Danish Cartoons 1
"If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear," - George Orwell.
If there’s any good that came from this, it’s that I became significantly more religious as a result, upon discovering so much inspiring about Muhammad’s (S) example, and finding the beauty of what Muslims should have done in response.
But there's alot to be said.
First, I think it’s important that people know what they’re talking about if they’re going to say anything. So here’s a link a Wikipedia page showing the cartoons. And perhaps more important, here's a letter from the editor of Jyllands-Posten explaining why he published those cartoons.
I decided against simply posting the cartoons for one reason: if you’re serious about your faith, always struggling to improve it, then you have reason not to want to see the ads. Insults to the Prophet are nothing new, and you have better things to worry about. It’s an admirable attitude, in many ways... but it does mean that you're not in a place to comment on this issue.
If you want to say anything about them, if you’re getting whipped up into a frenzy over this, you better look at them first and get your facts straight.
I’ll leave it to you to decide about their offensiveness, but I post a link to make one essential point: The original cartoons were not deliberately provocative. They were published to protest the intimidation of European authors and thinkers by extremists. That’s an important point to make. The newspaper tried to publish a biography of Muhammad’s (S) life and every illustrator they contacted was scared out of his wits. If they declined to depict the Prophet (S) out of respect, I’d be happy. But illustrators felt this effective death threat against anyone who dared depict the Prophet (S). That’s not ok, and the Prophet (S) himself would never sanction that. A secular newspaper decided that death threats were more important than not drawing certain pictures. So they, at serious personal risk, devised a cartoon contest to highlight the problem of intimidation. There was no point publishing cartoons of Jesus a few months earlier: there’s no intimidation problem to protest.
In any case, the global “Muslim” response is a lot more interesting, not least because many of them are proving the cartoonist’s point.
If there’s any good that came from this, it’s that I became significantly more religious as a result, upon discovering so much inspiring about Muhammad’s (S) example, and finding the beauty of what Muslims should have done in response.
But there's alot to be said.
First, I think it’s important that people know what they’re talking about if they’re going to say anything. So here’s a link a Wikipedia page showing the cartoons. And perhaps more important, here's a letter from the editor of Jyllands-Posten explaining why he published those cartoons.
I decided against simply posting the cartoons for one reason: if you’re serious about your faith, always struggling to improve it, then you have reason not to want to see the ads. Insults to the Prophet are nothing new, and you have better things to worry about. It’s an admirable attitude, in many ways... but it does mean that you're not in a place to comment on this issue.
If you want to say anything about them, if you’re getting whipped up into a frenzy over this, you better look at them first and get your facts straight.
I’ll leave it to you to decide about their offensiveness, but I post a link to make one essential point: The original cartoons were not deliberately provocative. They were published to protest the intimidation of European authors and thinkers by extremists. That’s an important point to make. The newspaper tried to publish a biography of Muhammad’s (S) life and every illustrator they contacted was scared out of his wits. If they declined to depict the Prophet (S) out of respect, I’d be happy. But illustrators felt this effective death threat against anyone who dared depict the Prophet (S). That’s not ok, and the Prophet (S) himself would never sanction that. A secular newspaper decided that death threats were more important than not drawing certain pictures. So they, at serious personal risk, devised a cartoon contest to highlight the problem of intimidation. There was no point publishing cartoons of Jesus a few months earlier: there’s no intimidation problem to protest.
In any case, the global “Muslim” response is a lot more interesting, not least because many of them are proving the cartoonist’s point.
posted by Aatif at 11:52 PM
2 Comments:
so i looked at the cartoon and i read the article. there really is a lot i wanna say, but actually i was wondering, do you think its alright to leave a massive cultural gap between the mid east and the west. Cause it seems to me like most of the problems even today are more because of the inability to cross cultural boundries then actualy political bullshit. On the other hand, from an islamic point of view, are we to sumbit to such a modernized culture in an islamic community, i mean people like you and me have to since we are living in america and we have to make some compromises but in a place were it is no a necessity, should people transfer to a more westernized and modernized culture, i mean just understanding it and retaining the current way of life would be ideal but its gotten to a point where people don't even want to listen to it, i mean isn't that what you are tryin to do in your office, making things more organized and in a sense compatible to your american work ethic? do you think the only way for the middle east to compete againt american is to adopt most of its ideas because we certainly aren't doing it the islamic way. Well it was nice readin some of your thoughts, ammarah have me a link to this site, i haven't read it all althogh i intend to at some point so keep posting. Normally i woudn' put so much thought into even discussing the deeper matter, its just that living in the south and hearing all the different opinions really wants to make me so somethin about it, but for now all i can do is talk anyways this is gettin long as all hell. i found this last nite and ended up watching the whole thing, its got some good solid evidence on how the 9/11 was "controlled" i know you would think that this is bullshit but it makes sense so far
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8260059923762628848&q=loose+change
keep in touch , bye
hassaan
I guess the main problem is that since there is this big gap in understanding, it's easy for a few unscrupulous leaders to take advantage of people and turn them hating each other. So it's both cultural boundaries and political bullshit at fault.
Believe me, I'm trying to figure out what Muslim countries should do. Corruption, waste, bad management, military rule, fixing elections, none of these are Islamic! And most of the principles that I find missing are right there in Islam: shura, honesty, accountability, etc. But I guess you need more than principles, you need systems and ways to implement principles, and I don't know where those come from. There's a lot of potential here: Egyptian business culture could be SO awesome if they stopped being insecure about the good parts.
But too much of the time, people borrow the worst from both cultures and you get, well, evil dictators who manipulate religious rhetoric while sleeping around drunk.
For some reason Google Video doesn't work here. Is that the video about how implosions went off on the opposite side of the building, thereby ensuring that the building collapsed rather than toppling over? Toppling over would have been much worse, but I'm still clueless what to make of that whole thing.
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