[phobiaphobe]

Recieved this email from my stepfather this morning:

Thought you would find this interesting; This is the cartoon that will have the Islamic world now killing Danish - Pretty much an indication of how sanctioned violence is within Islam.

Wait until they see South Park.

George.

Look how well France's anti-war rhetoric worked out for them. Now Denmark is a target too.

[ConqSoft]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe...eut/index.html

[BDA116]

Here's what good ol' Mr.Boortz had to say about it this morning.

Admit it, this turban/bomb thing could be the next big fashion hit on the Muslim street!
Muslim outrage huh. OK ... let's do a little historical review. Just some lowlights:

• Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces were exposed. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to school in Indonesia. A Christian school. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Egypt. No Muslim outrage.
• A Muslim attacks a missionary children's school in India. Kills six. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia. Muslims shoot children in the back. No Muslim outrage.
• Let's go way back. Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and busses. Over 700 are injured. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons. No Muslim outrage
• Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge. No Muslim outrage.
• Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed. Muslims are outraged.

Dead children. Dead tourists. Dead teachers. Dead doctors and nurses. Death, destruction and mayhem around the world at the hands of Muslims .. no Muslim outrage ... but publish a cartoon depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and all hell breaks loose.
Come on, is this really about cartoons? They're rampaging and burning flags. They're looking for Europeans to kidnap. They're threatening innkeepers and generally raising holy Muslim hell not because of any outrage over a cartoon. They're outraged because it is part of the Islamic jihadist culture to be outraged. You don't really need a reason. You just need an excuse. Wandering around, destroying property, murdering children, firing guns into the air and feigning outrage over the slightest perceived insult is to a jihadist what tailgating is to a Steeler's fan.
I know and understand that these bloodthirsty murderers do not represent the majority of the world's Muslims. When, though, do they become outraged? When do they take to the streets to express their outrage at the radicals who are making their religion the object of worldwide hatred and ridicule? Islamic writer Salman Rushdie wrote of these silent Muslims in a New York Times article three years ago. "As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming?"

All good points.

[phobiaphobe]

From conq's link:

Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin said the dispute was not just between Jakarta and Copenhagen.
"It involves the whole Islamic world vis-a-vis Denmark and vis-a-vis the trend of Islamophobia," he said.

And just who is it that is perpetuating "Islamophobia"? Why do you think people associate this religion with violence and murder? Because we are infidels?

[deftones156]

"French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy condemned the protests in a television interview.
"I am totally shocked and find it unacceptable that -- because there have been caricatures in the West -- extremists can burn flags or take fundamentalist or extremist positions which would prove the cartoonists right," he said."

Another good point from Conq's link.

Just another case of the Islamic extremist's myopic point of view that continues to perpetuate a growing distrust and hatred towards muslim communities.

[davef]

Originally Posted by BDA116

Here's what good ol' Mr.Boortz had to say about it this morning.

All good points.

Amen!

That's one scary religion.

[xraycatj]

Originally Posted by BDA116

Here's what good ol' Mr.Boortz had to say about it this morning.

All good points.

Very good.

[Tornado bait]

I was listening to Neil yesterday and he was fairly excited about the issue, but right on the $ as far as I'm concerned.

[CBRVFR]

That is one hell of an effective piece of OP-ED.

[davef]

And now they're stoning Catholic churches in Beirut. Just another excuse for Muslim violence against non-Muslims. It's just a matter of time until something big goes down.

Oh, and Iran's Foreign Ministry called the insult "a sign of barbarism". This from people who gleefully perform all of the previously mentioned violence.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060205/ap_on_re_mi_ea/prophet_drawings_53;_ylt=AmNtUuEulN9.8GBuq7ljHJ3bE fQA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[nhfirefighter13]

And the fight within the media: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1001957270

[luvtolean]

CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam.

So...it's OK to burn the flag of Denmark in protest and as a bit of freedom of speech, stone a different church, but not OK to draw caricatures of a religious symbol?

Hand grenade into the French cultural whatever?

