ChIck3nL3gz

While you are right. However, I highly doubt that it would invoke such acts of violence as beheadings, murder, human bombs.

Instead, it will most likely turn into some sort of race related legal battle and the offendee would end up paying the offended reparation for his acts.

But any time one muslim religious sect says something negative about another muslim religious sect it ends up in civil war with women and children being murdered and people strapping bombs to each other and running into markets.

Thats like me waling up to an person of Irish decent for calling me a Kraut in a condescending manner or something ignorant about my Germanic descent without knowing anything about me or my family and knifing him in the chest. I wouldn't do it. Yeah, the comment might piss me off or upset me but I'm not about to go to war with his family over it.

It seems any time anything is said in the muslim world its taken to the extreme. So what, the Danish made a cartoon of a muslim with a bomb for a head. Get over it. Its a freakin' cartoon. And if you don't like it maybe you should seriously take a step back and look at why such a cartoon would offend. Maybe, you should try and solve things with words instead of bombs. Maybe then you'd be looked at in a different light.

*EDIT*
I'm using the word "You" in the context of those who incite violence as an act in response to the cartoons.

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Steeler

Ah, but there's the rub. What are we arguing about here? It is a foregone conclusion that the response in the Muslim world has been, from our perspective, insane and inexcusable. The cartoons have been exploited by local imams and political leaders to incite riots and further hatred of Western powers. The reprehensible nature of the response is not in question.

We have been discussing the limits (self-imposed or otherwise) of free speech in publishing. Some people say there is a double standard. I don't think it is that clear cut. Regardless of the response it could generate, it is exceedingly rare for any publication with a significant national distribution - a mainstream paper - to publish material patently offensive to a religion or any group of people.

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ChIck3nL3gz

The publisher in question needs to revise their rules on publication of such questionable material. The editor should have caught this mistake prior to printing. It should have been questioned and possibly removed if they felt the images may be "offensive". The one who drew the article should be reprimanded as should the editor, the printer, and the management of the paper for allowing it.

But the fact remains, it was not and riots and violence ensued. Unfortunate yes. But there were other ways to approach the situation. Ways that teh muslim world failed to recognize and once again has instead resorted to their age old and somewhat tiresome tactic of civil war and anti-semetic banter and again they have begun to generalize the western world as barbarians and heathens due to the political mistakes of others.

I think we can all recognize the fact that not all of the muslim world is gun toting bomb eating morons; just like they should be able to recognize that some folks in the western world are say what they want do what they want and publish what they want retards.

While yes, I agree those that published the picture aren't helping the western image in the eyes of the muslim world but the actions taken by the islamic elitests and fanatics still doesn't help their image.

IF they had some semblence of a government heirarchy they could instead send a letter to the Danish government demanding the cartoon be retracted with a written apology and then the Danish government could send the muslim government a gift of sorts for the trouble and mistakes.

Kind of like the Japs did in 2001 when when a US Navy Sub accidentally struck a Japanese Fishing boat and sank it off of Hawaii. Japan didn't go to war with the US because they recognized it as a mistake, an error in judgement by the American Navy and an accident. Instead they demanded the US Navy retrieve the boat and its crew from teh bottom of the "drink" and return it to Japan.

But yes I agree, there is a quite a bit of misunderstanding and miscommunication between the western world and the Islamic world.

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Lucky Shot

Why would you speculate that there would have been a less violent reaction? The reaction is what it was, but their is a possibility that more violence would result if a middles-eastern predominatly Muslim country's press ran those pictures. I don't think the mid-eastern riots were done nearly as effectively as the riots in France.

Lucky Shot

Wulfyn

Well like I said I don't like to guess, but were I forced to guess I'd say that the rioting / violent reaction would have been just as strong. I wasn't speculating that the reaction would have been less so much as opening the question to the floor.

I guess that was kind of my point - the argument that you don't react as violently to your own would be nullified if a muslim newspaper printed it and the local muslim community reacted violently. Kinda seeing it from the other side of the coin I guess.

Or maybe the reason is that us cynical capitalist nations just don't care about things enough anymore?

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USN_Squid

This was printed in the Jyllands-Posten Yesterday and I couldn't agree more:


MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

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ChIck3nL3gz

Now there are 12 Islamic people who DO NOT have their heads up their collective ass.

I applaud them and wouldn't mind putting my non-Islamic name on that list. I hope they succed in what they are fighting for.

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