For some time now, Islamists have been fighting pitched theological battles using the somewhat-curious device of the cartoon.

First there were the Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoons in 2005 for breaking a taboo against portraying Prophet Mohammed. In 2010, the creators of the South Park TV show faced death threats and January brought the brutal attacks on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Earlier this month in the US state of Texas, two gunmen were shot dead after they opened fire at a cartoon contest at which participants were drawing caricatures of the prophet.

Clearly then, cartoons seem to rile people up, a lesson that Iran seems to have learnt well: it jailed a cartoonist just this week after she depicted the country's leaders as animals. Ironically, Iran has launched a cartoon competition of its own. The Independent reports that the Tehran Municipality has organised a cartoon competition that aims to generate work that mocks the Islamic State, the radical Islamist group that has seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

Here are some of the cartoons.

 

 

 

 

There is an inherent paradox in this exercise, since many people would characterise Iran itself as an extremist, Islamist state. That said, the Islamic State extreme creed characterises all Shia Muslims as heretics and its forces have done their best to not only wipe out Shias but also destroy Shia shrines and places of worship. This, of course, means that there is no love lost between the Shia state of Iran and the IS.