So I made these cartoons about Mohammed and now I'm dead...

[TheBlueTree]

If you haven't been living under a rock you must know about the crazyness going on over east (speaking from Canada). I would like to know what everyones opinon is on the matter.

Personaly I think the Muslam people have taken this joke way to far in the matter. Killing and burning buildings over a joke is not THAT big a deal. And I have just learned today that the Muslam community has posted a contest to for the best cartoon making fun of the holocast. I don't really care if they posted a cartoon about it, it is just proving to the world that they are just stupping to their level and showing the world how childish the matter really is.

[drinian]

For anyone who hasn't seen the actual cartoons in question, they are viewable (in English) here:
[url]http://www.faithfreedom.org/Gallery/Mo_Cartoons.jpg[/url]
Really rather innocuous, by any standard. They originally accompanied an article about the "many faces of Mohammed."

No major paper or news outlet in the US, though, will publish them in the fear, I imagine, that by doing so they would either be seen as multiculturally insensitive or responsible for the death of people in the ensuing riots.

That being said, I doubt that 99% of those actually protesting in the Muslim states have actually seen the cartoons. This isn't about the cartoons any more than the Rodney King riots were about one person getting beaten by the LAPD. More than that, I think there's a few factors in play:

1) General Muslim anger about perceived imperialism by the West over Muslim countries, which bubbles up all the time into protests and riots -- we just don't hear about them all the time in the West

2) The true and sincere attitude of many Muslims, in Europe and elsewhere, that they are in those countries to re-establish the Islamic Caliphate. The BBC carried a story a few months ago about an Islamic group in Scotland who requested that alcohol no longer be served in open-air cafes so that their youth would not be tempted (can't find the link, sorry). Canada is allowing the formation of Sharia (Islamic law) courts. And, apparently, in Denmark where all these protests started months ago, free speech is subordinate to religion -- but especially Islam.

It's a world-view that hasn't been through the Reformation yet, unfortunately. Nations should be melting pots, not tossed salads -- and it is the obligation of immigrants to adapt, not the other way round, no matter what some people would think.

What's more shameful, though, is that the Vatican has come out against disrespecting religion with speech now as part of the backlash from this whole affair, and most Muslim governments seem to be condemning the move as well. As for me, I won't stand for it -- if we're going to have to respect (instead of tolerate) the beliefs of all religions, I'm founding my own. My fundamental tenet is that the government is obligated to give me one million dollars a year to spend as I please.

[SEELE 08]

All that fuss over those cartoons....they weren't THAT offensive...and people have died over this bullshit....

[Hexon.Arq]

I really like the third one.

[SEELE 08]

What I really love about this situation is how Muslims are protesting that their religion isn't violent yet they go out and torch embassies and people die over cartoons. Does this seem ironic to anyone but me?

[ThroneofDravaris]

I wish I was surprised by this. I really do.

[drinian]

What I really love about this situation is how Muslims are protesting that their religion isn't violent yet they go out and torch embassies and people die over cartoons. Does this seem ironic to anyone but me?

See my post above. I strongly suspect that this isn't about religion, in many ways, any more than the Iraq terrorism of the moment is.

[Titus]

They were bound to run outa virgins sooner or later, at the rate that 1 suicide bomber ges like 70 or so....

I like it.

[TheBlueTree]

A few bad apples spoil the bunch. one guy starts throwing rocks, and one by one the rest of them do. one guy starts throwing maltove cocktails and so does everyone else. Just a few extreamests get the whole group upset and go crazy.

Christianity has also gone berzerk on the subject of abortion. A guy walks into an abortion clinic and kills the doctor... im gana kill you because you kill babies! Im sure theres more instances then that, but this is the first to come to mind for me.

[drinian]

Christianity has also gone berzerk on the subject of abortion. A guy walks into an abortion clinic and kills the doctor... im gana kill you because you kill babies! Im sure theres more instances then that, but this is the first to come to mind for me.

Here's the difference: one person who thinks he's Christian bombs an abortion clinic, and is sentenced to Death Row. A mob of thousands of people who think they're Muslim attack an embassy, and are tacitly supported by their governments.

[Phaze]

Jylland-Posten's journalists are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs

Looks like someone just got SERVED.

[Eternal Yamcha]

All that fuss over those cartoons....they weren't THAT offensive...and people have died over this bullshit....

The western world... Isn't exactly liked over in the Middle-East... And this doesn't help. Imagine if someone you didn't like, nearly to the point you could say that you hated them, made cartoons about you that were far from flattering... How'd you feel and react?

[AchtungAffen]

Last year in my country there was an exposition by a plastic artist, an 80 year old guy, who made opuses like Jesus crucified on an American jet fighter. The following day, the moral christians started first peacefully demonstrating, then running wild and breaking havoc. Some months later there came that woman from holland with her abortion ship. On the oh so moral and christian demonstrations against her coming, they threw a guy through a flight of stairs breaking many bones on him, and also breaking up the place.

So, stupidity over religion is not exclusive to muslims.

[Hexon.Arq]

All that fuss over those cartoons....they weren't THAT offensive...and people have died over this bullshit....

The western world... Isn't exactly liked over in the Middle-East... And this doesn't help. Imagine if someone you didn't like, nearly to the point you could say that you hated them, made cartoons about you that were far from flattering... How'd you feel and react?

That exact thing actually happened to me a few years ago, and I still see this as stone-age ass-hatted idiocy. Dignity cannot be stolen; it can only be forfeited. To regard petty cartoons as an offense meriting death is an insult to the undentable Allah.

[drinian]

Last year in my country there was an exposition by a plastic artist, an 80 year old guy, who made opuses like Jesus crucified on an American jet fighter. The following day, the moral christians started first peacefully demonstrating, then running wild and breaking havoc. Some months later there came that woman from holland with her abortion ship. On the oh so moral and christian demonstrations against her coming, they threw a guy through a flight of stairs breaking many bones on him, and also breaking up the place.

So, stupidity over religion is not exclusive to muslims.

I do think that certain environments seem to foster it though. (No offense to your country, but...) Here in the US we had a very contentious debate over the future of the NEA (National Arts Endowment, government funding for art) a few years ago after someone noticed an NEA-funded work called "Piss Jesus" that involved a crucifix placed in a glass jar of urine. I'm not aware of anybody dying over that.

Actually, it annoys me more that many of the same editorialists here who supported the NEA back then are now refusing to reprint these Mohammed cartoons in the name of religio-cultural sensitivity.

[Defectron]

I heard that some cleric put a 1000000 bounty on the head of the cartoonist. This is just being taken to rediculous lengths.

[Eternal Yamcha]

That exact thing actually happened to me a few years ago, and I still see this as stone-age ass-hatted idiocy. Dignity cannot be stolen; it can only be forfeited. To regard petty cartoons as an offense meriting death is an insult to the undentable Allah.

I'm going to assume that you're not a radical and aren't willing to kill yourself for your "religion." Many of the radicals will take whatever they can and blow it out of proportion if it helps their cause... It's a VERY effective tactic... Apparently.

Edit: I in absolutely, positively no way am defending them and their actions... What I am doing is explaining, to the best of my abilities, how their minds might be working.