So, who thinks Piss Christ should have been banned and if someone had murdered the artist it should have been passively condoned as "what he gets for inflaming people's cherished beliefs"? How about the film "Dogma"? Should that have been banned and Kevin Smith murdered for upsetting the Christians by "belittling" Jesus? Because there are certainly people who contemplated that action in both instances. If someone had murdered Kevin Smith, would that have been Kevin Smith's fault, or the murderers? How about Hustler v. Falwell? Should Jerry Falwell and Charles Keeting been able to destroy Hustler for printing a cartoon? When you went to see "The People Vs. Larry Flint", did you get mad when Falwell didn't prevail in the end? I would love to see one of you lawyers explain to me how wrong the court was in Hustler v. Falwell.
I think that if anybody organized a pisschrist day, where everyday people were encouraged to desecrate a crucifix in the name of protecting artistic freedom, they'd be being more effective in celebrating how to be an ******* -- then anything to do with artistic freedom, or freedom of expression. And I think the same thing about this tasteless 'draw the prophet' stunt.
If I go into a notoriously dangerous neighbourhood, and scream F you to a bunch of gang members, I get shot. Legally, it is their fault. But nothing changes my death and I am certainly an idiot for doing so. No one is arguing about the legality of this. It is legal. No issues. Even the psycho Muslims know that it is a legal right, and that violence is a crime. That's not the issue and we need to stop bringing it down to that shallow level because there are no problems there, there is no confusion there, nothing.
Wow, comparing art and political speech to yelling "F You." As stupid as I thought Piss Christ was, I never really thought the guy was asking to be murdered, as you are here implying.
That's the thing. Where these lunatic muslims are/were in power (e.g. Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia), drawing a freaking cartoon could have deadly consequences. That, to use your words, would have been the "notoriously dangerous neighborhood". I would not go to Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia and draw a cartoon of your prophet there in some crowded marketplace - that would mean provoking them where they have power, and that would be crazy (and suicidal). What these crazies - and to some extent people like you, Mathloom - are trying to do is to extend that "notoriously dangerous neighborhood" to the whole world, by threatening people (or by enjoying seeing people who drew cartoons live in fear, like you do, Mathloom) in Denmark, Sweden, the USA, etc. They are basically trying to force their standards onto everyone and to expand the bad neighborhood. This is exactly what this initiative is about - not to let them do this, to draw a line in the sand. If you let them force their standards and pretended sensitivities onto everyone in the world, in reality, they manage to have similar power of setting standards for the restriction of freedom of speech as in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia since (not legally, but in reality) THEY would dictate the limits of freedom of speech by feigning outrage and instilling fear and they would have achieved a first step of what they wanted to achieve, and they would not stop there.
What does this even mean? Enough obviously care because violence has occurred. Apparently you want to believe that all Muslims in the world are warm and cuddly and would never resort to violence and have no problem with depictions, but unfortunately you are apparently a resident of fantasy land. Ahhhhh, good to know you care at least a little then!
So you're saying Larry Flynt had it coming to him when the white supremacist terrorist tried to kill him and he ended up paralyzed? That if you upset such types, you should expect to be killed?
It's a totally different situation. A crazy artist takes risks to insult a majority population in a majority society. A majority can boycott, they can use influence to shun the person, they can do all kinds of things simply by the virtue of being the majority in power to stop someone from insulting them. They can extract a price for that hateful speech against them. Muslims in Denmark are a huge minority. There's nothing to stop Danes from using the levers of power in their majority society to make fun of, harass, and castigate Muslims. I can't believe you don't understand these differences. MLK would roll over in his grave if he ever heard someone compare drawing insulting religious cartoons to the American Civil Rights movement.
So if you're a minority it's ok to threaten with violence and murder those you disagree with? Sorry, but last time I checked Muslims in Denmark enjoy the same rights as other citizens there.
No, insulting minorities in the name of free speech because they have no recourse against you is just a b**** move. If Muslims came up with a creative way to exercise their free speech and intimidate Danes in the same manner that Danes are doing to Muslims then it would suddenly cease being a freedom of speech issue and it would become a public safety issue. It's bullying at its finest.
