Um. No, wait. We’ll take the food. Just bow to our hate and censorship, mmm-kay?
8 February 2006 by Sean
A prominent Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, invited artists to enter a Holocaust cartoon competition, saying it wanted to see if freedom of expression — the banner under which many Western publications reprinted the prophet drawings — also applied to Holocaust images.
“We shall smite them back with Jew cartoons! Then! Then we will see how the infidels like it when they are the ones who are hatefully placed in the funny pages! We shall bring about a jihad of goo-goo-googly eyes and big, spiky sound effects balloons the likes of which the world has never seen! They will cower before the might of our irony and yes, silliness! Vengeful, righteous silliness in the name of The Prophet! Only then will they see how their Sharpies have offended Allah!”
Meanwhile, back in the real world:
An aid group that provides food to tens of thousands of people in the war-ravaged Chechnya region of Russia suspended its operations after Chechen officials banned all Danish organizations because of the cartoons. The Danish Refugee Council distributes food to some 250,000 people in mostly Muslim Chechnya and the surrounding area.
Fuck you. You gonna burn down our property and boycott our products? We’ll stop feeding you, muthafuckas.
“Yes, but we would rather our people starve than see cartoons of Muham — what? We really will starve if we ban all these Danish organizations over Snoopy and Zippy the Pinhead? We’re getting food from the Danes? For free? And now we are cutting off our noses to spite our faces, because we have our priorities planted firmly right up our puckering patooties?”
Once again, the poor of the Muslim world can count on their governments to do what’s right by them. Keep those Danish flags a-burnin’, folks. It’s serving you well.
Addendum:
“Islam says it’s all right to demonstrate but not to resort to violence. This must stop,” said senior cleric Mohammed Usman, a member of the Ulama Council — Afghanistan’s top Islamic organization. “We condemn the cartoons but this does not justify violence. These rioters are defaming the name of Islam.”
Except here at GifS, where we already know that all of the sky-gawd religions are filled to the brim with violence.
The Koran: The Women:
[4.89] They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah’s way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.
More with the word unbeliever.
8 February 2006, on 1:45 am
Maybe starving for Allah is another way to get to heaven.
8 February 2006, on 6:31 am
The (over) reaction of the muslim communities in the middle and near east, shows you how unstable their faith actually is. If they had true faith in their religion they would have brushed this off with little or no effect on them. The fact that entire societies and nations have been rocked to their foundation shows that there is NO love, forgiveness or understanding within their religion or themselves!!
This is a great example of how rotten people (as individuals, societies and nations) can be when they hide behind a facade of religion. Would christians or hindus have reacted the same if they were “insulted” in the same degree…? Most properly yes. Why? Because i think people use this kind of thing as an “excuse” (unconsciously) to let out all the “ugliness and darkness” from within themselves that was supposed to have been “removed” by their godly savior… but it never got removed…. because there is no godly savior… except yourself, which all religion rejects.
8 February 2006, on 7:57 am
The response from the Iranian newspaper to call for retaliatory cartoons in the Islamic media is a deeply worrying development. Have you ever seen Muslim attempts at humour?
8 February 2006, on 8:21 am
Slay. Demolotion. Behead. Butcher. Extermination.
Each of these words appear in just one picture — the one I provided.
Funny, I have never been to a rally here in San Francisco that focused so completely on MURDERING people. Must be a stimulating, loving crowd to march and sing songs with.
8 February 2006, on 9:23 am
…dirka, dirka, dirka …why do de Jews have big noses? dirka, dirka to have a place large enough to put a bomb! HA dirka, ha dirka, ha dirka. Yes we will put bomb in Jew nose, dirka! den, we will put bomb in infidel nose, dirka …now that we got de bombs out …lets just put one up everyones nose! HA DIRKA, HA DIRKA, HA DIRKA!
8 February 2006, on 9:34 am
Morne said:
i think people use this kind of thing as an “excuse” (unconsciously) to let out all the “ugliness and darkness” from within themselves that was supposed to have been “removed” by their godly savior… but it never got removed…. because there is no godly savior… except yourself, which all religion rejects.
Very well put, Morne.
8 February 2006, on 2:17 pm
I feel that this is less about individual rage but a way for the leaders in these countries (either political or religious) to provoke a large segment of their population into ignoring what is wrong with their own culture and instead to turn their hate and anger onto a cultural other. In other words, the leaders are thinking to themselves “gee, what reason do our people have to foolow us. We keep them poor and ignorant and they greatly outnumber us. We need some way to distract them. Wow, these cartoons are expressing a similar level of criticism towards us that our own people could level at us. What we need to do is make the people think these cartoons are directed at ALL of us, then we can forge a sense of solidarity.” It’s your basic Gramsican concept of hegemony: when the rabble outnumbers you make them believe that you are expressing their concerns and desires.
8 February 2006, on 2:59 pm
I wanted to p[oint out that the Christians have similar problems with the depiction of Jesus and the character of their religion. So, recently NBC had to cancell their own religious program. One story about that said,
“…I called NBC several times before the show ever ran and told them it was poorly conceived, acted and produced and didn’t have significant redeeming features about it,” said DeLier. “We even went so far as to pre-empt regular programming and hold a televised public forum with a Baptist pastor, Church of Christ minister and Episcopalian and Catholic priest. I was there and the ministers answered phone-in questions and analyzed the show from a Christian perspective. We were the only NBC affiliate in the nation to do that.”
The series, which starred Aidan Quinn as an Episcopalian priest with a pill habit who holds regular conversations with Jesus, has a promiscuous son and a daughter who deals marijuana, proved better at drawing criticism than viewers.
“The conclusion of our panel was, among other things,” said DeLier, “that if a (viewer) was firm in their faith, the show would not bother them….”
http://www.tylerpaper.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16019212&BRD=1994&PAG=461&dept_id=510175&rfi=6
The fact that the Christians couldn’t take the image of Jesus so depicted on this program shouldn’t imply that they are shakey in their faith, any more than Muslims are shakey if they take offense to cartoons that were drawn to be offensive. So, I reject this thought,
“…The (over) reaction of the muslim communities in the middle and near east, shows you how unstable their faith actually is. If they had true faith in their religion they would have brushed this off with little or no effect on them.”
The shakiness of their faith is one thing, the fact that they are offended by insults is another.
8 February 2006, on 4:11 pm
Absolutely, KR. That’s exactly what is going on. As I noted earlier, these cartoons were originally published back in September, but suddenly they are all the rage now? It’s becoming more and more apparent that the clerics are stirring this up. The clerics are the eternal buffers between the poor and their rich, corrupt governments. Once again, religion serves its greatest political purpose as opiate (and dog collar) of the masses.
8 February 2006, on 5:00 pm
In France, President Jacques Chirac asked media to avoid offending religious beliefs as another French newspaper reprinted the caricatures. The satirical French weekly Charlie-Hebdo also printed a new drawing under the headline “Muhammad Overwhelmed by the Fundamentalists” that showed the prophet with his head in his hands, remarking, “It’s hard to be loved by idiots.”
