"The Right to Blasphemy"

[Gentle Giant]

Have folks been following the threats against Denmark by fundamentalist Muslims because a newspaper printed an editorial cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammed? Now, a number of other papersin the EU are showing solidarity in what I think is a genuinely courageous stand in promotion of freedom of expression and freedom of the press. I wouldn't consider the Muslim threats to be of the idle nature, so hat's off to the brave editors putting themselves, their businesses, and their nations in the line of fire.

Prophet Mohammed cartoons are republished
Free expression cited, but Muslims angered
By Angela Charlton, Associated Press | February 2, 2006

PARIS -- French and German newspapers republished caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed yesterday in what they called a defense of freedom of expression, sparking fresh anger from Muslims.

The drawings have divided opinion within Europe and the Middle East since a Danish newspaper first printed them in September. Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet to prevent idolatry.

The cartoons include an image of Mohammed wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse and another portraying him holding a sword, his eyes covered by a black rectangle.

The front page of the daily France Soir yesterday carried the headline ''Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God" along with a cartoon of Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian gods floating on a cloud. Inside, the paper reran the Danish drawings.

Germany's Die Welt daily printed one of the drawings on its front page, arguing that a ''right to blasphemy" was anchored in democratic freedoms. The Berliner Zeitung daily printed two of the caricatures as part of its coverage of the controversy.

Italy's La Stampa printed a small version of the offending caricature, on page 13. Two Spanish papers, Barcelona's El Periodico and Madrid's El Mundo, also carried the images.

The decision by French Soir drew a stern but measured reaction from the government.

''Press liberties which French authorities defend everywhere in the world cannot be questioned. However, this has to be done within the spirit of tolerance and the respect of faiths and religions," said French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy during a visit to Ankara, Turkey.

It is unusual for the Foreign Ministry to comment on the contents of French publications, but the issue is sensitive at home. France has Western Europe's largest Muslim community with an estimated 5 million people.

France Soir, which is owned by an Egyptian magnate and has struggled to attract readers, justified its decision.

''The appearance of the 12 drawings in the Danish press provoked emotions in the Muslim world because the representation of Allah and his prophet is forbidden. But because no religious dogma can impose itself on a democratic and secular society, France Soir is publishing the incriminating caricatures," the paper said.

The Danish daily Jyllands-Posten originally published the cartoons after asking artists to depict Islam's prophet to challenge what it perceived was self-censorship among artists dealing with Islamic issues. A Norwegian newspaper reprinted the images earlier this month.

Angered by the drawings, masked Palestinian gunmen briefly took over a European Union office in Gaza on Monday. Syria called for the offenders to be punished. Danish goods were swept from shelves in many countries, and Saudi Arabia and Libya recalled their ambassadors to Denmark.

The Jyllands-Posten -- which received a bomb threat over the drawings -- has apologized for hurting Muslims' feelings but not for publishing the cartoons. Its editor said yesterday, however, that he would not have printed the drawings had he foreseen the consequences.

[Monte Smith]

I say break the Muslim boycott and buy Danish. Now...what's a Danish product? I don't care what it is. I'll take two.

[rollhead]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

I say break the Muslim boycott and buy Danish. Now...what's a Danish product? I don't care what it is. I'll take two.

Why stop at two, Monte? You Republicans have the whole trayful. Might as well take it all.

[jeff54]

While I am against purposely offending anyone based on their religion (Scientologists accepted), I think the response to the pictures are a little over the top.

Anyway for anyone who is interested here is a link to a page that has the offending cartoons as well as other dipictions of Muhammad through the ages. http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/

This one was my favorite.

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by rollhead

Why stop at two, Monte? You Republicans have the whole trayful. Might as well take it all.

That tray of Danish would taste a lot better if they were made made on a certain street corner in Manhattan. No really

[Monte Smith]

You know, danishes are not really Danish. Just like Freedom Fries aren't really French.

[rollhead]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

You know, danishes are not really Danish. Just like Freedom Fries aren't really French.

Bullshit. Now, tell me the chimichanga isn't Mexican.

Originally Posted by Doc Martin

That tray of Danish would taste a lot better if they were made made on a certain street corner in Manhattan. No really

Yea, I know. I can find them right across the street from the shop that sells the only "real" bagels in the world.

