpunch you with all his strength? And who would be in the wrong in such a scenario?
for crimes against free speech I sentence the quran to 1000 lashings with the sole of my shoe
…he will suckerpunch you with all his strength? And who would be in the wrong in such a scenario?
He is in the wrong. And he just proved me right. Although to be accurate I should say that he is a violent stupid moronic retard.
Gus
You are more likely to be criticised by your other neighbors for using the word ‘retard’. It’s on that list of words that have been removed from use because of hurtful or derisive usage.
Gus:
Quite apart from the redundancy and tastelessness of ‘stupid, moronic retard’, I wonder why you would suggest that I would deliberately and pointlessly provoke a neighbor, just to speculate about their emotional response, as if that disproved Voltaire’s point about the indivisibility of freedom of speech?
No-one is calling for the right to gratuitously insult private individuals; freedom of speech means that you can publish an opinion in a newspaper (or a poster) that a certain politician (or pope) is in your view a moron, which is a valuable right.
So, apart from confirming that ‘retard’ is a deeply offensive term that is likey to get an angry reaction, what is your point?
Gus:
A problem I have with your analogy (if an analogy it be) is that it conflates the individual with the ideas represented by the individual.
Of course, posting a personal attack on your neighbour is asking for trouble, posting an attack on his ideas shouldn’t be.
In written works, it’s easy enough to avoid confusing the two, but with an image, this isn’t the case. Maybe that’s why “they” always go for the cartoonists first.
Gus, what a strange and oddly specific question. Having trouble with the neighbours, old love?
Of course, posting a personal attack on your neighbour is asking for trouble, posting an attack on his ideas shouldn’t be.
In written works, it’s easy enough to avoid confusing the two, but with an image, this isn’t the case. Maybe that’s why “they” always go for the cartoonists first.
Leaving aside the point that Mo *is* just an idea. Cartoons about politics and current events use caricatures of people and widely recognized symbols make a statement.
If I see a picture of an old man in a gown, and an enormous pointed hat – that’s the Pope. If he has dark bags under his eyes and a lemon-sucking grin – that’s the other Pope, the one hiding from the law under suspicion of aiding and abetting sex crimes. Those are actual people and the caricature is just a way to identify them at-a-glance.
hotrats said
Macha:
What Francis actually said:
“You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others…
And I say: If they don’t want me to make fun of them, they should stop believing those lunatic fairy tales.
I’m willing to meet them half way, I’ll give up the ridicule and they give up the sincerely held beliefs.
It’s like your implying that Jesus and MO are convenient inventions or caricatures of individual desires for religious icons… Seems right.
On a more pleasant note …
Did anyone else catch the gorgeously subtle Jesus joke in last week’s (12 Jan) ‘Unbelievable Truth’ on Radio4? Listen to the first 8or9 minutes. Arthur Smith delivers it and David Mitchell adds a nice followup. It’s here till 16 Feb:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04xnd0c
Enjoy!
And about el popeo … He’s saying this stuff in The Philippines where the papacy is used to getting a free ride. It must have been miffing to have Pres. Aquino point out that the Filipino church knuckled under to Aquino’s dictatorial predecessors. Vatican’s local minions also opposed Aquino’s introduction of sex education and subsidised birth control in 2013.
Gus, is it ever acceptable to respond to an insult with murder?
HackneyMartian, thanks for the link!
On a different note, here’s another link that may be of interest to fellow patrons of the Cock & Bull: http://www.mediaite.com/online/ultra-orthodox-jewish-newspaper-edits-female-world-leaders-out-of-charlie-hebdo-march/
HackneyMartian, I did and it was gorgeous.
Love this place. Thanks Author for this week’s cartoon Most excellent.
I have invented a blasphemy virus, which operates thus: if I am murdered, a cloud of pungent incandescent gas will be released immediately from my corpse and linger in the air, to slowly morphinto the likeness of an arabic-looking chap in clerical robes with his dick sticking in his ear. This likeness will remain visible for forty days and forty nights, and many who behold it will mutter that it represents… you know who and I don’t mean Voldemort. In time it will come to be understood that those who bear a certain mark while alive will release this cloud of blasphemous caricature upon their being slain; thus their slayer must bear the full blame for allowing this blasphemous representation to be created… Hang on, does this sound like a South Park plot or what?
Two cents’ worth, I’m having a hard time deciding which is worse, the airbrushing out of women in a minority rag with a small distribution, or the globally published photographs that hide the fact that the photoshoot took place away from the actual march, and consisted of a front row of international leaders and three or four rows of entourage and ‘rentacrowd’.