9 February 2006, on 1:32 am
The Danish response will be overwhelming.
http://users.wolfcrews.com/toys/vikings/
9 February 2006, on 3:04 am
More… (can you tell I am obsessed? this goes straight to the heart of my purest belief: freedom of speech)
“With all respect to press freedoms, obviously anything that vilifies the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, or attacks Muslim sensibilities, I believe, needs to be condemned,” the king said.
Fuck you, Abdullah. “Needs” to be condemned? By who? You? Certainly doesn’t “need” to be condemned by me. See, once again, we have to make the point: NOT EVERYONE SHARES YOUR BELIEFS, FUCKSTICK.
9 February 2006, on 4:00 am
The cartoonists who created the original 12 cartoons have gone into hiding, Rushdie-style:
Those who haven’t seen them on the Internet haven’t missed much. The one that is apparently deemed the most offensive shows the Prophet wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb. The only one that would likely strike Sun readers as remotely funny has the Prophet in heaven greeting a line of incoming suicide bombers with the words: “Stop stop. We ran out of virgins.”
Cute, but is it worth going into hiding for? The Danish cartoonists who produced the 12 images for the newspaper Jyllands-Posten have reportedly done so, fearing for their lives.
http://winnipegsun.com/News/Columnists/Gleeson_John/2006/02/09/1432644.html
Sad.
9 February 2006, on 9:59 am
Our pal Doug Ireland’s take in the London ‘zine “openDemocracy”. Good read.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/caricature_3245.jsp
9 February 2006, on 11:06 pm
Fuck Islam and their Jew-hating! How ’bout for every hostage a Muslim takes, we publicly shit on and burn a pile of Qur’an’s? Then maybe cartoons won’t seem so bad!
Also, the hadith specifically tell of Muhammad being engaged to a six year old (Aisha), and marrying and banging her at the age of nine. Should we also respect the Qur’anic injuction to beat the wife if she gets out of line? Muhammad is a worthless camel-humper, and his religion is garbage. Respecting ANY Muslim is a big mistake.
Just needed to rant. Sorry!
10 February 2006, on 10:52 pm
They rejected my Holocaust cartoon:
http://www.rodneyanonymous.com/2006/02/while_some_say_iran_i_say_i_ca.html
11 February 2006, on 4:18 am
Rodney: LOL!
On another note, the Danish paper that published the original Islam cartoons… To prove their point that it was about free speech and only free speech, has offered to print the Holocaust cartoons that crop up as a result of the Iranian challenge.
Of course, as someone said, have you ever seen Muslim humor? Don’t expect much!
13 February 2006, on 2:49 am
http://www.townhall.com/print/print_story.php?sid=185968&loc=/opinion/columns/cliffordmay/2006/02/09/185968.html
More fun:
Muslim demonstrators have been torching embassies, stoning churches and threatening mass murder – to protest cartoons characterizing Muslims as violent extremists.
The damage these demonstrators are doing to the image of Islam is incalculable, far beyond what any poison-penned cartoonist could accomplish. So why are they doing it?
Machiavelli provided the answer more than 500 years ago. For those who would rule, he said, it is better “to be feared than loved.”
By now, all but the most self-deluded among us recognize that Militant Islamists are waging a War Against the West, a deadly jihad against Christians, Jews, Hindus and moderate Muslims. These religiously inspired fascists have no interest in being loved by “infidels.” They do, however, want to inspire fear – and they do want to rule.
The international intifada that has erupted — ostensibly in response to 12 cartoons first published in a Danish newspaper in September — is merely the Militant Islamists’ latest tactic. The charge most frequently leveled against the protestors is hypocrisy. How can they be up in arms over a few cartoons lampooning Muslims when, in many Muslim societies, Jews and Christians are routinely characterized in the most vicious terms and images? But that misses the point.
The Militant Islamists are not demanding equality. They are demanding superiority. They are Muslim supremacists — ideological heirs to those who, in the 20th century, fought for Aryan supremacy and white supremacy.
Yousef Al-Qaradhawi — leader of the European Council for Fatwa and Research and president of the International Association of Muslim Scholars – is seen by some as the “hidden hand” behind the protests. He has candidly declared: “Islam will return to Europe as the conqueror.”
And speaking of Muslim humor:
http://wip.warnerbros.com/lookingforcomedy/LFC_content.html
13 February 2006, on 7:54 pm
Check this out:
After meeting with a newly formed network of moderate Muslims, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen called for peaceful dialogue to defuse Denmark’s biggest international crisis since World War II.
However, critics said the network did not represent Denmark’s estimated 200,000 Muslims and warned the prime minister could be heightening tensions by not reaching out to radical groups.
YES, SOCIETY OWES IT TO ITS RELIGIOUS RADICALS TO REACH OUT TO THEM!
jeebus fucking cripes on a pogo stick.
14 February 2006, on 2:22 am
Steve Andresen:
If I am following your comment’s logic, you are saying that if Xian’s are also pissant, baby whiners who demand that people SHUT UP whenever anyone makes fun of their backwards beliefs or imaginary idols, then this proves that it is unfair to point out that Muslims are also pissant baby whiners who want everybody to SHUT UP, too?
Makese sense.
Attention all religious fanatics: please put your fingers in your ears and go “Lalalalalala!” from now until the next millenium. You clearly aren’t capable of handling anything outside of the limited canvas upon which you have painted the universe.
14 February 2006, on 10:55 am
Sean,
I am not, as you seem to claim, that it is unfair to make fun of Muslims because it would be unfair to make fun of Christians. I pointed out that when people take offense when they are made the butt of some jokes, and quite public smearing in poo, this need not reflect any shakiness in their religious beliefs. So, Christians didn’t like this NBC storyline, for whatever reason, and the Muslims didn’t like, for whatever reason, these cartoons. Neither of their reactions needs to reflect shakiness.
I suspect the claim that the “taking offense” reflects a shakiness in Muslim’s faith was first suggested to somehow imply something about Islam. The claim would be, I think, Islam can’t be much of a religion if it’s believers can’t take a joke, or, perhaps, can’t take constant abuse and insults. I just wanted to reject this kind of argument.
What I’m saying, I think, is that if I publish a bunch of cartoons calling into question the morals of Sean’s mother, in …let’s say the NYT’s, the fact that Sean might get upset about that should not be taken to reflect or support the claim, made by the cartoons, that she was immoral. All I should learn from Sean’s reaction would be that he get’s upset when his mother is insulted in public.
I, of course, would not be so rude as to insult Sean’s mother in public.
14 February 2006, on 11:50 am
What I’m saying, I think, is that if I publish a bunch of cartoons
calling into question the morals of Sean’s mother, in …let’s say the
NYT’s, the fact that Sean might get upset about that should not be taken to
reflect or support the claim, made by the cartoons, that she was
immoral. All I should learn from Sean’s reaction would be that he gets upset
when his mother is insulted in public.
Thank goodness that my mother was a real person and Muhammad and Jesus are fabrications re-worked hundreds of times like fairy tales over thousands of years of translation and reconstruction. Thank goodness that all of us don’t put the same weight on the “insulting” of fairy godmothers than we do of real mothers. Thank goodness there are still some rational voices in the world ready to stand and ridicule religion, superstition, and backwards belief systems that perpetuate the persecution of gays and unequal rights for women (hint: that was for Islam and Xianity both).