[Surfer]

Originally Posted by jeff54

This one was my favorite.

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Gentle Giant]

Shit's still hitting the fan. It won't be long before some of it sticks.

Islamic anger widens at Mohammed cartoons
Europeans face protests, threats
By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff | February 3, 2006

BERLIN -- An extraordinary row over newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed intensified yesterday, with street demonstrations from North Africa to Pakistan to Indonesia, threats of violence against Europeans in the Middle East, and diplomatic protests by Muslim nations.

The caricatures, originally published in September by a Danish paper, include one depicting Mohammed as a terrorist with a bomb in a turban. As the furor has escalated, newspapers in Europe have reprinted the images, which have appeared on websites worldwide.

The cartoons have stirred outrage across the Islamic world, which considers any caricatures of the prophet to be blasphemous.

The threats triggered a backlash in Europe this week, with editorialists and politicians proclaiming that free-press protections apply to political satire that is neither obscene nor racist.

Yesterday, Palestinian gunmen surrounded the European Union office in the Gaza Strip, and fired shots into the air. The protesters demanded that countries where the images have appeared apologize for the cartoons. The Associated Press reported that many European journalists, aid workers, and diplomats were pulling out of Gaza last night because of death and kidnapping threats.

Also yesterday, Norway and Denmark closed their diplomatic missions in the Palestinian West Bank for fear of attack, while in Paris, a top editor of the newspaper France Soir was dismissed for reprinting the cartoons, according to French press reports.

The controversy started with the appearance of a dozen satiric images of Islam's founder in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten last September. It escalated after at least a dozen newspapers in Switzerland, Spain, France, Germany, Hungary, and other countries reprinted the Danish cartoons on Wednesday, usually with accompanying editorials asserting that freedom of speech is a more important value in democracies than respect for religious sensitivities.

Scores of Muslim political and religious leaders in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia have vehemently protested. The outgoing Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, said yesterday that the images ''provoke all Muslims everywhere in the world. We hope that the concerned [European] governments are attentive to the sensitivity of this issue."

In a statement, Kuwait labeled the drawings ''despicable racism," while gunmen in the West Bank reportedly combed hotels, possibly in search of Westerners to abduct. Palestinian militants [meaning what? The government?] warned that if European governments did not apologize, Westerners in the region ''will be targeted," according to wire service reports.

In Pakistan, protesters chanted, ''Death to Denmark! Death to France!" In Indonesia today, about 300 militants went on a rampage in the lobby of a Jakarta building housing the Danish embassy. The white-clad protesters from the hardline Islamic Defender's Front smashed lamps with bamboo sticks and threw eggs. The embassy is on the 25th floor of the building and protesters were unable to get past security in the lobby.

The Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who has rejected demands from Arab governments to rebuke the newspaper Jyllands-Posten for publishing the caricatures, will hold an emergency meeting today in Copenhagen with diplomats from Muslim countries. He said the dispute has gone from a tiff over one newspaper's editorial decision to an international clash of values.

''We are talking about an issue with fundamental significance to how democracies work" Rasmussen told reporters yesterday. ''I can't call a newspaper and tell them what to put in."

Most sects of Islam forbid artistic depictions of the human form. Physical representations of Mohammed, no matter how benign, are deemed blasphemous because they might give rise to idolatry.

Jyllands-Posten commissioned the cartoons by 12 Danish artists in response to a complaint by the author of a children's book on Mohammed that he could not find an artist willing to risk Muslim ire by illustrating the work.

Most of the cartoons seem innocuous to the Western eye. One simply depicts Mohammed as a sage old man.

But another shows Mohammed at the gates of heaven, warning suicide bombers: ''Stop! we have run out of virgins" -- an allusion to the 72 virgins that, Islamic tradition holds, are accorded the status of Muslim martyrs when they reach paradise. [Cool. Where do I sign up?]

In most Western countries, political cartoonists make editorial comments by mocking ideologies, social conventions, and politicians and prominent figures.

''The reaction of Arab regimes betrays . . . a lack of understanding of the nature of press freedom," said Robert Ménard, head of the Paris-based media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders, The countries that have most vehemently protested the cartoons -- including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Syria -- have no tradition of free speech, he noted.

