Editor fired after publication of Islam cartoons

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Addendum to my last post:

The appropriation of the Holocaust as a justification for the slaughter of Palestinians by the state of Israel is in my view also a form of Holocaust denial. If you portray yourself as a victim of genocide and then engage in genocide, it shows that you have not learned from your own victimization. I have wondered for a long time why Palestinians have not politicized this hypocrisy in their favor and instead fall for the rhetoric of Holocaust deniers which in effect disbands the state of Israel from this ethical conundrum.

Palestinians slaughter Israelis and vice versa. Neither are innocent.

[Fischkoepfin 1]

Addendum to my last post:

The appropriation of the Holocaust as a justification for the slaughter of Palestinians by the state of Israel is in my view also a form of Holocaust denial. If you portray yourself as a victim of genocide and then engage in genocide, it shows that you have not learned from your own victimization. I have wondered for a long time why Palestinians have not politicized this hypocrisy in their favor and instead fall for the rhetoric of Holocaust deniers which in effect disbands the state of Israel from this ethical conundrum.

Palestinians slaughter Israelis and vice versa. Neither are innocent.

Never said either were innocent. But it is ridiculous for Israelis to claim their status as genocidal victims while perpetrating genocide.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Addendum to my last post:

The appropriation of the Holocaust as a justification for the slaughter of Palestinians by the state of Israel is in my view also a form of Holocaust denial. If you portray yourself as a victim of genocide and then engage in genocide, it shows that you have not learned from your own victimization. I have wondered for a long time why Palestinians have not politicized this hypocrisy in their favor and instead fall for the rhetoric of Holocaust deniers which in effect disbands the state of Israel from this ethical conundrum.

Palestinians slaughter Israelis and vice versa. Neither are innocent.

Never said either were innocent. But it is ridiculous for Israelis to claim their status as genocidal victims while perpetrating genocide.

Come on now. I wouldn't call what the Israelis are doing 'genocide'.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I am not defending anything. Just saying that the reaction proves the very point the cartoons were making.

Maybe, but it is also possible to say that the cartoons willingly provoked the reaction. If they had been published before the world according to GWB, there wouldn't have been this reaction. Two wrongs don't a a right.

The reaction has nothing to do with GWB. Rushdie and vanGogh were quite isolated from anything GWB and the reaction was all the same: death threats and actual murder.

[Fischkoepfin 1]

I am not defending anything. Just saying that the reaction proves the very point the cartoons were making.

Maybe, but it is also possible to say that the cartoons willingly provoked the reaction. If they had been published before the world according to GWB, there wouldn't have been this reaction. Two wrongs don't a a right.

The reaction has nothing to do with GWB. Rushdie and vanGogh were quite isolated from anything GWB and the reaction was all the same: death threats and actual murder.

I'd keep Rushdie out of the equation because it was the Ayatollah Khomeini who sentenced him to death in the 1980s and at that time most European Muslims were appalled.

As to the VanGogh-murder, I do see a connection to the hate-rhetoric of "you're either for us or against us" that has effectively demonized Muslims. Until quite recently, Muslims and non-Muslims lived peacefully side-by-side across Europe. Now, that is becoming more and more difficult because many Muslims feel ostracized by the overgeneralizations in reaction to Islamic fanatics. I'm not trying to defend this action, but there is a growing climate of hate from both sides that doesn't need to be fueled any further.

Edited February 3, 2006 by Fischkoepfin

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I am not defending anything. Just saying that the reaction proves the very point the cartoons were making.

Maybe, but it is also possible to say that the cartoons willingly provoked the reaction. If they had been published before the world according to GWB, there wouldn't have been this reaction. Two wrongs don't a a right.

The reaction has nothing to do with GWB. Rushdie and vanGogh were quite isolated from anything GWB and the reaction was all the same: death threats and actual murder.

I'd keep Rushdie out of the equation because it was the Ayatollah Khomeini who sentenced him to death in the 1980s and at that time most Muslims were appalled.

As to the VanGogh-murder, I do see a connection to the hate-rhetoric of "you're either for us or against us" that has effectively demonized Muslims. Until quite recently, Muslims and non-Muslims lived peacefully side-by-side across Europe. Now, that is becoming more and more difficult because many Muslims feel ostracized by the overgeneralizations in reaction to Islamic fanatics. I'm not trying to defend this action, but there is a growing climate of hate from both sides that doesn't need to be fueled any further.