I hear that there is a version of American Idol that they have been showing in the Middle East. Unfortunately, there are no images of the singers and the actual performances are “re-sung” by the text-to-speech capabilities of an iMac. It makes for rather dull programming, but other than the lyrics of a few racy Barry Manilow songs, it has yet to offend anyone. Thank goodness for free media. Oh, and the title of the show is brilliant: American Idolatry.
16 February 2006, on 4:04 am
Sean,
You seem to think the continuous and unreserved publication of these cartoons, which were intended to insult Muslims, is justified, not just because Danes among others have “freedom of speech,” but also because Mohammed like Jesus is a fairy, and no one should riot over fairies.
I think you need to see that your understanding of Islam or of Christianity is not shared by the majority of folks who are Christians or Muslims. They do not appreciate the ridicule of characters they take to be as important to them as their mothers being insulted in public.
I understand you are ready to make the argument that their Gods are for suckers, as the title of this blog suggests, but the cartoons did not carry the weight of your arguments or insights, and therefore they came off as just being rude.
I also understand that you would like to prevent the persecution of gays and the belittlement of women that you feel is caused by these religions. You seem to think you will be able to accomplish this by using vinegar, rather than sugar.
I think sugar is more successful.
16 February 2006, on 4:28 am
Steven:
Yeah. Whatever. Your high horse is a little bit long in the tooth. Maybe you should climb down off of him before he collapses.
Fuck Xians and fuck Muslims. Like you said yourself, take a look at the title of the blog.
Religion is the bane of humanity’s progress. I could give a fuck about whiny little children getting their thongs in a knot over having their imaginary friends insulted.
I have no sugar for anyone who would behead me for not agreeing with their hateful belief system.
I also understand that you would like to prevent the persecution of gays and the belittlement of women that you feel is caused by these religion.
I “feel? “Is this now a matter of personal perspective now instead of fact?
Again, see blog title. This is what we do here. We tell the truth, whether people can take it with castor oil or not.
In times of great upheaval and ignorance, truthsayers should scream from the mountain tops. Militant truthsaying. That’s what I want to see. Fight fire with fire.
16 February 2006, on 7:48 am
I think you need to see that your understanding of Islam or of Christianity is not shared by the majority of folks who are Christians or Muslims. They do not appreciate the ridicule of characters they take to be as important to them as their mothers being insulted in public.
I understand you are ready to make the argument that their Gods are for suckers, as the title of this blog suggests, but the cartoons did not carry the weight of your arguments or insights, and therefore they came off as just being rude.
I originally thought that the arguments given about this concerned freedom of the press and freedom of speech in relation to religious matters — and, more important, I also thought that such freedoms are to supposed to be around just in cases like this, i.e., where comments are made that someone else doesn’t like. Granted, there are cases of slander and liable, but I hardly find the comparison sufficient here. But maybe it’s me.
I also understand that you would like to prevent the persecution of gays and the belittlement of women that you feel is caused by these religions.
Yes, it all comes down to our feelings about these issues. History definitely shows us that religion had nothing to do with it.
You seem to think you will be able to accomplish this by using vinegar, rather than sugar.
No offense, but the blog is called “God is for Suckers.” We don’t use vinegar here, you fucking moron. We use acid and dynamite…
I think sugar is more successful.
You’d actually grant the claims of these religious people, retract everything that’s out there, lessen freedom of speech and the press in (only?) these religious matters, and think that would be a good thing? Why?
Or maybe “sugar” here means just letting people print and say this stuff, but publicly agreeing that it might be offensive? If that’s your position, then fine, I’d easily grant it, so long as the stuff stays out there. But I think you’re saying something stronger.
16 February 2006, on 7:54 am
Bob said:
“You seem to think you will be able to accomplish this by using vinegar, rather than sugar.”
No offense, but the blog is called “God is for Suckers.” We don’t use vinegar here, you fucking moron. We use acid and dynamite…
Nice.
17 February 2006, on 2:16 am
Bob,
You said,
“I originally thought that the arguments given about this concerned freedom of the press and freedom of speech in relation to religious matters — and, more important, I also thought that such freedoms are to supposed to be around just in cases like this, i.e., where comments are made that someone else doesn’t like. Granted, there are cases of slander and liable, but I hardly find the comparison sufficient here. But maybe it’s me.”
I think the issue is more complicated than whether the Danes and their friends can criticize who they want without retribution or censorship. I think the cartoons were designed to be offensive. It’s this rudeness which is out of place and makes their publishing, not quite like cases of slander or libel, but close.
I think the papers should be able to print what they want. I just think the Danish government should have pointed out that the editorial policy or that paper did not reflect the policies of the Danish government or the position of the Danish people in general.
The cartoons themselves were offensive, and as time has passed, it has come out that the same papers would not have published similar cartoons about Christianity or Judaism, showing that even they recognize offensiveness when they see it.
When I stated that Sean “felt” that religion was the cause or was responsible for the persecution of gays and the belittlement of women I wanted to leave open what specific complaint Sean might want to make. I think the issue about religion and these persecutions or belittlements is just what role the religions themselves play. So, I know the response will be that it’s the priests who pork the boys, that is, rogue elements in the church, rather than the religious doctrines which are responsible. I just don’t think you can get at the religions by drawing inferences from the religion’s believers.
When I mentioned how Sean seems to believe vinegar is more successful than sugar, and how I think otherwise, I’m talking about how I think one should disabuse people of bad religious docrines. I think a good argument should be more successful than calling them names like “fucking moron,” and so forth.
I think that a resolution of the conflicts over the cartoons, for example, has to be one where all sides have something at stake and all eventually agree to the resolution. I just don’t see how this could be done by insulting people who don’t at first agree with you.
I think the anger and violence caused by these cartoons may seem to be all out of proportion. But, I don’t think you can understand the Muslim reaction to these cartoons without consideriong the fact that the United States has invaded Iraq, a Muslim country, stealing their valuables and killing tens of thousands of Iraqis every couple of months. We are about to Nuke Iran and invade that country of 70 million to try to install a government friendly to us. All this happens and the people in the streets of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, and so forth feel that nobody in the world community will stand up and keep the U.S. from doing whatever it wants.
I think these cartoons were part of an effort to undermine European and international resistance to further American adventures in the middle east. The thought being, it would be expected that the people would riot all over the place and thereby show them to be irrational.
Yeah, I’d allow people to be offensive, but If I were the Danish Prime Minister I would have pointed out how offensive the cartoons were. I’d also wonder just what was behind their publication. There is a suspicion that they had some more sinister purpose.
17 February 2006, on 9:22 am
I think the issue is more complicated than whether the Danes and their friends can criticize who they want without retribution or censorship. I think the cartoons were designed to be offensive. It’s this rudeness which is out of place and makes their publishing, not quite like cases of slander or libel, but close.
Well, I’d claim further that it could only be “close” because of the content that’s being ridiculed. People want to hold that these cartoons are like putting naked pictures of mom on the front page of the paper, and that’s just a false analogy. One should be able to criticize ideas and opinions, and, since cartoons are the medium, something has to be personified for the point to get across.
