Choice: Freedom or Dhimmitude

[Annie]

I know my choice.

http://news.bostonherald.com/opinion/view.bg?articleid=127000&format=text

Tolerance must have limits
By Lorenzo Vidino
Monday, February 20, 2006

Violent protests continue to sweep the Muslim world over the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. While the furor will eventually fade away, it is important to ponder some larger issues raised by the controversy.
For now, two conclusions can be drawn. First, the most radical segments of the Muslim world have shown their power, bringing a Western nation virtually to its knees.
Secondly, the lack of support for the Danish newspaper by much of the Western media has shown we are willing to accept limits to free speech, if going beyond those limits provokes a clash with the most violent voices of the Muslim world.
The key question is: where do we place that limit? How far must we compromise to respect other peoples’ feelings? Last year, for example, two Scottish Muslim organizations tried to prevent a Glasgow restaurant from obtaining the authorization required to sell alcohol to patrons sitting outdoors, claiming it was offensive to Muslim passers-by.
Are we going to reach a point where no alcohol will be served in public places, as that could offend Muslims? By the same token, some Muslims are offended by mini-skirts and other revealing clothes. Are we going to implement a culturally-sensitive dress code for Western women on our own turf? The question is not so preposterous, given the acts of kowtowing that abound in the West.
Indeed, the Academy Award for self-imposed censorship goes to the city council in the town of Derby, England, which sent out a directive last year to all its employees informing them that, after complaints from Muslim workers, all pig-related items were to be removed from their desks, including stuffed animals and coffee mugs representing the impure animal.
Are Muslims living in the West that intolerant? Are we on a collision path with a monolithic bloc that violently opposes any criticism or perceived offense? The protests over the Danish cartoons provide us with a good perspective on these issues.
Many Muslims deeply resented the publication of the cartoons, most of which were unquestionably offensive. Yet they expressed their anger in a democratic way, through letters to newspapers, peaceful demonstrations, and even boycotts, methods that Christian and Jewish organizations have used in the past in similar circumstances.
Only a radical minority of Muslims issued death threats and became violent, most of them belonging to radical organizations with the stated goal of Islamizing Europe. A civilization that believes in itself and its values would have engaged the moderate voices in a healthy debate over free speech and tolerance, while standing strong against the radicals who attempted to exploit the controversy for their own political purposes.
Unfortunately, most of the Western media caved in and left Denmark to fend for itself. The reaction in the United States is also particularly distressing. The State Department has flip-flopped, timidly defending the right to free speech, but defining the publication of the cartoons unacceptable.
Great Britain provides an excellent example of this timidity. Two weeks ago 500 protesters marched through the streets of central London with placards saying such things as “Europe you will pay, your extermination is on its way” and praising the four terrorists responsible for last summer’s London bombings.
Scotland Yard did not arrest any of the protesters. But what kind of message does England send when a British retiree is charged with “racially aggravated criminal damage” for scrawling “free speech for England” on a wall, yet thugs dressed as suicide bombers are left free to incite the extermination of their host nation? Tolerance to the intolerants does not pay — it produces only more intolerance and creates the impression that we are unable to stand up for our values.

 

[Annie]

Seems to be a theme today:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/s_425027.html

The new 'final outcome'

By Ralph R. Reiland
Monday, February 20, 2006

Bill Clinton called them "totally outrageous" and an "appalling example" of stereotyping. He was talking about the Danish cartoons that sparked the rioting and killings throughout the Islamic world.

Similarly, Sen. John Kerry was appalled by the cartoon depictions of Mohammed -- one, for example, showing the prophet in a turban shaped as a bomb. "Inflammatory images deserve our scorn," he said.

French President Jacques Chirac, likewise, urged caution in regard to upsetting anyone's apple cart, especially if it's a faith-based cart: "Anything liable to rub the wrong way the beliefs of others, particularly the religious beliefs, must be avoided."

Fighting the same rub, the Vatican said that no one has "the right" to hurt anyone's feelings when it comes to religious commentary. We can think it, declared the Vatican, but we can't say it, write it or draw it, lest some overly delicate believer might take umbrage.


From the Vatican's statement on the Danish cartoon fallout: "The right to freedom of thought and expression cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."

Really? What if you're an agnostic Inca who thinks the tossing of virgins into the mouth of a volcano won't produce a better crop? You shouldn't say anything for fear of offending the true believers? Where's the morality in that, particularly from the virgin's point of view?

What about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and Lutheran pastor who became involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler? An avowed pacifist, Bonhoeffer nonetheless came to believe that killing Hitler was less evil than doing nothing and watching the trains go off to Dachau and Auschwitz.

Should Bonhoeffer have done nothing, said nothing, written nothing, so as not to ruffle the religious feathers of his neighbors in Nazi-occupied Europe who obediently and piously rounded up and loaded millions of Jews, "race-mixers," gays and other "undesirables" into the trains, seeing their task as particularly pleasing to God?

Should Bonhoeffer have said nothing when Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus called Hitler's rise to power "a gift and miracle from God"?

Should he have muzzled himself when swastika flags began to decorate the altars of German churches?

So as not to make his fellow churchmen uneasy, should he have kept quiet when they said nothing about the arrests of Jews and the trashing of their storefronts during Kristallnacht, the "Night of the Broken Glass"?

On April 9, 1945, Bonhoeffer, at age 39, was hanged at Flossenburg concentration camp by his Nazi captors, 11 days before Allied troops liberated the camp.

Today in Denmark, armed guards protect Carsten Juste, the editor of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that originally published the Mohammed caricatures. His wrap up of the entire episode: "My guess is that no one will draw the Prophet Mohammed in Denmark in the next generation -- and therefore I must say with deep shame that they have won."

In New York City, former Mayor Ed Koch echoes a similar concern, noting that only a handful of major newspapers in the United States have reprinted the Danish cartoons, even though the caricatures are a key part of their front-page stories.

Washington Post executive editor Len Downie says he won't publish the cartoons because of "general good taste." The New York Times, which daily trumpets "All the News That's Fit to Print" on its front page, finds the cartoons unfit to print because they're "so easy to describe in words."

Koch sees a replay of Neville Chamberlain: "When the greatest, most important institutions in the land -- the free press -- get frightened and surrender, as the German press did under similar assault in Hitler's Germany in the 1930s, I worry about the final outcome."

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has condemned the cartoons as "insensitive." Franco Frattini, the European Union's justice and security commissioner, says the EU is setting up a "media code" to encourage "sensitivity."

In France, from Chirac: "I condemn all obvious provocations which could dangerously fuel passions." And what if a woman's bare arms "fuel passions"? What if a man is viewed as offensive if he's flying a kite or humming a tune? Do we cover ourselves, muzzle ourselves, to avoid offending, to keep the peace?

At the Al-Omari mosque in Gaza, a cleric laid out the bottom line regarding the cartoons and retribution:

"We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible."

 

[dilloduck]

Seems to be a theme today:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/s_425027.html

Great message here----if something that someone prints or says is offensive to you, kill, burn and riot until they get the message and stop doing it. Christians should take rioting 101 or maybe find a group of folks who will kill, burn and riot for pay.

 

[Annie]

Great message here----if something that someone prints or says is offensive to you, kill, burn and riot until they get the message and stop doing it. Christians should take rioting 101 or maybe find a group of folks who will kill, burn and riot for pay.

Yup, do it well enough, the government will apologize to you, even though they had nothing to do with it.