Iran sponsors Holocaust cartoon contest

This is just a quick reminder to keep things in perspective.

I’ve been reading several of the threads relating to these cartoons and I am dismayed to see the number of posters who keep talking about “those people” and who seem to unconsciously lump all muslims together in one fashion or another.

As I’m sure you’re aware, over 99% of muslims haven’t done anything at all regarding this. Oh, sure, the vast majority of them is not exactly happy that the cartoons were published. But i assure you they’re not beheading danes or setting anything on fire. For instance, my roommate is danish and he is 100% unbeheaded.

Make of this what you will.

Unless they have fully stated their editorial position. Then you can judge them. There may in fact be cases of newspapers being hypocritical. If they refused to print an offensive picture of Jesus, and their sole rationale was, “We will not print offensive caricatures of religious figures, period.”, then they’re hypocrites or at least liars if they go ahead and do so anyway.

If that’s the case, then let them make the argument. Seriously, I’ve pretty much lost the point you’re trying to argue here. They can say whatever they want. You are free to judge them hypocrites or not. If they can make an argument to convince you otherwise, great. If they can’t, then go ahead and continue calling them hypocrites.

No, I did not. My understanding is that Islam prohibits any depiction of the Prophet. If someone attacks you because you did depict the prophet, and the grounds of their attack is that this is verboten, period and full stop, then if they go ahead and do the same thing they are hypocrites. Why is this so difficult?

But you spoke of how to ‘enforce the standard’. What do you mean by that? Do you mean by exercising editorial judgement? If so, then we agree. If you mean something else, then tell me what it is.

This is, of course, spot on.

Arab media is already full of antisemitic bile. Hell, the Hamas charter references the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the President of Iran is on record denying the Holocaust already. In each case objections were raised against those who actually were responsible for the offensive expression, the offensive expression has been reproduced in the media, and no one was killed, and no buildings were burned.

No doubt the winnning cartoon would get wide play in the international news media, and Jewish organizations would express their offense that Iran promoted this hate speech as a matter of governmental policy (unlike the government of Denmark, which merely is giving an independent media a wide berth). Iran would further earn its cred as radical leaders and continue to create enemies for Arabs to rally together against … needed lest more moderate forces start gaining ground.

Sure, the “vast majority” of Muslims are not committing acts of violence over some cartoons.

As Isaid elsewhere recently in a different context, however, one can readily make excuses for bad acts within a group by arguing that most members of the group aren’t doing those acts. The key is how detrimental the acts are to society, and whether other members of the group are doing enough to control their bad apples.

A local Muslim pediatrician had an editorial piece published in our local paper yesterday, paying lip service to the concept of a free press, but emphasizing how terrible it was that people were offended by the exercise of that free press. Violence was noted to be incompatible with Islam. There was not a single acknowledgement of numerous highly offensive cartoons and portrayals of non-Muslims that have appeared in Muslim publications (not to mention Holocaust denials and threats of annihilation of Israel by Iran’s president), and which have garnered only peaceful protest in Western nations. A more responsible article would have mentioned the differences in response.

Aha…that’s an interesting reply. Just for fun, let’s replace muslims by blacks and see what we get:

Sure, the “vast majority” of Blacks are not drug dealers, rapists and murderers.

[…]However, one can readily make excuses for bad acts within a group by arguing that most members of the group aren’t doing those acts. The key is how detrimental the acts are to society, and whether other members of the group are doing enough to control their bad apples.

So, some dude somewhere wrote something saying that free press is good, condemning attacks on it and denouncing violence in the name of Islam? Sounds like a fairly nice guy to me. But I don’t know him so maybe he’s really not a nice guy.

Are you serious? You’re actually blaming some pediatrician (not even a real journalist!) writing some generic “freedom is good, tolerance is good, violence is bad” column for some local newspaper for not mentionning…argh! I can’t do this anymore. I’ll go ahead and assume you didn’t think this whole thing through.

Happens to all of us.