(And no one should ever drink while trying to spell “libel.” Duh. I’m such a dope.)
I think the papers should be able to print what they want. I just think the Danish government should have pointed out that the editorial policy or that paper did not reflect the policies of the Danish government or the position of the Danish people in general.
Agreed, sure.
The cartoons themselves were offensive, and as time has passed, it has come out that the same papers would not have published similar cartoons about Christianity or Judaism, showing that even they recognize offensiveness when they see it.
You say here that this particular fact has “come out.” Is there a link you can provide for this? They actually said they would not have published toons about xianity or Judaism? (I’m just wondering why they would say that, and would like to read further.)
I think the issue about religion and these persecutions or belittlements is just what role the religions themselves play.
Well, of course.
So, I know the response will be that it’s the priests who pork the boys, that is, rogue elements in the church, rather than the religious doctrines which are responsible.
A couple of things on this. First, I’m pretty sure there’s no actual chapter-n-verse about porking little boys, so, in that sense, sure, there’s no actual doctrine.
But clearly the relationship between the porking and the religious doctrine needs to be unpacked and examined just a bit more — and it doesn’t take that much to see the problems. I wouldn’t simply say that the religious doctrine is “over here” and the porking is “over there,” and it’s completely random how those two things ever got connected. It doesn’t take much to play the Kevin Bacon Game with these concepts to see the connections.
I just don’t think you can get at the religions by drawing inferences from the religion’s believers.
Seems you’d be able to “get at religion” through both the attitudes and behaviors of believers along with the actual text to see what it says — something that Sean has repeatedly done, and something that Ron has also done.
17 February 2006, on 7:58 pm
steven andresen Says:
February 17th, 2006 at 2:16 am e
Bob,
You said,
“I originally thought that the arguments given about this concerned freedom of the press and freedom of speech in relation to religious matters ˜ and, more important, I also thought that such freedoms are to supposed to be around just in cases like this, i.e., where comments are made that someone else doesn‚t like. Granted, there are cases of slander and liable, but I hardly find the comparison sufficient here. But maybe it‚s me.”
I think the issue is more complicated than whether the Danes and their friends can criticize who they want without retribution or censorship.
“Retribution” is a scary word when it comes to a free press. I for one never want to live in a supposed democracy that believes there should be a anything close to “retribution” toward someone who exercises their right to free speech. As the European press has said again and again in statements of solidarity on this issue, blasphemy itself is, and should be, protected in any democratic nation.
I think the cartoons were designed to be offensive. It’s this rudeness which is out of place and makes their publishing, not quite like cases of slander or libel, but close.
The cartoons — as has been stated over and over — were put forward by the Danish paper to challenge the notion that screaming fundies of any stripe should not be allowed to curtail free speech. The purpose of the cartoons, the chief editor said, was “to examine whether people would succumb to self-censorship, as we have seen in other cases when it comes to Muslim issues.” I think it is important, as everyone tries not to offend the Islamic imaginary friends on this issue, to see the fact that Western Europe — home to the most civilized democracies on the planet — is at the forefront of this battle of ideas. They went through a little thing we call Nazism, and they don’t want to see it happen again. Ironically, they have stricter free speech laws than we do as a result of the hate speech that gave rise to Nazism, yet the U.S. media has done practically nothing to back them up on this crucial issue.
I absolutely disagree with your suggestion that anyone can be held accountable for something remotely close to slander or libel when it comes to the matter of imaginary friends and non-existent gawds. That is just ludicrous. If I want to say Rip Van Winkle is a silly git, nobody has a right to burn down my embassy over it. He’s a freakin’ work of fiction, and killing people over words — be they words discussing fiction or fact — is an abomination to democracy. (Note: as Rufus pointed out in another thread — there is a place where free speech stops: threatening to kill specific people or inciting others to do so. Civilization requires in regards to about this.)
I think the papers should be able to print what they want. I just think the Danish government should have pointed out that the editorial policy or that paper did not reflect the policies of the Danish government or the position of the Danish people in general.
The Danish government has taken the exactly correct position. They have basically said “We have a free press… we have no right to even comment on this issue.” Fundies can’t grasp this idea, be they Xian Americans or Islamic Middle Easterners.
The paper itself has apologized. That is enough. Demanding that the Danish government apologize, which is what the Islamic extremists want, is ludicrous and betrays a gross misunderstanding of the 300-year-old democratic notion of the separation of government and the press.
Also, I do think they are bravely sending a message: you fascists of all religious stripes… You do not represent anything close to modern, democratic ideals. Why should we buckle to your hate any more than we should listen to any faith-based propaganda machine? We stand as a firewall between you and a world subjugated to the concept that, in an attempt to appease all creators of imaginary friends, we deny the inalienable, secular rights of others who choose not to be the victims of your irrational beliefs and their hateful bylaws (ie: homosexuality should be punishable by imprisonment or death — as in Iran, or the America that Fred Phelps would like to see).
The cartoons themselves were offensive, and as time has passed, it has come out that the same papers would not have published similar cartoons about Christianity or Judaism, showing that even they recognize offensiveness when they see it.
What? Prove this.
When I stated that Sean „felt‰ that religion was the cause or was responsible for the persecution of gays and the belittlement of women I wanted to leave open what specific complaint Sean might want to make. I think the issue about religion and these persecutions or belittlements is just what role the religions themselves play. So, I know the response will be that it‚s the priests who pork the boys, that is, rogue elements in the church, rather than the religious doctrines which are responsible. I just don‚t think you can get at the religions by drawing inferences from the religion‚s believers.
I’m sorry, but this smells dangerously close to the No True Scotsman fallacy. What else do we have to go on as a point of reference than the actions of those who currently represent the majority of any given faith? Since religions are based on constantly re-interpreted, whackadoo, ancient doctrines, I say that whatever shit they are pulling in the present-day world should be held up to the light of reason.
The bibble and the koran were written by backward-ass desert nomads thousands of years ago, and yet they are being used as an excuse for burning embassies and killing abortion doctors. I have no choice as a rational human being to stand against this hatred. I reserve the right to draw any inference I want from the religions’ current believers, since otherwise they are just words in a book. I do not care what “The Lord of the Rings” has to say about the ideals of Elves and Orcs. That is, until the point that hundreds of millions of people around the world start to believe that these imaginary creatures are real, and start committing acts of hatred and violence in the name of this delusion. At that point it is my duty to stand up and challenge them.
When I mentioned how Sean seems to believe vinegar is more successful than sugar, and how I think otherwise, I’m talking about how I think one should disabuse people of bad religious docrines. I think a good argument should be more successful than calling them names like “fucking moron,” and so forth.
I think that a resolution of the conflicts over the cartoons, for example, has to be one where all sides have something at stake and all eventually agree to the resolution. I just don’t see how this could be done by insulting people who don’t at first agree with you.
