Denmark opens up a can of worms

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And for the last time, READ the post before you make a reply. Doesn't it say "Muslims"? Where on earth did you see me say Arabs ? Open your eyes before you make a reply dude.

Oh really ? Well, try putting Mohammeds head on one of these cartoons, and see what happens next. For years they have been dragging the holocaust into this, portraying Sharon as a childeating, satanic creature, walking hand in hand with Adolf Hitler. Thousands of pictures like that have been published over the years, and you say that less worse than portraying their cultfigure as a sheepshagger ? Give me a break, that's some serious double standards you display here.

[ February 08, 2006, 01:41: Message edited by: Pac man ]

 

Hmm. I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be "outrage" over that. You see, for many years people have been thinking on Jesus, and the Holy Grail. The idea of Jesus and Mary M. having sex (and producing offspring) has been around for years, and was a part of the popular book "The Da Vinci Code". I'm not 100% certain, but to my knowledge there were no death threats because of Dan Brown's book. And there were certainly not any massive protest marches threatening the publisher with terrorism.

 

@Pac Man: Those cartoons are a product of the ARAB WORLD, written by Arabs who may not even be Muslim. (However, they most likely were. 5% of the Arab world is Christian and 2% is Jewish, but they share a common culture. They are allowed full rights to practice their faiths as they are regarded "people of the book".) It's one thing to say that most Arabs are Muslim. It's another thing to say that what Arab Muslims do is indicative of what ALL Muslims do because they are actually in the MINORITY. Frankly, any argument that labels 100% of a people based on what a small fraction of an already small fraction of them do is in poor taste, unfair, and factually without base. A Black American Muslim does not have the same world view as an Arab, be that Arab a Christian, Jew, or Muslim.

@Zenastin: Actually there was outrage about the very idea that Jesus even thought about having sex with Mary Magdalene in the United States. That was one of the reasons the Last Temptation of Christ was so controversial when it came out. There were a great many demonstrations against the film and a few orders within the Catholic church actually stated that seeing the movie could potentially be "sinning against the Holy Spirit" (Rome actually stayed silent on this note, though they did say the movie was heresy and no one should see it. For the theology impaired, a sin against the Holy Spirit is the only sin that will never be forgiven).

[ February 08, 2006, 04:21: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

I stand corrected. I was 3 at the time, so it's clear as to why I didn't know of the event...

However, the idea, presented again only a few years ago, in the book I mentioned, has obviously caught less rage and violence than it did back then.

Then again, according to wikipedia (which is usually fairly accurate, although not 100%), a number of conservatives have re-examined the film recently and have decided it isn't blasphemous after all.

 

Most americans don't read books. I'm sure if a movie was made out of the Da Vinci Code, you'd have your outcry.

 

Such a sad truth.

 

Hehe, I think that some people just don't watch/read much news, a movie out of the Da Vince Code is already made.

And with the standars of today communications, you don't need a whole country to read a book/watch a movie to point out or start a controversy about it.
How you think all these people know about the cartoon even when it was published in Denmark?

Spain is the inmigrant's paradise, I am one of them, and I can say that Spanish people had to adapt to their way of life: you see the neighbourhoods where they settled all messed up, garbage everywhere, pissing, spitting, etc., just wherever they feel like it, etc.; so now people have to live with that, with the fact that they make lot more noise than anybody because they don't take naps or they have their fun until 12pm, etc., I know that people had to live with that, for instance adapt to their way of life; but you can tell them that at least, throw the garbage in the cointainers because you'll get 30 of these people shouting at you that you are discriminating them, I saw that happened, is not just a story somebody told me; government gave them 400 mt2 to make their mosque but these muslims said that government were discriminating them because the mosque was... 120 mts of their neighbourhood.
So, is our fault? They come to a total different environment, where people already live with their own customs, and pretend that WE have to adapt to them? We already do that by the time our neighbourhoods became all trashed, we can't have naps anymore, etc...