So, civilized debate i/o death threats is an unreasonable expectation? I don't see masked German gunmen blockading offices and embassies of Muslim countries and calling in bomb threads to such places because Muslim fanatics have kidnapped and threaten to behead a number of German engineers.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I'd keep Rushdie out of the equation because it was the Ayatollah Khomeini who sentenced him to death in the 1980s and at that time most European Muslims were appalled.

I recall many British Muslim extremist groups (they have tons of them there) supporting Khomeini.

[Fischkoepfin 1]

I am not defending anything. Just saying that the reaction proves the very point the cartoons were making.

Maybe, but it is also possible to say that the cartoons willingly provoked the reaction. If they had been published before the world according to GWB, there wouldn't have been this reaction. Two wrongs don't a a right.

The reaction has nothing to do with GWB. Rushdie and vanGogh were quite isolated from anything GWB and the reaction was all the same: death threats and actual murder.

I'd keep Rushdie out of the equation because it was the Ayatollah Khomeini who sentenced him to death in the 1980s and at that time most Muslims were appalled.

As to the VanGogh-murder, I do see a connection to the hate-rhetoric of "you're either for us or against us" that has effectively demonized Muslims. Until quite recently, Muslims and non-Muslims lived peacefully side-by-side across Europe. Now, that is becoming more and more difficult because many Muslims feel ostracized by the overgeneralizations in reaction to Islamic fanatics. I'm not trying to defend this action, but there is a growing climate of hate from both sides that doesn't need to be fueled any further.

So, civilized debate i/o death threats is an unreasonable expectation? I don't see masked German gunmen blockading offices and embassies of Muslim countries and calling in bomb threads to such places because Muslim fanatics have kidnapped and threaten to behead a number of German engineers.

No, it is not an unreasonable expectation at all. But the cartoons weren't published to kick off a civilized debate, but to see what would happen; the debate preceded the publication.

There is in journalism, particularly in western journalism, such a thing called self-censure, meaning that there are certain limits to what a journalist can do while staying within certain moral parameters. Given that the controversy over Muslims in Europe had already reached the limits of a civilized debate with conservative and other politicians proclaiming the end of the western world (Abendland) and that Muslim life in Europe has become increasingly subjected to the intolerant gaze of the public eye (think of the citizenship test in Baden Wuertemberg, the prohibition on headscarves for German teachers and French students and teachers, etc), it was pretty obvious that the next drop would cause the barrel to overflow. There was no need for the Danish newspaper to commission the cartoons.

I'm appalled at the way in which the controversy is stoked by radicals from both camps. I think it is absolutely pointless. The people proclaiming the imminent clash of civilizations are the ones who are listened to the most, if their name is Osama Bin Laden or GWB doesn't really matter (this list can be expanded endlessly). I (like you) grew up when the Cold War was coming to an end, and I still remember the rhetoric of hate that proclaimed that Americans and Russians were incompatible and the only way to win was to eradicate the other side. We were living on a battlefield that had been staked out by our allies for nuclear and conventional war. There is no reason to repeat the showdown of hate.

[mawilson 2,133]

Muslims protest outside Regent's Park Mosque in London

Does anyone else find it ironic that these people are holding placards saying "freedom

of expression go to hell", yet exercise their right to freedom of expression in doing so?

[junglee069 0]

Muslims protest outside Regent's Park Mosque in London

Does anyone else find it ironic that these people are holding placards saying "freedom

of expression go to hell", yet exercise their right to freedom of expression in doing so?

hahahahha. that is a classic. i find it very ironic - extremely ironic that they are complaining the very freedom they are using to complain.

hahaha

.....i find that funny. i also find flag burning an excercise in futility - and extremely immature.

and i happen to be a muslim who too is offended by the caricture's - however, would like to ask any and all muslims, capitalizing on a phrase made popular by christians, but modified - 'what would mohammed (pbuh) do?'

[almaty 19]

Muslims protest outside Regent's Park Mosque in London

Does anyone else find it ironic that these people are holding placards saying "freedom

of expression go to hell", yet exercise their right to freedom of expression in doing so?

hahahahha. that is a classic. i find it very ironic - extremely ironic that they are complaining the very freedom they are using to complain.

hahaha

.....i find that funny. i also find flag burning an excercise in futility - and extremely immature.

and i happen to be a muslim who too is offended by the caricture's - however, would like to ask any and all muslims, capitalizing on a phrase made popular by christians, but modified - 'what would mohammed (pbuh) do?'