So as an athiest, one of the most hated and despised of minority groups, I can go to town on all you MF'ers? And since there are a whole lot more Muslims than athiests in the USA, you can't do crap in return? I like where you're going. Doesn't really seem fair to you, though. But, say your religion involves ritualized forcible rape of children. Or requires female circumcision, or requires you not to take your child to the hospital if they have bubonic plague because God will heal them if God want's to. Because the Christians are in the majority they can't pull "b**** move" and criticize that or do anything about it, cause that would be "bullying at its finest?"
My favorite quote so far in all this craziness is from an anonymous blogger: "Fight for the right to draw Mohammed, but then decline doing so." My one-off cartoon is rotten as a long term 'plan'. More on my website. Thanks for the spirited discussion! Molly http://www.mollynorris.com/
What's it matter? If they find it offensive, why would you keep doing it if not to simply provocate anger? This whole concept is stupid. If your wife is angry at you for something stupid, do you just make fun of her for being angry and continue purposefully doing what pisses her off? No, you stop (I'd hope). This is just veiled anti-Muslim sentiment spilling out, IMO, and its provocative undertones disgust me.
Honestly and sincerely you are incorrect. Dismissing the other side in a discussion as having less than sincere beliefs is a very easy and lazy to avoid having to deal with thinking about those views. The idea that a subject is off limits - any subject is off limits - for discussion because it might offend people... I can't imagine that Muslims can find drawings of Mohammad to be too much more offensive than that idea is to me. The following is from an article from Yale Law Journal called "The Embarasing Second Amendment": [rquoter] As Ronald Dworkin has argued, what it means to take rights seriously is that one will honor them even when there is significant social cost in doing so. If protecting freedom of speech, the rights of criminal defendants, or any other part of the Bill of Rights were always (or even most of the time) clearly costless to the society as a whole, it would truly be impossible to understand why they would be as controversial as they are. The very fact that there are often significant costs—criminals going free, oppressed groups having to hear viciously racist speech and so on—helps to account for the observed fact that those who view themselves as defenders of the Bill of Rights are generally antagonistic to prudential arguments. Most often, one finds them embracing versions of textual, historical, or doctrinal argument that dismiss as almost crass and vulgar any insistence that times might have changed and made too "expensive" the continued adherence to a given view. "Cost-benefit" analysis, rightly or wrongly, has come to be viewed as a "conservative" weapon to attack liberal rights. [/rquoter]
You are a dog with a bone. You are a German dog with a religion-hating bone. So what that Muslims don't want Allah depicted? Why the **** should that bother you so much? I'm a Jew. You know what bothers me? Germans who pretend to be superior about religion and how religious people should observe their religions. You have a lot of damn nerve pretending superiority in this. Just STFU and live your own life. Muslims are a whole group of people, with a whole lot of varied beliefs. So are Jews. So are GERMANS. But Muslims never murdered six million people. Get humility.
Your post is amazingly - self-righteous - besides the point - xenophobic. You're drunk and bitter. Go to sleep.
The threats are a response of a comparatively very few to the bullying of Muslims by the Danish establishment. What is the recourse of a minority to defend themselves from the hatred of a majority? To assert that depicting someone's God as a terrorist over and over and over again in the national press is simply the exercise of free speech is r****ded. It's using the mechanisms of power available to the majority to defame the minority. What is the recourse for that?
A majority of the minority is actually getting their whole life - food, shelter, everything - funded by the so-called "Danish establishment". They chose to come to Denmark and were welcomed generously. How is this hatred? A few cartoonists depicting a prophet (not a God, as you mistakenly state) as a terrorist...does that come out of nowhere? They did not do that before 9/11 and before seeing in person that members of the minority that was living off Danish taxpayer money celebrated the death of thousands of Americans on Danish streets. Still, no member of that minority was persecuted, threatened, taken their rights to freedom of speech away. All that happened was a few cartoonists drawing cartoons. How you equate that to "mechanisms of power available to the majority to defame the minority" is beyond me.
