Muslims Overract: It's just a cartoon, grow a thicker skin!
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
--- THIS BLOG HAS BEEN ABANDONED. OUR NEW HOME IS: THE WEASEL SOAP BOX ---
In the US you have the Christian zealots who congregate to protest anything 'liberal' or that conflicts with their moral values. They gather to protest the rights of homosexuals and women's right to choose. They've been the lynch mobs that seek to detroy that which doesn't agree with ingrained and doctrined Christian values and morals.
They are merely a small breed of a greater movement that can only be best describe as Religious Extremism, a brand of fundamentalism that Americans have typically associated with the Mid Eastern Islamic countries, which embrace Islam as their (un)official state religion, whether through zealous enforcement (Saudi Arabia, Iran...) or through cultural pressures (Iraq, Syria, Jordan).
Freedom of the press is a foreign concept in some Middle Eastern and Far East countries. The media is just a mouth piece for the government to spout off propoganda in order to keep the masses blissfully ignorant.
Freedom of the press is normal in 'western' nations, where we haven't even the faintest notion why someone could not understand why we cherish this so.
Denmark, Sweden, France, Norway and Germany are just a few of the nations with such freedoms. They enjoy those freedoms. It is with those freedoms that the press can make a mockery of religion's fanatics and its fundamentalism. They stick it to the Jews and Christians on a regular basis with little or no back lash, while an innocent and yet stereotypical editorial cartoon sends some Muslims into a tirade of anger and indignation.
How the row unfolded...
2006
7 February: Several hundred Iranians attack the Danish embassy in Tehran as the country announces it is cutting all trade ties with Denmark.
6 February: Protests claim lives - at least five people are killed in Afghanistan, and a teenage boy dies after protesters attack police in Somalia.
5 February: Lebanese demonstrators set the Danish embassy in Beirut on fire. Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh resigns over the violent protests.
4 February: Syrians attack Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus, prompting UN chief Kofi Annan to call for calm.
2 February: The editor of the French newspaper France Soir is sacked for printing the cartoons.
1 February: Papers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain reprint the caricatures, defying Muslim outrage.
31 January: The Danish paper apologises. The Danish prime minister welcomes the apology but defends the freedom of the press.
30 January: Gunmen raid the EU's offices in Gaza, demanding an apology over the cartoons.
26 January: Saudi Arabia recalls its ambassador to Denmark, while Libya says it is closing its embassy in Copenhagen.
10 January: A Norwegian newspaper reprints the cartoons.
2005
20 October: Ambassadors from 10 Islamic countries complain to the Danish prime minister about the cartoons.
30 September: A series of cartoons, some depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist, are published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
But, who can blame the numerous free presses around the world for reprinting these editorial cartoons? After all, they are entitled to freedom of expression and they have frequently shown the same contempt for Christianity and other religions.
About 5,000 people take to the streets in Peshawar in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province
Several hundred Muslims protest in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir
Hundreds of Muslims gather in Cotabato, in the southern Philippines, demanding Denmark punish the newspaper that initially published the cartoons
Norway demands compensation from Syria after its embassy in Damascus is set on fire on Saturday
In Indonesia, protesters target the Danish and US consulates in Surabaya, the country's second-largest city. Protests are also held in the capital, Jakarta
Only they don't take to the streets in throes.
Sure, the government may have used propoganda and the clerics ignorance, but the people have to act on what they are given. They are told what to believe instead of educating themselves on worldly and cultural matters. These people are from parts of the world were education isn't as fundamental as family values and religious morality.
It is these people who have shown a lack of regard for property; they've taken out their anger against governments who have no control over the press because the laws of these countries permit freedom of the press.
A clash of rights and responsibilities
And yet it is the governments and not the press who is apologising? Why? No idea...
And of the protesters?
They have allowed religion to blind them; they have decided to let someone else think. The cycle continues because there is little education can do in the face of religious fanaticism.
All this over a series of editorial cartoon...
The cartoons offends the few who read the original paper.
The cartoon then offended an envoy of Danish Muslims who reproduced the images in the east and then the people react angrily.
And as a sign of maturity...
Iran paper seeks cartoon revenge
An Iranian paper is holding a contest for cartoons about the Holocaust, to retaliate against the publication of images of the Prophet Muhammad.
Now, normally I try and be unbias, but when it comes to religion, I can hold back...
GROW THE FUCK UP! It's just a bloody picture!