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

An interesting article by a prominent member of the conservative blogosphere--

The furor over the Danish cartoons is sparking an odd reaction among some commentators in the West who see no contradiction in dondemning the idiocy of Joel Stein or the repulsiveness of Tom Toles while urging solidarity with the idiot newspapermen in Denmark who thought it a good idea to not just illustrate Mohammed, but to include some illustrations designed to offend. Like Toles and Stein, they sought a cheap reaction, and getting it, are alarmed that anyone could be judgmental of their efforts.

[...]

The cartoons were in bad taste, an unnecessary affront to many of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, just as Joel Stein affronted the military, the families and friends of the military, and as Toles did the same to the wounded, and their families, friends and admirers. Of course each of them had the absolute right to publish their screed, and the Dutch (and now Norwegian) governments must reply to demands that these papers be punished with a steely refusal to be dictated to as to their culture of free expression and the protection of the vulgar and the stupid.

But don't cheer the vulgar and the stupid.

There are hundreds of thousands of American troops deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and across the globe among Muslim peoples who they are trying to befriend. The jihadists like nothing more than evidence that these troops represent a West intent on a new crusade and a new domination of Muslims. Idiot cartoonists make our troops' jobs more difficult, and the jihadists' mission easier.

http://hughhewitt.com/archives/2006/01/29-...dex.php#a001246

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

One can also look at it this way:

OPINION

Democracy in a Cartoon

By Ibn Warraq

Best-selling author and Muslim dissident Ibn Warraq argues that freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it against attacks from totalitarian societies. If the west does not stand in solidarity with the Danish, he argues, then the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest.

The great British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, "Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being 'pushed to an extreme'; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case."

The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten raise the most important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we in the west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom -- freedom of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives?

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before, the institution of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law? What of the British architecture of Bombay and Calcutta? The British even gave back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples.

On the world stage, should we really apologize for Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe? Mozart, Beethoven and Bach? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Breughel, Ter Borch? Galileo, Huygens, Copernicus, Newton and Darwin? Penicillin and computers? The Olympic Games and Football? Human rights and parliamentary democracy? The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes.

How can we expect immigrants to integrate into western society when they are at the same time being taught that the west is decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised? Why should they, in the words of the African-American writer James Baldwin, want to integrate into a sinking ship? Why do they all want to immigrate to the west and not Saudi Arabia? They should be taught about the centuries of struggle that resulted in the freedoms that they and everyone else for that matter, cherish, enjoy, and avail themselves of; of the individuals and groups who fought for these freedoms and who are despised and forgotten today; the freedoms that the much of the rest of world envies, admires and tries to emulate." When the Chinese students cried and died for democracy in Tiananmen Square (in 1989) , they brought with them not representations of Confucius or Buddha but a model of the Statue of Liberty."

Freedom of expression is our western heritage and we must defend it or it will die from totalitarian attacks. It is also much needed in the Islamic world. By defending our values, we are teaching the Islamic world a valuable lesson, we are helping them by submitting their cherished traditions to Enlightenment values.

Source

Edited February 3, 2006 by ET-US2004

[rclouse 0]

No, your inferred holocaust denial and anti-semitism are out of order. This is a dispute between the secular but mostly Christian nations of Europe and the Muslim world. To insert a jab at Israel and Jews deserves ridicule.

It's maddening to watch moderate Muslims become subject of such racism from the West, yet allow the extreme elements to do their best to validate these views. You will always make a more effective argument if you moderate your rhetoric, stay on topic, and ground your points in reality.

You have just made some very serious, specious and malicious allegations about me which are entirely baseless. You need to put yourself in check.

Where have I EVER made "anti-semitic" statements, OR "denied the Holocaust" (either in outright terms OR by insinuation) ????? My mention in this thread of the fact that free and uncensored study/discussion of the Holocaust is forbidden by law in some countries, or my questioning/criticism of the policies of the Israeli government in other unrelated threads, is an example of neither. And your pulling of the "anti-semite/Holocaust denier" cards shows how desperate you are to stifle such debates.

You have now sunk below the mere hurling of snide insults, and actually stooped to what are legally known as libel and defamation of character. And after all that, you actually have the chutzpah to say that I'm the one who needs to "moderate" my "rhetoric" and "ground" my "points in reality" Look in the mirror, bub.

You go girl!

[Carol&Marc 0]

Muslims protest outside Regent's Park Mosque in London

Does anyone else find it ironic that these people are holding placards saying "freedom

of expression go to hell", yet exercise their right to freedom of expression in doing so?

Pretty much says it all doesnt it?