So now, are we gonna have violence because of this? Or this? Or this?
I don't think so; maybe we'll have people babling, but not violence.

Now all come to this. A contest to publish Holocaust cartoons, maybe, is time to show them that we aren't like them, and I hope that we, 'infidels' take that matter just as a cartoon fun, and don't go around killing people because of it (there are already 12 people dead because of this)

 

I don't buy the minority part anymore, there's too many of them involved now. And i know a black American muslim is different than anything else, their reasononing is based upon the wet dreams of an ex pimp, and when they speak about white people, they speak about the devil, go the arguement that they ae that much different than the Arabic muslims goes limp right from the start.

About the cartoons, these particualr ones may be Arab, i'm not even sure, but in Indonesia are similar cartoons, and Indonesia happens to be the largest muslim nation on the planet, and the theater of several attacks on western civilians. It doesn't matter where the muslims come from, their reaction is the same everywhere. There's raging lunatics, and there's the silent mob.

 

OK, I've read the news today and the man of the hour: Abu Laban, a prominent Muslim figure in Denmark

From here

According to the article I've read today, Abu Laban presented his "dossier of islamophobia" in Danemark to his audience in the Middle-East that included:

- more cartoons than the published ones, including hardcore pornography involving the Prophet and animals

- warnings that Danemark was planning public burnings of the Quaran

- tales of oppression

Nowadays, Abu Laban is pleased or displeased with the riots, depending on whether it is an European or Arabian Channel that asks.

A refugee clutching at his 15 minutes of fame at the expense of his host country that granted him asylum. A narcissist, me thinks.

 

iowa state daily

ASMUSSEN: When cartoons start riots
ARTICLE MEDIA
(Iowa State Daily)
(2.7.06)

I would like to start with an apology. Last week I ended my column in jest by saying that "Denmark has been pretty quiet lately." For misleading my readers, I apologize.

Denmark has been quite the opposite.

In the last week, the tiny peninsular kingdom has managed to provoke international protests on three continents - quite an accomplishment for a country the size of Iowa's Fourth Congressional District.

The cause of the commotion is 12 editorial cartoons first printed on Sept. 30, 2005, in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

After reporting that a local author could find no illustrator for his book about Mohammad, the paper published the caricatures to accompany its editorial decrying European "self-censorship." They depicted the Muslim prophet with varyingly levels of tastelessness: In one drawing, he wears a bomb-shaped turban with a lighted fuse; in another he tells a line of suicide bombers atop a pile of clouds that "we ran out of virgins."

There is a tendency in Western societies to write off religious beliefs, such as the Islamic prohibition on visual representations of their prophets, as ridiculous and backward. Though the editors of Jyllands-Posten may have anticipated that their controversial cartoons would cause an upsurge in the volume of fiery letters to the editor from pious religious rule-followers, they probably didn't expect to ignite any actual conflagrations.

I, too, was caught off guard when my favorite online magazine reported last week that Palestinians by the thousands took to the streets, burning Danish flags and chanting "War on Denmark, death to Denmark!" I wondered whether I had accidentally logged on to The Onion.

No, this wasn't satire. On Friday, Denmark's embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, was attacked. In the Syrian capital of Damascus, protesters set fires to the Norwegian embassy (since a newspaper in Norway recently reprinted the cartoons), as well as the building which houses the Danish embassy. The flames failed to reach Denmark's offices on the third floor, although the arsonists did scorch the first-floor Chilean embassy's furniture.

Chile had "no immediate reaction."

Iraqi insurgents and Chechen terrorists have promised to target Danes and Norwegians. I suppose that a strongly-worded letter to the editor is just not their style.

Europe, so far, is standing its ground. Newspapers in other European states have reprinted the cartoons, and the German newspaper Die Welt published this carefully nuanced response: "We have the right to blaspheme." That's sure to calm everyone down.

The sympathetic character in all this is Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen - and I'm not saying that just because our last names are similar. How can he prevent his country's embassies from being torched and make the Arab world safe for people whose surnames end in "-en" without undermining the freedom of speech and of the press?

