Ah oh well, looks like they are a run of the mill hate group.
I wish there were more decent people showing fanatics you cannot stop people from drawing a historical figure. Every time an attack like this happens every single newspaper should include a non-offensive picture of a man with period clothing in the story identified as the prophet.
*That bus ad is kind of clever, it appeals to haters on both sides of the Israeli-Palestine conflict since it doesn’t say which is which.
Not nearly the equivalent of shooting up a bunch of people, of course, but still several violent responses to a work of art.
NM
No it isn’t. All it requires is the realization that your religion’s rules only apply to the adherents of your religion.
That isn’t just for Muslims. There are plenty of Christians who can stand a refresher in this concept.
Well, if you’re convinced that your religion is the One, True Religion, then it doesn’t matter what those heathen bastards think about the tenets of your religion, because they’re wrong by definition.
That’s the problem here to an extent; there’s either the concept that images of the Prophet are wrong and punishable by all, or that it’s acceptable for others to do so, which I imagine is considered even more unacceptable.
You’ll notice that the comments from Muslims tend toward the “Violence is bad”, not toward “Free speech is good”. I think this is telling personally; it’s the means that they’re decrying, not the actual concept.
Had say… the Garland PD arrested Wilders, Gellert and the rest for hate speech and jailed them, I think you wouldn’t likely get a peep out of the Muslim world about limiting their freedom of speech.
Huh? What government is trying to censor these cartoons?
Or do you just really not understand how the First Amendment works at all?
On the one hand you have Muslim extremists who apparently have no problem killing people over cartoons. On the other a bunch of gun nuts who were hoping for JUST such a reaction (well, minus the killing of the authority figure. Maybe). To me it’s a match made in Heaven. Ship 'em all off to Mars and let them have at. Extremists and gun nuts. To me there’s no better set of people to have in a “fight to the death” than those two.
This is a group (Christians) that does absolutely nothing correct with respect to the One True Religion, and you’re forced to decide that this one particular incorrect thing they do is punishable with violence?
This is not a difficult decision, they just need to place this particular incorrect act with the overflowing heap of other incorrect acts that Christians (and other non-Muslims) do with regularity, which do not trigger a violent response from Muslims.
I wasn’t specifically talking about terrorists, I was talking about the Muslim religious authorities in general- they’re stuck between free speech and religious teachings. They’ll say that the violence was bad, but if you’ll note, they won’t condemn the actual motivation.
If they said that the violence was wrong because it’s just a picture, then they’re hypocrites, and if they say that the violence is ok, then they’re assholes. So they pick the middle ground, which is to decry the violence, but imply that it’s still wrong in their view for anyone to depict Mohammed. That’s not exactly getting to the root of the issue and solving it, or very effective in preventing future situations like this.
Modern Islam and western concepts of freedom of expression are still largely incompatible.
Regards,
Bigot-Racist-Islamophobe
You say that like you’re proudly bucking American orthodox thinking, but most Americans probably agree with you. And you posture like some knowledgeable critic, proudly offering your views despite the backlash, but you’re just some guy who doesn’t know anything about “Modern Islam.”
There are indeed tensions between some aspects of common Islamic law doctrines, some Islam-influenced political ideologies, and western (and in particular, American) concepts of free speech. Describing that complexity the way you have is like saying that “Modern Christianity” and western concepts of equality in government treatment are still largely incompatible. True, in some ways, but wildly oversimplified.
I know how it works, but when a fringe group has intimidated all of society through threats of violence to the point 99.9% of media companies refuse to depict something you’re entering a grey area.
Also remember how Obama, the president, personally called the creators of the intentionally offensive film The Innocence Of Muslims and asked them not to release it because it had an actor playing the prophet?
Again big grey area for free speech.
And it turns out that one of these guys was already a known criminal who was on the authorities’ radar for terrorist connections.
It isn’t the case that 99.9% of media companies refuse to depict the Prophet Muhammad. A casual google search should disabuse you of that notion. And to the extent some media companies do decline to show such depictions, they generally do so out of a sense of decency, not threat of violence.
It is nonsense to declare that the existence of a private social taboo on something means it becomes a First Amendment issue. It is socially taboo to believe that Asians are inferior. Does that mean that when someone gets shunned by private actors for saying that, we must stand up for that person? Of course not.
The closest you come to making a sensible point is feeling cautious about Obama’s statement on The Innocence Of Muslims. You mischaracterize what happened, but Obama did ask YouTube whether it made sense to keep hosting the video. That you might reasonably label a First Amendment gray area, though it is not formally a First Amendment problem.
Was Mo allowed to due self portraits?
Though a minority, the sheer numbers can result in many millions of Muslims who see violence as a suitable reaction to depictions of Mohammed.
A BBC poll of Muslims in the UK taken shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks showed 68% say acts of violence against those who publish images of the Prophet can never be justified. And 24% disagreed. 8% did not know.
Per Wikipediathere are about 2,786,635 Muslims living in the UK according to census data.
A little math (2,786,635 * .24) shows 668,792 Muslims in the UK think that violence is, at least sometimes, an appropriate response to drawings of Mohammed.
Not sure if that 24% is high or low for a worldwide figure.
Wikipediashows about 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. If 24% think violence is a suitable response, at least some of the time, to drawings of Mohammed then that would make for 384 million such Muslims worldwide. That is greater than the entire population of the United States and the UK together.
Naw…its just a few rabble rousers…
PS. Thanks for the specific numbers.
Yeah, I mean there are some serious crazy-ass nutjobs calling themselves “Christians”, and some get into mild violence, but not Garland sort.
I hope that Garland cop gets a medal, a promotion, and somebody starts a fundraiser for that hero.
Yes, but it’s still unsure of what the other weapon was. And a Kel-Tec 2000 is 'an automatic".
Anyone who uses “LSM” in a post shouldn’t complain about other people being “too stupid.”