The German newspaper Die Welt, which published one of the Danish cartoons on its front page Wednesday, made much the same point in an editorial: ''There is no right to protection from satire in the West."

Muslim editorialists disagreed.

''It is no longer a matter of thought or opinion or belief," a journalist, Samir Ragab wrote in Egypt's state daily, el-Gomhuria. ''It's a plot hatched against Islam and Muslims."

The Jordanian weekly newspaper Shihan yesterday also reprinted some of the Danish caricatures of Mohammed, in order to ''display to the public the extent of the Danish offense and condemn it in the strongest terms," said the editor-in-chief, Jihad al-Momani.

But only hours later, Momani was fired by the publisher and the editions were withdrawn, and the government threatened legal action against the publisher, according to wire service reports.

When they first appeared last fall, the cartoons were initially met by local protests by Muslims in Denmark, but drew almost no notice anywhere else. That changed, however, when a group of Islamic activists from the Scandinavian nation toured mosques and religious centers in the Persian Gulf last month, calling upon Muslims to protest.

Their campaign triggered an economic boycott that has caused tens of millions of dollars in losses to Danish companies.

In Paris, the managing editor of France Soir, Jacques Lefranc, reportedly was dismissed by the paper's owner, Egyptian business magnate Raymond Lakah, who apologized for any offense caused by the cartoons. Even so, the newspaper yesterday ran a ringing editorial defense of publishing the drawings.

''Imagine a society that added up all the prohibitions of different religions," the newspaper stated. ''What would remain of freedom to think, to speak, and even to come and go?"

[Gary Sisco]

I have nothing against offending the religious. Freedom to believe exists only where there is freedom to not believe. The prophets opened themselves up to satire by their zany antics, anyway, long ago.

[Paul B]

I agree Gary. It's preposterous that the whole world has to curtail free expression because it displeases one segment of the world's populace. They have the freedom to terrorize; we have freedom of the press and of expression. Reminds me of the Rushdie incident...To hell with these people.

Bye-ya

[Tom Storer]

Originally Posted by Paul B

It's preposterous that the whole world has to curtail free expression because it displeases one segment of the world's populace.

It doesn't, thank goodness. But free speech is not something that religious fanatics want: they want their dogma respected, period. In the West it seems preposterous not to understand the benefits of free speech and the concomitant respect for differing viewpoints, but that's just it: if your respect is only for God and not for other people, then free speech is a bad thing. It lets you blaspheme and get away with it!

Meanwhile, there are enough easily offended religious folks to go around:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/0...eut/index.html

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Tom Storer

Meanwhile, there are enough easily offended religious folks to go around:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/0...eut/index.html

Aren't they already supposed to be boycotting that show due to all the gay folk on it?

[clinthopson]

This just demonstrates the irrational fanatacism of a huge portion of the Moslem world.

They can't be dealt with rationally, so let's just ignore them and burn ethanol.

[Brian Olewnick]

Might the protest carry a slightly greater amount of weight were the offended Muslims at the same time protesting the slanderous depiction of Jews in popular Arab media?

[amfortas]

Im outraged that a Labour goverment here in England attempted to abolish the freedom to criticise religion.
I should be free to say that islam,or christianity, are(as i believe) for the most part utter nonsense, and that the empirical claims made on their behalf are without any basis fact; if anyone can produce some evidence lets see it.
It is appalling that we should censor criticism of religion.

[amfortas]

With regard to blasphemy, let us note that each religion, since it differs from the next, means that people of differing faiths are in perpetual blasphemy:muslims, buddists, and christians for example, are in violation of the principles of the other religions(to say nothing of common sense).
It is therefore utterly absurd to attempt to create a law 'against' blasphemy.

[sonic1]

The paper that put out that comic knew they were being inflamatory when they posted that. Wrong or not, you can't bitch when you throw a rock at a bully and the bully starts making bomb threats. It just isn't logic.

But it is a right wing paper, so I guess logic and politeness are out, eh?

[bluenoter]

Originally Posted by clinthopson

This just demonstrates the irrational fanatacism of a huge portion of the Moslem world.

