TAS
Member
But the foundation of the march was ridiculess, 800 people is alot of people to get offended by a cartoon.....A stupid cartoon does not warrant the spread of hate on the streets of the country that allows you to speak freely in the first place. Some might say, well the cartoon is free speach so we can yell whatever we want. Right, but the entire reason both of these country's are at war, is because of 9-11, something that these "peace marchers" are yelling out in favor of. It is there so called "religion" that started this war in the first place. Is osama bin laden not of the same religion as the Iraqi insurgents and of these Peace marchers? They have a biblical hatred for all things western and modern, yet they live by the same freedoms that allow them to speak of there hatred, of the rights that they themselves are practicing!
I am really glad that christian interpretation has not gone so far off the reservation. You would think that after 10,000 years of religious warfare, that muslims would start to realize that all of there pain and suffering is because of the interpretation of one single book written in a language with thousands of different meanings for the same words.
Vintij
800 people were not the only people who got offended by the cartoon. All of us, me and all the Muslims I know, got offended by the cartoon. It was an attack on someone we hold very dear to ourselves, a brother, a role model. It was an attack with no objective but to insult and offend Muslims, not to debate or discuss Islam. I don't think that any person with an ounce of dignity would tolerate or at least be neutral towards someone who insulted someone he loves, especially if it was a religious or spiritual figure. Would it be ok with you if Muslims mocked and ridiculed Jesus? If others mocked one of your loved ones?
Yes, some Muslims went overboard like those ones in the pics and the ones who burned embassies. And I don't agree with what they did (and Islam doesn't agree with what they did either). But even though, what is the % of those, let's say 8000 Muslims instead of 800, to the remaining 1.5 billion Muslims? Almost nothing.
The response of the majority of the Muslims was either to boycott Danish products (not all Western products), hold peaceful demonstrations (which the main media didn't report as extensively as the violent ones. I don't think that this would come to a surprise to anyone), or debate about the concept of freedom of speech (like, what about the Holocaust?).
Second, why associate Islam with the actions of Muslims? These are 2 separate things. Islam is a religion, a holy book, a document. Muslims are humans with emotions, desires, and aspirations. The document is something and the people are something else. Islam is not what a minority, or even a majority, of Muslims do. There could be so many contradictions between what the text of a religion says and what the followers of that religion do.
For example, do you link Christianity with negative and bad things that some Christians do even if they were priests? I don't and I won't. If what they did was sanctioned in the Bible, then yes, I should blame Christianity for it. If not, then not.
We here in the Middle East never blamed the religion of Christianity to the negative actions of Christians not during the times of the crusades nor during the colonization period nor during the current wars. We knew and know that their actions had nothing to do with Christianity and never associated Christianity with them.
Until then, write this in the quran, "thou shalt NOT force islam on anyone, thou shalt not pray for Beheadings"
Then maybe someone will start taking you seriously.
Regarding the verses in the Quran, there are quite a few like:
2:256 There is no compulsion in religion, for the right way is clearly from the wrong way. Whoever therefore rejects the forces of evil and believes in God, he has taken hold of a support most unfailing, which shall never give way, for God is All Hearing and Knowing.
16:82 But if they turn away from you, (O Prophet remember that) your only duty is a clear delivery of the Message (entrusted to you).
6:107 Yet if God had so willed, they would not have ascribed Divinity to aught besides him; hence, We have not made you their keeper, nor are you (of your own choice) a guardian over them.