I think the anger and violence caused by these cartoons may seem to be all out of proportion. But, I don‚t think you can understand the Muslim reaction to these cartoons without consideriong the fact that the United States has invaded Iraq, a Muslim country, stealing their valuables and killing tens of thousands of Iraqis every couple of months. We are about to Nuke Iran and invade that country of 70 million to try to install a government friendly to us. All this happens and the people in the streets of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, and so forth feel that nobody in the world community will stand up and keep the U.S. from doing whatever it wants.
I think these cartoons were part of an effort to undermine European and international resistance to further American adventures in the middle east. The thought being, it would be expected that the people would riot all over the place and thereby show them to be irrational.
Yeah, I‚d allow people to be offensive, but If I were the Danish Prime Minister I would have pointed out how offensive the cartoons were. I‚d also wonder just what was behind their publication. There is a suspicion that they had some more sinister purpose.
You do know the cartoons were published all the way back in September, right? Yes, there may be something more sinister at work here, but it may not be what you think. In addition to this Danish Muslim group that seems to have gone out of its way to raise hell over this (months after the original publication), story after story has shown that clerics and fundie activists throughout the Muslim world have been coordinating these protests on the “Arab street.” Something sinister indeed.
I agree with the other things you said. Maybe we shouldn’t jump down people’s throats so readily — it’s just that, you know, we are sick of the bullshit. And I agree, killing large numbers of Arabs hasn’t exactly endeared the West, and especially America, to them. But I do wish they would listen to some of their moderates and think about how this stupidity makes them look. They aren’t endearing themselves to the West, either. They are, as I have said before, a people desperately in need of a Gandhi.
I guess both sides look pretty stupid. But I would be an outcast in either society — and probably killed in theirs — so who am I to talk? I can’t keep up with the religious nuts. There are too many of them, of too many different types. All a good atheist can say is fuck ‘em all.
There, that wasn’t very sugary, I know. It just comes out like that. Can’t help it.
18 February 2006, on 2:10 am
To Bob,
You said,
“…People want to hold that these cartoons are like putting naked pictures of mom on the front page of the paper, and that’s just a false analogy…”
I would use this analogy mayself. I think that the cartoons don’t, in fact, criticize much in the way of ideas and opinions. The reason I think the analogy between Mohammed and their moms works is because I think the role of their religion is as close and as directive and consoling for them as we might think their moms would be. Yo may think that the religion is not much more than stories about fairy godmothers and fathers, but this, I believe, would be to ignore much about what the religions involve. So, for example, they learn about right and wrong in contact with their religious leaders. Whether the characters were real or not, their morality and their inspiration to act is real.
The 12 Danish cartoons were really about a narrow range of issues. Most relied on some fairly angry story about Muslims. That is, they’re bomb throwers. They bomb in order to meet virgins in heaven. They look like some stereotype. And so forth. None of them were very funny. None of them had much sympathy for the Muslim community.
I don’t think the cartoons had much to say than poke fun at Muslims understood to be bomb throwers. There are others who would make more of this argument. So, for example, the socialists write,
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/cart-f08.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/cart-f15.shtml
Here is a piece about the Danish paper having refused to publish anti Christian and holocaust cartoons in the past:
http://www.black-iris.com/?p=503
and here,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/680615.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1703501,00.html
http://www.bendib.com/newones/2006/february/2-5-Denmark-cartoons.jpg
http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=508448
Anyway, there’s discussion of the unwillingness of the JP to publish offensive cartoons about others.
18 February 2006, on 6:38 pm
To Sean,
By “retribution” I meant that once the commentary or news gathering has been done and it’s out there, the writers or newspeople get visited by thugs sent by those who’ve been exposed in the news. Yes, stuff like this is a scary thing. Unfortunately, I think we live in a “supposed democracy” where this kind of thing is in fact a problem. Instead of “retribution”, there is probably more intimidation to prevent news reporting. Hence, the efforts made to gut the Freedom of Information act. The effort to attack whistle blowers. There is the effort to kill if not injure journalists reporting on the war in Iraq. In this country you can look at some of the recent “suicides” of journalists working to expose corruption in high places, see Gary Webb, for example. I agree with you that it is very important to protect a free press.
You’ve suggested that one evidence of a free press is the ability blaspheme without fear of retribution. This, of course, is a claim disputed everywhere. The christians, for example, would object if you said nasty things about Jesus. Again, I think the question is complicated.
I think you would find this related,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11407439/
Apparently Clooney said,
Clooney: “I want to thank Jack Abramoff, you know, just because-I–I’m the first one out- lets get this thing rolling. I don’t know why. Who would name their kid Jack with the last words “off” at the end of your last name? No wonder that guy is screwed up. Ahh-alright I just got bleeped. Thank you very much…”
The interesting part here is that Abramoff’s father complained about this joke, complained that it made his granddaughter cry.
When asked about this, Clooney said, via Associated Press,
“Believe me, the person who’s disparaged the Abramoff name is not me,” Clooney told King. “Unfortunately, I think he also hurt the House of Representatives along the way.”
Clooney said he admired Abramoff’s father for sticking up for his son.
“I appreciate people who stick up for family members, even in the face of confessing to felonies,” he said.
So, I suspect Sean would think the Mohammed cartoons are very much like Clooney’s joke about Jack Abramoff. On Sean’s view, neither Clooney nor the editors, much less the Danes, have any reason to apologize for what was said, or drawn.
I’d like to dispute this analogy. So, Clooney was making fun of a person who is accused of buying favors from powerful politicians. As Clooney said, he may have injured the House of Representatives. And,
so Clooney might say, if you can’t stand the heat of comedic abuse, then stop breaking the law.
Abramoff’s father was trying to defend his son, the accused felon, by suggesting that Clooney was really making an attack on Jack Abramoff as a father, or was somehow violating comedic standards by being “glib and ridiculous.” There’s an account here,
http://news.softpedia.com/news/George-Clooney-s-joke-upsets-Abramoff-s-family-16682.shtml
saying,
“…Abramoff’s father says, “Your glib and ridiculous attack on my son, Jack, coupled with your obscene query as to the choice his mother and I made in naming him brought shame and dishonor on you and your profession. What drove you to this lapse in lucidity, I can never know, but you need to know that your words were deeply hurtful to many innocent and decent people. Are you the heir to the dignity and greatness of Hollywood’s past, or, more likely, a portent to a depressing and horrific future?” ”
I think the father was reaching to find a way to characterize Clooney’s joke in such a way that it was unfair. I don’t think the appeal to comedic standards works.
However, about the cartoons, the JP attacked the religion and its Prophet as a way of criticizing some problem that specific Muslims have. The angry and violent reaction to these cartoons, although over the top, is partly based on the unfair smear of all Muslims, or of the religion, for the problems of a few.
The problem with the cartoons is as if Clooney would have made fun of Abramoff’s Jewish commitments in order to make points. See here, about Abramoff,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff
Now, does the European press want to protect their paper’s right to promote nasty stereotypes of religions, a.k.a. Nazi cartooning, and so on, or are they wanting to protect Clooney’s right to make jokes of Abramoff, or even Bush? And, let’s say you do want to protect nazi cartooning, shouldn’t the governments of Denmark, or whatever country, distance their people from that kind of rudeness? Yeah, you might say, papers have a right to insult whomever they want, but shouldn’t governments make it clear Denmark doesn’t agree with it.