The French had it right, the reaction of Islam is doing nothing but threatening to prove the cartoons right.

[BDA116]

Yet another reason to add to the hundreds of others for a CNN boycott. They will show cartoons that poke at Christianity, Judaism, political parties - well, O.K. it's CNN which means only one political party, etc. yet when it comes to Islam it's time to walk on eggshells?
Pussies. Both CNN and the Islamic goons.

[ND4SPD]

I still stand by the thought that entered my head about 8:50am on 9/11/01. This just reinforces it even more.

[davef]

God forbid any of the rags in this country say anything negative about Islam. Like BDA says,

"Pussies. Both CNN and the Islamic goons."

[ND4SPD]

But don't anyone DARE say Merry Christmas

[roadrunner954]

The begining of WWIII ?

It's all building up to something BIG in the Middle East...

[roadrunner954]

Originally Posted by ND4SPD

But don't anyone DARE say Merry Christmas

Pathetic isn't it...

[phobiaphobe]

More email correspondence, now my sister is tilting the discussion leftwards:

Compelling counter-points. When I read a well-balanced debate like this one,
I'm reminded how warped mainstream media is. It truly just thrives on the
soundbite and I think that's really dangerous. Sound bites can stick in
one's head and cause you to believe or reinforce your belief that freedom of
speech is infallible and Muslims are a bunch of gun-wielding murderers.
I think healthy debate is necessary, but on the other hand, I believe
lumping people together does more harm than good.
This is actually a fascinating time for debate. There are going to be
HUNDREDS of thesis papers pouring out of universities on this one!!

Carmen.

The below articles were printed in the Guardian:

Comment
Does the right to freedom of speech justify printing the Danish cartoons?

When one person's liberty collides with another's values, there is no clear
occupant of the moral high ground

Philip Hensher and Gary Younge
Saturday February 4, 2006
The Guardian

Philip Hensher: Yes
The first thing to say about the contested cartoons published by a Danish
paper last September is that some are, indeed, offensive. Jyllands-Posten
took up the case of a Danish author who could find no one to illustrate a
book about the prophet Muhammad. The paper, presenting this as a case of
self-censorship, asked 12 illustrators for depictions of the prophet, and
the one that has caused immense offence shows the prophet wearing a turban
that conceals a fizzing bomb.

The cartoonist can't be accused of ignorance or lack of research - he has
scrupulously transcribed a verse from the Qur'an on the turban - and there's
no doubt that this is seriously offensive, and not just to Muslims but
anyone who values truthful debate. It just isn't true to say that, from its
founding, Islam would inevitably lead to suicide bombing, or even that its
founder's teachings bear responsibility for this particular brand of
atrocity.
That accusation, if made of any religion or secular school of thought that
has spawned violent followers - a comparable image of Marx, say, or, quite
plausibly, Darwin - would in most cases be just as offensive and wrong. In
this case there is a special, deliberate offence to Muslims because the
religion has an edict against such depictions.

Whether action should be taken, in a western democracy, against an argument
that is just wrong, or against deliberate offence caused, however great, is
another question. It's difficult to see that personal offence should be the
basis of legal action in a state professing commitment to freedom of speech.
The state takes a view on when personal offence is reasonable and when it
threatens to infringe someone else's liberty, largely based on whether
offence is caused generally, or just to a section of the community. Do the
Danish cartoons cause offence only to isolated individuals? Or do they so
attack anyone professing to be a Muslim that they would be caught by the
UK's religious hatred law?

The cartoons almost certainly look very different to a Muslim living in a
western democracy and to someone in the Muslim world. It's easy to
sympathise with a Muslim living in Denmark, who would feel directly
persecuted by these images. The Copenhagen Muslim interviewed in yesterday's
Guardian certainly had a point when he compared them to the comments of a
Danish MP who apparently called Muslims "a cancer in Denmark". Many people
in his situation live difficult lives, and such images won't improve matters
much.