No, whatever it demonstrates is confined to the people involved. I doubt that you can back up the assertion that it's a "huge" portion of the Moslem/Muslim world.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by bluenoter

No, whatever it demonstrates is confined to the people involved. I doubt that you can back up the assertion that it's a "huge" portion of the Moslem/Muslim world.

I agree.

[Monte Smith]

Maybe you can't say it is a huge percentage of Muslims, but you certainly can say that it has brought out large crowds of Muslims in dozens of countries, which is a stark enough statement. You have to buy into a lot of crap about the world community of Islam before you can hold that the local residents of Gaza or Indonesia have any plausible complaint of over cartoons from Denmark. What does a paper in Denmark have to do with their own concerns?

The good news, however, is that just like the Monty Python skit about the Germans developing a lethally funny joke, the Pentagon can begin development on a lethally offensive caricature of the Prophet Mohommad.

[Jazzzoline]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

You know, danishes are not really Danish. Just like Freedom Fries aren't really French.

Poutine is genuinely from Québec

[GregM]

Is it still "blasphemy" if mohammed turns out to be a false prophet?

[crawjo]

Funny that the protests basically prove the point of the original cartoon. The face of Mohammed is a bomb. It's far past time that people call out Islam for the piece of shit religion that it is. Islamic fundamenalists make Christian fundamentalists look like flag-burning leftists.

[GregM]

Originally Posted by Face of the Bass

Funny that the protests basically prove the point of the original cartoon. The face of Mohammed is a bomb. It's far past time that people call out Islam for the piece of shit religion that it is. Islamic fundamenalists make Christian fundamentalists look like flag-burning leftists.

"How dare you cast such dispersions on the prophet (PBUH). Anyone who does not believe Islam is peaceful must be beheaded so that rivers of your blood flow in the streets and the gates of hell open for you. The mulsim world is peaceful as a summer breeze, from Algeria to Bali--and if you don't think so you should die from our shahid explosion, your flesh ripped assunder by the poison-doused screws and bits of metal we use in our peaceful bombs. Allahu akbar!"

[Pete C]

Blasphemy should not only be a right, it should be an obligation. Maybe even a pillar.

[Scott Dolan]

*ahem*

Far be it from me, the most grammatically challenged asshole on the board, but shouldn't the title of this thread be The Right To Blaspheme?

[Gary Sisco]

I'm with Pete on this question, as always.

Shit, I get that deeply offended every day, just by passing through the alleged culture that surrounds me. So what? So nothing. I'm as offensive to it. So what? So nothing. If I wanted everything that offends me censored you could go to B&N and find maybe one or three magazines on the shelves, no newspapers, and I'd likely still be offended by something inside the mag covers.

The great thing is that these sorts of reactionary movements -- of which there is a Christoid variety in the US, let us not forget or do so at our own peril -- is that they come alive especially when they feel their grip losing hold, and it is. Modernity and the commodity are going to do, globally, what no amount of firepower from any source could do or prevent. There is no stopping that historical wave, however bloody, and bloody it's certainly going to be.

[crawjo]

Lois sent me a pm asking me to edit and clarify post #24, in which I called Islam a piece of shit religion. I stand by that assertion. A religion is a set of beliefs, and I have every right to call out a religion that suppresses the rights of women and homosexuals to the extent that Islam does. I have little to no respect for Islam as a religion, and will not shy away from saying so. I am sure that any Muslim reading this will find these words offensive--so be it. Obviously, all Muslims are not misogynistic murderers, but an alarming proportion of them are, or at least support the actions of misogynistic murderers, particularly in the Middle East, but also in Europe.

Anyway, I stand by my comment, and I will not edit it. If the post is deleted, then I can only assume that it is no longer permissible on this site to attack belief systems, of any kind, which I guess would include conservatism, liberalism, fascism, or racism, to name a few.

[Paul B]

A religion is a set of beliefs, and I have every right to call out a religion that suppresses the rights of women and homosexuals to the extent that Islam does. I have little to no respect for Islam as a religion, and will not shy away from saying so.

Kudos. And of course you could say much the same thing about Christianity, and people would pat you on the back (especially the regarding the American version). Sadly, saying something similar about that third monotheistic religion and its so-called democratic state (i.e. homeland) would surely get you booted from this board.

Bye-ya