You said,
“…I think it is important, as everyone tries not to offend the Islamic imaginary friends on this issue, to see the fact that Western Europe — home to the most civilized democracies on the planet — is at the forefront of this battle of ideas. They went through a little thing we call Nazism, and they don’t want to see it happen again.”
I am curious to know whether you think the cartoons were hate speech. Don’t you think that these cartoons are just milimeters away from the anti-semitic stuff that Nazi’s, and some of the Arab papers publish? And if so, aren’t you defending the right of Nazi’s to go on to marginalize and belittle Muslims/Jews/Christians because of their religions? So, then if that’s your position, what seperates you from the Nazi’s?
Aren’t the editors of the JP, the Prime Minister of Denmark, and others in Europe supporting the publication of these cartoons modern day Nazi’s who are determined to use these cartoons to make Muslims today, instead of Jews as in the past, scapegoats for the failures of their economic agendas? This would be one interpretation of the cartoons. Do you have great disagreement with this arguments put forward by the socialists, for one, on this issue?
You said,
“…If I want to say Rip Van Winkle is a silly git, nobody has a right to burn down my embassy over it. He’s a freakin’ work of fiction, and killing people over words — be they words discussing fiction or fact — is an abomination to democracy. (Note: as Rufus pointed out in another thread — there is a place where free speech stops: threatening to kill specific people or inciting others to do so. Civilization requires in regards to about this.)…”
You know, I think I understand that you don’t want to make more of Islam or any religion than just fairy stories, but this is not a position that these people sympathize with. So, to them, making fun of Mohammed is more than making fun of Rip van Winkle. I also think you have failed to see the context in which these cartoons have appeared. Over the last few years, and also for a hundred years or more, westerners have been carving up the middle east for the benefit of western interests , not at all for the benefit of the people who live there. At the moment, the U.S. is killing tens of thousands of Muslims every couple of months. With the uranium dust in the air there, there’s the possiblility that anyone who breathes there will die of cancers. We are about to nuke the country of Iran. In this context, where westerners are threatening to kill many many Muslims, the rioting should be expected.
So, lets’s say Martians were threatening to eradicate all human life on earth, as a preliminary move to make life for them here pleasant. And as part of this historical moment, it became known that Martian cartoonists were making fun of humans. Their mothers look funny. Their mothers sleep around. Their fathers have the morals of dogs. and so on. Wouldn’t rioting be understandable?
Wouldn’t the question be more complicated than just whether Martian cartoonists had the right to make cartoons ridiculing human mothers, or morals, or their religions?
You said,
“…The Danish government has taken the exactly correct position. They have basically said “We have a free press… we have no right to even comment on this issue.” Fundies can’t grasp this idea, be they Xian Americans or Islamic Middle Easterners.
The paper itself has apologized. That is enough. Demanding that the Danish government apologize, which is what the Islamic extremists want, is ludicrous and betrays a gross misunderstanding of the 300-year-old democratic notion of the separation of government and the press…”
Undermining freedom of the press is one thing, but making it seem that one’s government or the people of a country agrees with the policies of a particular paper is another. So, you think that freedom of the press means that a country should not question the factual support offered for some newspapers commentary, or reporter’s claims. This is strange. Suppose the JP wrote that the Saudi’s had developed a poison gas that was undetectable but could kill only people with cartain Northern European genes. Do you think that the Danish government would have no interest in investigating and publicly commenting on the factual basis for such claims? I’d think they would get someone in front of a mike and say whatever they could to counter such a claim.
Shouldn’t the government do the same if a paper tries to make it seem that Danes think Islam is for terrorists. Yeah, some right wing wacko paper can say such stuff, but why make it seem Danes who do not agree, do?
Was the Danish government asked to apologize for the printing of these cartoons, or for making it seem like the Danish people, and the Danish businesses who have been economically hurt by the boycotts, went along with the opinions of the JP? I suspect the government is torn between supporting their own economy and supporting their political agenda. Yes, they don’t want to be seen to be supporting these rude xenophobic cartoons, but they also want to push the marginalization of the Muslim community in Europe as a way of making it seem that the Muslims are at fault for the destructive policies of the right wing.
later,
18 February 2006, on 7:55 pm
Wow, Steve. I am enjoying debating with you, but give me a little time after this one. You just built a whole bunch of strawmen that I had nothing to do with, and are complete distractions from my basic argument.
E.g.: This is strange. Suppose the JP wrote that the Saudi’s had developed a poison gas that was undetectable but could kill only people with cartain Northern European genes.
That’s a good scarecrow. I commend you for being able to punch it around. It’s a complete non sequitur, but I am game… I will take this on a bit longer.
Will get back to you soon.
18 February 2006, on 8:16 pm
Sean,
You wanted to make a case that the sinister part of this situation may just be someone trying to do one thing, and other things happen that spin out of control. Here’s something that suggests that the reaction to the cartoons, even though it seems to be promoted by the actions of Muslim fanatics, may just be another part of the effort to paint the Muslim community as totally unreasonable.
You said,
“…there may be something more sinister at work here, but it may not be what you think. In addition to this Danish Muslim group that seems to have gone out of its way to raise hell over this (months after the original publication), story after story has shown that clerics and fundie activists throughout the Muslim world have been coordinating these protests on the “Arab street.” Something sinister indeed.
My thoughts would go to a review of Robert Drefuss’s “Devil’s Game,”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805076522/102-8844116-3458549?v=glance&n=283155
here,
“..One of the CIA’s first great moments of institutional reflection occurred in 1953, after American covert operatives helped overthrow Iran’s left-leaning government and restored the Shah to power. The agency, then only six years old, had funded ayatollahs, mobilized the religious right and engineered a sophisticated propaganda campaign to successfully further its aims, and it wanted to know how it could reapply such tradecraft elsewhere, so it commissioned an internal report. Half a century later, the most prescient line from that report is one of caution, not optimism. “Possibilities of blowback against the United States should always be in the back of the minds of all CIA officers,” the document warned. Since this first known use of the term “blowback,” countless journalists and scholars have chronicled the greatest blowback of all: how the staggering quantities of aid that America provided to anti-Marxist Islamic extremists during the Cold War inadvertently positioned those very same extremists to become America’s next great enemy. (Indeed, Iran’s religious leaders were among the first to turn against the United States.) Dreyfuss’s volume reaches farther and deeper into the subject than most. He convincingly situates America’s attempt to build an Islamic bulwark against Soviet expansion into Britain’s history of imperialism in the region. And where other authors restrict their focus to the Afghan mujahideen, Dreyfuss details a history of American support—sometimes conducted with startling blindness, sometimes, tacitly through proxies—for Islamic radicals in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Syria. At times, the assistance occurred openly through the American private sector, as Dreyfuss describes in a fascinating digression on Islamic banking. But ultimately, too few government officials were paying attention to the growth and dangers of political Islam. A CIA officer summarizes Dreyfuss’s case when he says, “We saw it all in a short-term perspective”—the long-term consequences are what we’re facing now.”