But along with the sympathy one has to feel for people in that beleaguered
situation, the uses that the Danish cartoons have been put to in the Muslim
world must be challenged. Around the world, the anti-Danish campaign is
being used by Islamist political groups to rally support for extreme causes.
The aim of many such groups is, through pressure, to limit free speech on
religious matters in the west, and entirely suppress it at home.

It is often forgotten to what degree law-making in the west is still seen
across the globe as a model of good practice; and for that single reason our
freedom of speech, even if exercised for the purposes of causing offence,
even if simply wrong in practice, can't be eroded. To take an example: in
Bangladesh in 1994, an attempt was made to introduce a law limiting what
could be said on religious subjects. It failed because, it was argued, its
terms could not be paralleled in the laws of any democracy. Britain's new
law on religious hatred, even in its limited form, removes that defence from
liberal voices outside Europe.

Debate on a great many subjects is already severely limited in the Muslim
world. Reading Robert Irwin's brilliant new book, For Lust of Knowing: The
Orientalists and their Enemies, it is a shock to learn that serious
scholarly work by historians on the first years of Islam has to be expressed
in code, lest it cause offence to the faithful by contradicting the received
account. It is unlikely that a newspaper in a Muslim country will ever want
to commission a cartoon along the Danish lines. But we are really talking
about groups, even in relatively liberal Muslim countries, that want to draw
the lines of permitted debate much tighter than they are at present.

In practice, our freedom of speech is not seriously threatened. Cartoonists
will probably be careful about exercising good taste in such an area, as
they already do on parallel subjects - for instance, in drawing an Israeli
or Jewish politician, a cartoonist will probably avoid the hateful
conventions of anti-semitic caricature. After the boycotts and a few
noble-sounding words, we will probably go on much as before.

And that's probably the best thing to do. If anti-democratic forces in the
Muslim world can make such effective use of a cartoon in a small European
country, they would be much more encouraged by any signs of restriction on
our part. Anyone in the Muslim world arguing for freedom of speech, on
religious or other matters, has only one place to look to - the west. We
ought to take into account the sorts of factions in the Muslim world who
would regard legal restrictions on our side as part of a wider victory.

· Philip Hensher is the author of The Mulberry Empire comment@guardian.co.uk

Gary Younge: No

In January 2002 the New Statesman published a front page displaying a
shimmering golden Star of David impaling a union flag, with the words "A
kosher conspiracy?" The cover was widely and rightly condemned as
anti-semitic. It's not difficult to see why. It played into vile stereotypes
of money-grabbing Jewish cabals out to undermine the country they live in.
Some put it down to a lapse of editorial judgment. But many saw it not as an
aberration but part of a trend - one more broadside in an attack on Jews
from the liberal left.

A group calling itself Action Against Anti-Semitism marched into the
Statesman's offices, demanding a printed apology. One eventually followed.
The then editor, Peter Wilby, later confessed that he had not appreciated
"the historic sensitivities" of Britain's Jews. I do not remember talk of a
clash of civilisations in which Jewish values were inconsistent with the
western traditions of freedom of speech or democracy. Nor do I recall
editors across Europe rushing to reprint the cover in solidarity.

Quite why the Muslim response to 12 cartoons printed by Jyllands-Posten last
September should be treated differently is illuminating. There seems to be
almost universal agreement that these cartoons are offensive. There should
also be universal agreement that the paper has a right to publish them. When
it comes to freedom of speech the liberal left should not sacrifice its
values one inch to those who seek censorship on religious grounds, whether
US evangelists, Irish Catholics or Danish Muslims.

But the right to freedom of speech equates to neither an obligation to
offend nor a duty to be insensitive. There is no contradiction between
supporting someone's right to do something and condemning them for doing it.
If our commitment to free speech is important, our belief in anti-racism
should be no less so. These cartoons spoke not to historic sensitivities,
but modern ones. Muslims in Europe are now subjected to routine
discrimination on suspicion that they are terrorists, and Denmark has some
of Europe's most draconian immigration policies. These cartoons served only
to compound such prejudice.