How easy it is to point to the protesters and condemn their antipathy toward free speech? Their unwarranted behavior, of course, should not be condoned. But the actions of some European newspapers have proved to be lacking in nobility.

They've turned a minor "clash of the civilizations" into a clash of un-civilized nations.

Freedom of speech is a right worth protecting, but intentionally disrespecting a widely held religious belief for the purpose of creating controversy is no virtue. The right to draw unflattering caricatures of Mohammad is about as dubious in importance to a free society as the right to urinate on crosses, tell homophobic jokes and publish pornography.

I'm not calling for a new law, just self-censorship. In other words, discretion, sensitivity and good taste. After all, there is more at stake here than the right to draw tasteless cartoons.

There are a billion Muslims wondering if secular government, freedom of speech and democracy can coexist with their religion, and the message they are receiving from Europe is that it can't.

This fight just wasn't a good one to pick. Now it's time to apologize and move on.

- Nicole Asmussen is a senior in political science from Omaha, Neb.

 

Wow, what an insulting comment to make. Speaking of the Da Vinci Code

And this was from March 19, 2004 so who knows how many copies have been sold since then. Then again us poor ignorant Americans probably just buy books so we can burn them.

 

Mmm. In other words, actions some might find distasteful, but they're completely legal? And 2 out of 3 categories are widely accepted and encouraged or enjoyed by very large portions of our society? Yay for porn! I'm not a fan of the other two activities, but whatever floats your boat...or your cross...

 

One thing that truly has me worried is the complete surrender of the U.S. media to Islam. If it wasn't for bloggers most Americans would have never seen the cartoons as they aren't being shown on television, newspapers, or magazines. The rationale is that they are offensive. I see (in my opinion) far more offensive cartoons in the editorials then the ones in question. To me it is just an issue of cowardice and giving in to intimidation.

I normally am not a big fan of many things European, but in this case I congratulate your media for the "stones" to stand up to the intimidation and fear.

 

I completely agree with you, Mr. Snook. It is pretty sad that our government and media are basically kissing Arab-ass. So much for being champions of free speech, justice, and the American way. Europe's doing a better job of all three right now (the good American way, not the one we've seen recently). I guess politicians feel that if those people are angry enough at us to bomb, ram, and poison our citizens without any provocation, we shouldn't add more fuel to the fire (...sorry for that bad, unintended pun, Denmark).

 

Insulting people's faith with childish cartoons is standing up to "intimidation and fear"?

I don't see how you get that, but from your previous posts its not surprising that you would come out with such a post

 

Has anyone else noticed that the mullahs have responded to an offense given by Europe, by calling for insults against Jews? They never miss a trick, do they?

 

Seems Jyllands-posten is gonna post pictures of more religious figures (Jesus, for example) on sunday.


Now we can piss everyone off at once!

 

Without a doubt it is. What you call childish cartoons, I call editorial content. Here in the U.S. we actually have a supreme court decision upholding the right of media to mock public figures (See Jerry Falwell vs. Larry Flint). Recently the Washington Post has been under fire for printing a cartoon with a soldier that had all of his limbs blown off and I beleive Rumsfield saying "He was battle hardened". It caused such an uproar with the military that the Joint Chief's of staff wrote a letter to the editor. It became political fodder for a few days, but now it is over. Please note, that nobody from the Washington Post has been beaten or killed nor has the building been burned down.

As to standing up to intimidation and fear, what else could it be? If you think the U.S. media is being "sensitive" to Islam you are being foolish. The one thing the U.S. media isn't is sensitive to anybody.

Deleted- Because Hack was correct and it wasn't appropriate.

[ February 08, 2006, 20:21: Message edited by: The Great Snook ]

 

These look like pm material. Remember, we're debating an issue, not the quality of a member's posts.

It looks like the US has finally spoken.
And I don't know why, but this story seemed an interesting read in contrast.