I would suggest that much of the violence in the Muslim world needs to be investigated because it could be just another effort, like the business with the Shah, to manipulate the Muslim community for western purposes.
To me, that’s sinister.
18 February 2006, on 9:00 pm
Wow, dude. You’re losing me with every conspiracy leap. You remind me of the guy I debated recently who started off arguing with me about whether SUVs for small businesses deserved a tax break and ended up asking me how I would explain “the UFO phenomenon” and “crop circles.”
My original statements, despite your attempts to draw me into strawman arguments that have nothing to do with my original statements, still stand: a democratic, free press has the right to “blaspheme”, period. This is what I am saying — no more and no less.
Perhaps you should watch this.
PS: To think that the unrest in Middle Eastern countries, now bleeding over into Africa, is somehow being directed by the West or the CIA is fucking whackadoo. How is your tinfoil hat holding up?
19 February 2006, on 2:28 am
Yeah, the idea that the C.I.A. is playing the Middle East is fucking whackadoo, as you said, but the question is whether it’s true. The suggestion that the C.I.A. played Iran to get the Shah in there, or to get Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or Pinochet in Chile, is whackadoo, or was to a lot of people, but by the accounts of those in the know, those whackadoo claims are true. I’m saying because of our reputation for doing such things, it’s a good question deserving of an investigation.
Yeah, the press has a right to blaspheme, but governments have a duty to point out that the guys with the newspapers, et al, are responsible for what they say, not the government or the people who have to duck the bricks of those getting blasphemed.
19 February 2006, on 12:53 pm
Steve, I am not as ignorant of these issues as you think. I lived with and dated a woman for seven years who had escaped Pinochet’s Chile. A friend of mine, an Iranian atheist, saw Iran under both feudal and theocratic control… and lost his brother in the pointless, tragic war with Iraq, which “we” (as in the U.S., not me personally) helped finance on Iraq’s side.
I know all this shit. But the idea that anybody other than Islamic nutjob cleric whackadoos are orchestrating this one is pretty out there. Even the CIA can’t put together something like this, from the Middle East to Africa — and moving beyond. No way. I mean, what would even be the purpose of what has happened in Pakistan this past week? “We” don’t want their government undermined… Musharraf is an ally, remember?
This is so off-track from my original point it’s almost not worth addressing anymore.
You said:
Yeah, the press has a right to blaspheme, but governments have a duty to point out that the guys with the newspapers, et al, are responsible for what they say, not the government or the people who have to duck the bricks of those getting blasphemed.
Um… Steve, this is exactly what has happened. The Danish government said they cannot comment or apologize for a free press. The JP newspaper openly apologized, which was their perogative, since they are the paper who printed it. As far as the civilized Danes are concerned, that settles the issue. And I agree with them 100 percent. But these fucking maniac fundies won’t let it go.
19 February 2006, on 1:43 pm
I do not think you are ignorant about these issues. I have no idea what your experiences have been, about Chile or Iran, for example.
I am sorry for introducing what to you seem like straw men.
I do not assume that the violence in the world is because people a “fucking maniacs.” To me, that fails to explain too many things. So, I want to ask what the role of our President’s secret police has been in all of what we’ve seen. I figure the reason we have secret C.I.A. police is to play people. That’s why they’re “secret.”
I would say to the Danes that the issue for them is not settled. Now that their right wing papers and incompetent government has made the Muslim world think Danes hate Muslims, and hence won’t buy Danish goods or services, the Danes will have to demonstrate that is not the case.
19 February 2006, on 2:36 pm
You said above,
“…the idea that anybody other than Islamic nutjob cleric whackadoos are orchestrating this one is pretty out there. Even the CIA can’t put together something like this.”
You said this to counter my suggestion that the violence could not be explained by just the cartoons. You seem to think it’s the cartoons and the fact that there’s insane people running the place.
I think this piece adds a little more information to support my claim that it’s more than just cartoons, though less than a C.I.A. black ops,
“…Over the past week, Islam and religious fervor have been fingered as the source of the spreading violence. But to some analysts, the erratic nature of the demonstrations points to different root causes.
The flash conflagrations, they argue, highlight a profound discontent in Paki-stan over economic and social inequality that has deepened over the past five years, sparking alienation and resentment.
While the attacks on Western restaurants, cars, and banks have been read as an attack on the West, those targets are potent symbols simply of privilege and status that is beyond the reach of much of Pakistan’s population.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0217/p01s02-wosc.html
So, I’d also say, the rioting isn’t just about whackos urging them on, but about how frustrated they are with their poverty.
19 February 2006, on 2:57 pm
So you are saying retribution for WORDS is something we should sit idly by and accept, Steven? I am a liberal, and I could care less whether the Danish paper is right-wing or not. The Danish people do NOT deserve to be punished for one newspaper’s words. Watch the Frank Zappa clip I linked to. To quote Frank: “The whole thing is about WORDS. We are talking about WORDS.”
From Wikipedia:
The paper gained international attention after its publication of 12 satirical images (one cartoon, for example, showed Muhammed as a terrorist with a bomb on his head. This one is widely considered the worst and most provocative of the cartoons) of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in September 2005 led to a diplomatic crisis between Denmark and many predominantly Muslim nations.
How is this for words and readily accepted brainwashing:
The “Islamic prophet Muhammad”??
I have even seen it used in AP stories as a stand-alone phrase like “the prophet Muhammad.” (can we, by the way, agree on a fucking spelling, folks??)
“The prophet????”
Prophet? What prophet? Whose prophet? I don’t see a fucking prophet.
The God Sean has spoken (there is a small furry animal somewhere in the world who thinks I am a god, so henceforth the press shall describe me as such).
19 February 2006, on 3:04 pm
The flash conflagrations, they argue, highlight a profound discontent in Paki-stan over economic and social inequality that has deepened over the past five years, sparking alienation and resentment.
While the attacks on Western restaurants, cars, and banks have been read as an attack on the West, those targets are potent symbols simply of privilege and status that is beyond the reach of much of Pakistan’s population.
Yeah, no kidding. But do they have the West to blame, or their own governments? I’d say both. Moderate Arab journalists have been trying to point this out in the past few weeks, only to be drowned out by the screaming mobs.
You and I are probably on the same side, Steven, but coming at it from different angles. I just deplore extremism of all stripes, liberal or conservative. These people are hurting and killing innocents over WORDS. It must be condemned. Absolutely MUST be, for the sake of civilized discourse.
Yeah, we are pissed here at GifS sometimes. Yeah, somtimes we aren’t so civilized in our discourse… But when the sun sets on each day, the worst you can say about us is that we used WORDS inappropriately.
No one here has murdered anyone. No one here is taking to the streets hell-bent on physically harming someone for their use of WORDS (I keep all-capping that with the great Frank Zappa’s voice in my head).
We are talking about WORDS.
19 February 2006, on 11:25 pm
I think words are maybe the most important things. With words you state what you know. You make arguments with words to make claims about what’s going on in the world, in your life, with how your loved ones are doing, what problems you see, and how you would like to see things improve. It’s the words in arguments that represent you to others, or to history. It’s with words in arguments that you resolve the conflicts that divide us.