The right to offend must come with at least one consequent right and one
subsequent responsibility. If newspapers have the right to offend then
surely their targets have the right to be offended. Moreover, if you are
bold enough to knowingly offend a community then you should be bold enough
to withstand the consequences, so long as that community expresses
displeasure within the law.

So far this has been the case. Despite isolated acts of violence that should
be condemned, the overwhelming majority of the protests have been peaceful.
Several Arab and Muslim nations have withdrawn their ambassadors from
Denmark. There have been demonstrations outside embassies. Meanwhile,
according to Denmark's consul in Dubai, a boycott of Danish products in the
Gulf has cost the country $27m.

The Jyllands-Posten editor took four months to apologise. That was his
decision. If he was not truly sorry then he shouldn't have done so; if he
was then he should have done so sooner. Given that it took yet one more
month for the situation to deteriorate to this level, these recent
demonstrations can hardly be described as kneejerk.

"This is a far bigger story than just the question of 12 cartoons in a small
Danish newspaper," Flemming Rose, the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten,
told the New York Times. Too right, but it is not the story Rose thinks it
is. Rose says: "This is about the question of integration and how compatible
is the religion of Islam with a modern secular society - how much does an
immigrant have to give up and how much does the receiving culture have to
compromise."

Rose displays his ignorance of both modern secular society and the role of
religion in it. Freedom of the press has never been sacrosanct in the west.
Last year Ireland banned the film Boy Eats Girl because of graphic suicide
scenes; Madonna's book Sex was unbanned there only in 2004. American
schoolboards routinely ban the works of Alice Walker, JK Rowling and JD
Salinger. Such measures should be opposed, but not in a manner that condemns
all Catholics or Protestants for being inherently intolerant or incapable of
understanding satire.

Even as this debate rages, David Irving sits in jail in Austria charged with
Holocaust denial for a speech he made 17 years ago; the Muslim cleric Abu
Hamza is on trial in London for inciting racial hatred; and a retrial has
been ordered for the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, on the same charges. The
question has never been whether you draw a line under what is and what is
not acceptable, but where you draw it. Rose and others clearly believe
Muslims, by virtue of their religion, exist on the wrong side of the line.

As a result they are vilified twice: once through the cartoon, and again for
exercising their democratic right to protest. The inflammatory response to
their protest reminds me of the quote from Steve Biko, the South African
black nationalist: "Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how
to react to being kicked."

g.younge@guardian.co.uk

My reply:

The only justifiable way for Islam to protest the Danish fish-wrapper is to
NOT BUY IT!

Why are they throwing firebombs at Danish embassies? It's completely
unjustified.

Are we to believe that those crowds of hundreds or thousands of people are
all 'extremist fundamentalists'? Doesn't "extremist" suggest a very small
minority?

BTW, when the cartoons first hit the public, they were largely un-noticed.
It was a Danish mosque that brought this story to the forefront; not only
did they re-circulate the original cartoons... they also slipped in 3 of
their own which were much more offensive than the originals. The objective
could only have been to incite violence. Obviously they were successful.

Speaking of violence, anyone catch the crowds in Egypt rioting and throwing
rocks at police because they lost their loved ones in the ferry wreck?

[deftones156]

"Moreover, if you are
bold enough to knowingly offend a community then you should be bold enough
to withstand the consequences, so long as that community expresses
displeasure within the law."

Key phrase there: Within the law

"Despite isolated acts of violence that should
be condemned, the overwhelming majority of the protests have been peaceful"

The question here should not be whether or not freedom of speech justify the printing of the cartoons. That is immaterial, in my opinion. The question should be, does the "right to be offended" justify the actions of outraged Muslims? Hell no, it doesn't.

The second writer then goes on to nearly state that it's okay for some Muslims to react as they have:

"As a result they are vilified twice: once through the cartoon, and again for
exercising their democratic right to protest. The inflammatory response to
their protest reminds me of the quote from Steve Biko, the South African
black nationalist: "Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how
to react to being kicked."

So, I suppose any time someone says something that offends me, I can destroy their property, and throw rocks at their home, and at their person?