My first submission to BBC Radio4’s iPM programme resulted in a mention of Jesus and Mo on Saturday, 10 January, 2015. There is a feature called One Line of News which is only a couple of minutes long. It begins twenty minutes in and J and M are in the last few seconds. Here’s the link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wwwl1
I was so chuffed (on all levels imaginable) that I have stopped lurking here and sent my first post to The Author and everyone else here.
Ha ha! Thanks, Oookbinder. Hope the t-shirt arrives soon.
Oookbinder, excellent work, cheers. Now you’ve said hello, don’t be a stranger. The more miscreants the better 🙂
Two cents’ worth, just realised that my last comment to you could sound as though I’m dismissing your comment but I promise you I’m not. I really can’t decide which is the bigger lie.
If the airbrushing had meant to be global there would be no question, but as it is does the severity of the airbrushing outweigh the leaders’ cowardice, or vice versa?
Or is it all a crock o’ white, no more than we can expect when religion and politics come together on one issue?
‘Crock o’ shite’, dammit!
What’s the point of auto-spell when one still has to check it?
Darwin Harmless’ You’re in love with the idea of Reality? I’m glad that Reality is moving on. I’ve set my relationship status with Reality to “It’s Complicated..”
Way to go, Oookbinder! Or, as I think they say in the UK, good on you! I hope your shout out about J&M will lead more folks here to the Cock & Bull.
AoS, I rather like “crock o’ white”–it can be said in front of “little pitchers,” and can be explained to them as meaning as “a pot of whitewash.” 😉
Don’t worry–I took your comment about the airbrushing in the spirit you intended. Everyone is supposed to be media-savvy and cynical these days, but I’m sure that many people assume that, if a picture appears in a news item (as opposed to an advertisement), it must be an accurate depiction :-/ . The airbrushing of the picture of the leaders “at the march” on Jan. 11th feeds my cynicism. I guess it’s only natural for politicians and others (such as the editors of The Announcer) to take advantage of such a situation and spin the message to support or improve their own positions. However, I haven’t been keeping up with the news, so, for all I know, the photo op was done for reasons of the leaders’ security and/or the photographers’ convenience, and at least some of the leaders actually did march with the demonstrators. At least the big message is loud and clear: millions of people, in France and around the world, support liberty and deplore terrorism.
AoS, your spell-checker just coined a new phrase that I fully intend to use. “Crock o’ white” sounds like an apt term for expressions of White privilege.
Oookbinder, just listened to your iPM line, nice, & ta for the intro to iPM – I long ago gave up on PM so didn’t know about it. The following iPM (17 Jan) features a soothingly intelligent interview with a sensible, not offended modern muslim, worth a listen. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04xs9m6
Meanwhile on The Big Questions, Hamza Tzortzis of the Islamic Education and Research Academy produced this gem on the subject of evidence and religion: “Why are we imprisoned epistemically? Why is it only science – what about philosophy, reason, maths, logic?” Reason, maths and logic are outside the scientific method – someone tell Dan Dennett!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b050c3sl/the-big-questions-series-8-episode-2 at 19:30 (ID & start of sequence is at 17:30)
Sorry, going on a bit, must get out more once I shake off this cold …
HackneyMartian, thanks for the link to the iPM interview! I had read about Muslims supporting free speech and condemning terrorism, but those articles were about male religious leaders. It was good to hear the thoughts of a woman who is not a religious leader, but a doctor who happens to be Muslim.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t listen to Hamza Tzortzis on The Big Questions because “BBC iPlayer TV programmes are available to play in the UK only.” I think we all agree on the meaning of “maths,” but maybe his definitions of “philosophy,” “reason,” and “logic” are different from ours.
Michael Shermer’s TED Talk on the pattern behind self-deception includes some interesting points about evidence and religion. The video is available at http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_the_pattern_behind_self_deception
two cents, Thanks for the Shermer link. The Big Questions has already been ripped to youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rd4PcNhq3I
Youtube has several episodes of TBQ – including this extract nicely annotated to dissect the apologetic rhetoric: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5EqPxGIH_w
I’m going to hear Prof Francesca ‘Magic Baby’ Stavrakopoulou, and Adam Rutherford, at Conway Hall tomorrow.
HackneyMartian, thanks for the links! I enjoyed both videos. What did Stavrakopoulou and Rutherford have to say at Conway Hall?
don’t you think it’s insulting the religions why you people are still keeping this cartoons
Dan: LOL RE: following the barmaid into the Ladies.
Hey we haven’t seen any female deities or prophetess. Like Maker Baker Eddy, Ellen G. White, and Kali etcetera.