Personnaly, it is with words that you communicate with god.
So, I would disagree that words are unimportant.
20 February 2006, on 12:30 am
Sorry, about the delay…was enjoying some time off…
I would use this analogy mayself. I think that the cartoons don’t, in fact, criticize much in the way of ideas and opinions. The reason I think the analogy between Mohammed and their moms works is because I think the role of their religion is as close and as directive and consoling for them as we might think their moms would be.
No one doubts that someone may feel that such and such is the case, but the point of this discussion is what to do with such feelings, whether or not they’re justified, and whether or not these feelings by themselves are sufficient to override anything else that we may or may not consider to be important, such as freedom of the press and freedom of expression.
Having feelings is one thing; reflecting and critically thinking about them is another.
You can’t just say, “Hey, cut it out! It’s different here because that’s important to me!” Sorry, but rights just don’t work that way. If you stopped people from saying offensive stuff only in the areas of stuff that was “important and held dear” to someone else’s heart, the world would be a very quiet place — and you’re supposed to embrace discussion in a democracy, not kill it before it can start.
Yo may think that the religion is not much more than stories about fairy godmothers and fathers, but this, I believe, would be to ignore much about what the religions involve. So, for example, they learn about right and wrong in contact with their religious leaders. Whether the characters were real or not, their morality and their inspiration to act is real.
The consequences and attitudes of these people are obviously real, since we’re reading about them all the time. But, again, that isn’t the point.
(There actually seem to be two issues here, and I try to get to that below.)
I don’t think the cartoons had much to say than poke fun at Muslims understood to be bomb throwers. There are others who would make more of this argument. So, for example, the socialists write,[...]
After reading these links, it turns out that, if these links are correct in their claims, the issue is much more complex than this, and I’m not exactly sure what to think about the toons. I’ve been going back and forth on this. That is, if the paper has a long-standing tradition of hating Muslims and attacking them (along with a huge portion of the population), and if the paper is constantly set in the context of Muslim-hatred in a sort of KKK-Jewish way, then the toons seem to become transformed, in my view, to something else because of the context. But to what, exactly? I just don’t know yet.
I mean, I’d clearly allow other types of offensive material, even when the paper that’s issuing it has some agenda, even when the paper is well-known, for example, for being anti-Jew, anti-gay, or anti-Muslim, etc. So I guess I’m not sure if that’s supposed to count for anything, even if one grants the transformation. (More on this below.)
Anyway, there’s discussion of the unwillingness of the JP to publish offensive cartoons about others.
Yeah, read those links and thought the paper was full of crap. Everything is fair game, or nothing is. Double-standards are just bullshit, and anyone would have a right to criticize the paper for not following through. Inconsistency just pisses me off. Stand by your fucking principles, assholes.
Now, back to the topic. I guess the distinction I’m trying to make is between:
(These aren’t the only two issues, but the ones that seem to be on the table.)
I was just assuming (1) for the most part, but if it’s (2), I guess I just don’t know what to say yet, and I’m going to have to think about this some more.
But I can say that, if your claim is that, even on (1), the toons should have never gotten into print and should have been censored, then that’s just not going to work. I think that claim is false, and I think the reasons that justify it — “Hey, you can’t do that here because this stuff is important!” — not only are bullshit, but also are just going to be way too broad for anything trying to be a free press in a democratic society.
So, if that’s your claim (I’m not saying it is), then it’s just false, and just suck it up and get some skin. But I’m going to have to think about (2) some more — i.e., if the press isn’t free, etc.
So, I guess my question is: What’s your claim?
20 February 2006, on 2:31 am
Personnaly, it is with words that you communicate with god.
It’s the way that you communicate with god, Steven. My god is omniscient and therefore does not need language to communicate. He can read my mind. We speak in symbolic abstract thought patterns, outside of space and time. How silly that an eternal being would need to speak English, a language from a miniscule part of the history of a tiny dust speck in a spiral arm of a remote galaxy.
So… you’re no true Scotsman!
20 February 2006, on 2:41 am
After Bob’s excellent questions, I just want to circle back around and state that my point is this: violence in response to words, no matter how offensive those words are, is right out for me. Off the chart, unaccetable. No matter what somebody says about your mother, if you kill them for it, you are gulity of murder. Period. Secondly, there is the issue of the separation of the press and the government in a democracy. I have never said what JP did was right. That’s a separate issue entirely. What I am saying is it should never be the Danish government’s duty to apologize for what their free press did. Ever. I don’t know how more clearly I can state this.
20 February 2006, on 2:44 am
By the way, I refer you back to the photo accompanying this post:
“Butcher those who mock Islam.”
Butcher.
That was on the streets of London.
Imagine going to a Middle Eastern country and walking down the street with a sign that says “Kill all non-Christians.” See how much police protection you get.
This is the nature of free speech, my friends. This is what it is. Deal with it.
(PS: If they actually were calling for the specific murder of somebody or a group of people, I believe they should be locked up. But the statement is abstract enough that it should be protected, as sick as it is.)
20 February 2006, on 9:21 am
Do you think the publication of anti-semitic cartoons, or images of Jesus having sex with whomever, should be protected under the protection of free speech? Let’s say if the publishers were the nazi party whose program was to kill all jews, or by some other organization devoted to destroying western culture. Does it matter about the history or additional claims by the publisher whether they should be prevented from publishing such stuff?
I think there are different standards in the U.S. and in Europe. Here, I think the 1st amendment protects a lot more. I understand one is unable to publish anything related to nazi literature in Germany, and maybe a few other countries. There are cases now where people are being prosecuted for writing about their doubts about the holacaust during WW2.
In this country, I seem to remember a case showing that it is not against the law for a company to lie about their product. So, if they say the stuff will make hair grow on your head, and it doesn’t, and they knew it wouldn’t, that would not be against any law hereabouts.
I guess I would like to say that “freedom of speech” protections worth anything should be about letting you say pretty much anything. So, even the nazi party should be allowed to publish what they want. If the Danish paper wanted to insult the Muslim community because they thought that would make the nuking of Iran easier, they should pretty much have the right to do so.
This seems kind of extreme, but I agree that it is important not to start qualifying your freedoms away.
I don’t think the Danish government should apoligize for what the Danish papers published. I have not here advocated any such thing. What I am advocating is that the Danish government has a duty to make it clear that the Danish people and the Danish government do not share the opinions of the Danish paper Jp. This is the issue that concerned the Muslim leaders, in part, and the issue that the Danish Prime Minister failed to address when he refused to see them originally. The fact that he or the papers themselves apoligized later may not be very important. The people of the Middle East already got it into their heads that the Danes and their government took a certain position.
I don’t think I have tried to justify or argue that the violence on the part of the Muslim community was the right reaction for them to have taken. I don’t even know what all has been happening. I do know there is a wide range of responses by people who write about this issue on Muslim blogs. They say all kinds of interesting things, some very acute.
I think one should never be comfortable inferring from a bunch of hotheads anything about Muslims in general.
20 February 2006, on 10:01 am
Ugh — Afghan cartoon protesters threaten to join al Qaeda.