02 Feb 2006
Muhammad cartoon row intensifies

Danish FlagThis has really highlighted the intolerance and bigotry in the Arab world. (Click the flag to get to the 'Support Denmark' website.) An Egyptian commenter on another BBC story said "Freedom of speech has its limits when it concerns others...How would it feel if Jesus Christ was the one insulted instead?". I got news for this guy: it's done every day over here - and while it offends and upsets some, I've never heard of armed thugs from the Southern Baptist Convention burning down a newspaper office. Imagine that! I sometimes worry about it coming to that, but my main fear is that the Islamic fundies will inspire and motivate their Christian counterparts - it certainly hasn't worked the other way around.

This comes from a fellow in a nation whose papers regularly insult and demean Jews - in most Muslim states it's practically illegal to be anything but Muslim, and it is illegal to be a heathen or a pagan (we're not "people of the book"). Holding an Imbolc ritual in Saudi Arabia will get you killed. And if you convert from the "true" faith to some heresy or another, that's a capital offense, too. I've never noticed any death penalty protesters outside of those executions in Iran or Saudi Arabia...

They just don't get it. Even Harmid Karazi, the President of Afghanistan, who owes his very existence and that of his nation as a nation to Western military power and the true freedom it represents, "deplored" the cartoons.

We're giving democracy and freedom, from the barrel of a gun and the blood of our soliders, to peoples and places who elect suicide bombers, theocrats and terrorists as governments - replacing the dictators and thugs they had in the first place. Compared to the mullahs, the Shah was practically a libertarian!

This whole incident may have awakened Europe to the impending danger: note that the idiotic Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, backed by none other than Tony Blair himself, went down to defeat. Even the "Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys" reprinted the offending cartoons, and their President was recently caught rattling his nuclear saber!

I just wish we'd wake up over here - and stop sending our sons and daughters to die for the freedom of these morons to threaten, burn and murder those with whom they disagree religiously. I for one am sick of the US playing the role of world policeman, especially when the police end up supporting and even installing criminals in positions of power.

Isolationist? You betcha! And this outrage goes a long way towards justifying it.

European papers reprint controversial caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, defying Muslim outrage.

(link) [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

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