If you look at this link and keep scrolling down.. It should help you understand the issue a bit more.
[External Link]
Allan
I'm not sure what more there is to understand. This is clearly a case of followers of a medieval religion wanting to bully the rest of the world into "respecting" them. Why should we ? Do they respect Christianity in Muslim countries ? Do they respect the wishes of Muslims who wish to leave the religion ? Do the respect Jews ? Western civilization ? What, precisely, do Muslims respect, other than their own narrow version of how things should be ?
They think we're disrespectful, do they ? It doesn't occur to them that we might find suicide bombers on Israeli buses deeply offensive ? Or masked thugs sawing off heads on al-Jazeera in rather poor taste ?
I'll start respecting Islam the day the Saudi government allows Christian missionaries to open a church in Riyadh. Until this happens, muslims are no better than Moonies or Scientologists: Dangerous cultists.
I just thought the pictures were hilarious.
Posted at 2006-02-03 05:24:06 [PermaLink]Gapper... With due respect, there is no comparison as per your last line. Neither Moonies nor Sciechs send children to blow themselves to bits, etc.
To the best of my knowledge, Moonies are largely pacifists. Check the Washington Times OpEds and Editorials, a Moonie owned publication. Rather calm conservatism on display there.
Further, Sciechs are to busy doing their own thing to be dangerous.
I'd posit further that not all branches of Islam are dangrous... radical orthodox strains of Shia and Sunni, yes, but there is a potentially huge modern class even within both major branches.
Killick,
LOL, ok, I take that back about Moonies and Scientologists; I just wanted to make the point that Islam has all the characteristics and psychoses of a cult. Once you're in you can't leave it, you have to follow the words of the leader on pain of physical harm, they try to bully those outside the religion into accepting it, etc.
Yes, yes, I'm sure not ALL Muslims are murderous, illogical bastards. But a very significant minority are, and even the so-called "moderates" are, for the most part, too afraid of the radicals to speak out. I have immense respect for that Jordanian editor. Unfortunately, he's an extremely rare bird indeed among Muslims.
Perhaps he should issue a fatwa of his own...against those who oppose free speech. Good on him.
Posted at 2006-02-03 05:50:30 [PermaLink]The best comment so far regarding this issue (from Lawrence Simon by way of Belmont Club):
"I think the Danish ambassador should issue an apology. In the largest Christian church in Saudi Arabia."
I too thought Jihad Momani had cojones to publish some of the cartoons - or a death wish. I take my hat off to him anyway.
I was of two minds on this controversy until I saw the BBC interview James Zogby of the Arab American Institute last night.
I don't think that the cartoons should have been created in the first place. I find the concept as objectionable as showing disrepect to Christians in Nebraska, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Thailand, Animists in Africa or Shintoists in Japan.
The keys to a functioning society are civility and politeness - concepts that were thrown out in the 1960's as hypocritical. However, without those to smooth the rough edges of discourse then the resulting friction generates heat and ultimately fire.
The cartoons should not have been created nor published because it would have been the polite thing, the civil thing to do: to show respect.
Having said that Zogby got up my nose. He opined that they should not have been published because of their consequences. Essentially he was suggesting that we should have known that it makes no sense to laugh at an armed, unstable man. The sensible thing to have done would be not to annoy him.
Frankly, I think that would have been a great example of doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons.
In the first instance that action is taken from a position of personal strength: I can but I won't because it's wrong.
In the second instance the action is taken from a position of personal weakness: I can but I won't because I'm afraid.
Zogby has just pushed the argument from a matter of morality to a challenge as far as I am concerned.
And in that case, I think that every paper in the world, bar none, should re-run those cartoons. Heck print them on sticky posters so that I can put them up in my front window.
If its a matter of pokey-chest - bring it on.
Chris:
I don't think they should have been published either.. just like I don't think the Rolling stone cover depicting Kanye West as Jesus.... Just like I don't think Larry Flint's barely legal should be published... just like I think Freddy Got Fingered should never had been made... The question is, should people have the legal right to do all those things.. The answer is yes!!
Allan:
I think you've summed up the controversy quite well.
Chris:
While I agree with you that to choose not to offend is the ideal position, consider this as well: isn't it an interesting lesson to the great silent moderate Muslim majority, and the rest of the world that something so comparatively harmless causes these guys to get so completely unhinged?
Lets not loose sight of what we're talking about here.
These 'cartoons' are biting political essays. The authors were'nt scrawling graffiti on boxcars; they were/are standing up and protesting against a virulently anti-democratic, anti-social, ideology that threatens all progress made since the Middle Ages. It's NOT an attack against individuals who happen to be Islamic by birth or even by choice. Their fundamental belief in one God isn't what's being attacked.
Muslims who blindly accept the Jihad path of killing and destruction as being 'righteous', are in fact the enemies of Islam. More vigorous examination has been focussed on this religion since 9/11 than in my entire life up to that point.
Preserved K, one problem with what you say...yes their are countless moderate muslims in the various denominations of Islam...
HOWEVER, the fanatics or fundamentalists as we call them, ARE only being honest to the text's of Islam as in the Quran or Sunnah...
THAT is what makes this all so dangerous...that the Hamas, Bin Ladins and so forth are perfectly in line with Muhammed's brutal example...
Remember, Muhammed himself had poets murdered for making fun of him...also Muhammed was a murderer of innocent Jewry and a looter and an advocate of rape of captive women and so forth...
And on it goes.....