Let's have that third World War, shall we?Follow

If I'm not mistaken, people actually got killed by Christians in theaters when the movie "Last Temptation of Christ" was released a while back.

So Christians have responded quite violently when faced with what they saw as extremely offensive.

But that was the past, nowadays people post comparisons between the leader of the biggest Church in the world and Darth Sidious without any kind of backlash, or cartoons of Jesus in drag or other funny stuff without anyone getting threatened with death.

Heck, people even put money on the correct year of the previous pope's death.

I've heard say that these cartoons aren't the main factor for the protest, but only the catalyst. That the Arab world and Muslim communities got sick of the last few year's constant humiliation and apparent anti-Islam behaviour in the West. Granted, invading two countries that are quite Islamic isn't going to help to solve that image problem.

But I feel that to be a cheap excuse.

The bottom line is simply freedom of speech, nothing more or less. Do we have the right in our countries to laugh, mock or even just depict a deity? That is why all over Europe, the newspapers supported the Danish one and reprinted the cartoons too. Ofcourse, the editor of Le Soir in France got fired for it, I must admit that I wasn't surprised to find out that the decision to do that came from the owner of the paper, a French-Egyptian businessman; good guess that he might just be Muslim.

This will not cause WW III, although it isn't completely unplausible. If the Middle East stops the oil supply, then we have WW III.

And a country like Saudi Arabia with a majority of the people following the harshest form and most likely the only dangerous one of Islam (Wahhabism, most Imam's in Europe connected with hatespeech, recruiting for Afghanistan or Iraq, ... are trained in Saudi Arabia for instance), might just do this. Not the current leaders, but they are on a thin line and we've seen in Iran what happens when the population decides to become very religious and gets rid of their current leader.

And depicting Mohammed is about the worst sin in Islam, but the Danish weren't Muslims.

How many americans bat an eye when a bomb drops and kills a **** load of civilian in an al-qaeda assassination attempt like the one in Pakistan a couple weeks ago that killed 18 civilians?

I am just saying that its f[/i]ucking wrong, stupid, infantile what is happening with this satiric comic however coming out and saying "f[b][/b]ucking extremists" is just as wrong. Take a moment, use some self reflection and approach the issue. Get off your high horse type style rhetoric cause you are riding a pony.

[i]Edited, Fri Feb 3 13:44:50 2006 by bodhisattva

roughly 48%. Fortunately, it takes more than that to win a 2 horse race.

There were five shooting cases in '94-'95 alone apparently, I'm too lazy to dig further.

Savi Case

The unbiased view point can usually be summed up by saying:

You are both wrong. Now shut up.


I am just looking at the situation from the anthropological view point that the basic "islamic extremist we would never do that cause we are better" style argument (not yours specifically but in general) is self defeating because it helps foster a sense of "us" and "them" which helps us to de-humanize them making any unjust action we might commit more easily acceptable all while protecting our own inate sense of righteousness. It builds resentment on both sides and only helps extend the gap and push people towards extremism.

Edited, Fri Feb 3 14:15:47 2006 by bodhisattva

They've done a way better job "dehumanizing" themselves than I ever could have.

What the hell are you talking about...obtuse

I post, my count goes up. Anyone can figure that out.

No....YOU'RE the poopy head.

No I didn't.

This is yet another example of the utter ridiculous nature of those savages many among you call Muslims. Moreover, it is a prime example of just how we have been mollycoddling these people-- despite protests to the contrary by all the anti-war and anti-Bush peaceniks --in an obvious double standard.

The State Dept. today has made all sorts of noise about how we need to respect Islam and its' beliefs, how offensive these cartoons are (by the way, those links to the cartoons failed to work), and that such egregious editorial behavior is deplorable. Many European countries have made similar hand wringing gestures and noises.

Oh bullshi[/i]t. Why is the West toadying to these savages?

I never heard any of this kind of moaning about offending the poor sensibilities of Christians when satirizing [i]any belief held by billions. No international protests when an artist depicts a cross in a jar of urine. No dour official State Dept. missives concerning the of lack of respect towards Christianity when popular culture lampoons anything and everything sanctified or considered holy.

Totem

Here's a little update in case you don't read the overseas news (front page story at CNN.com).

-link-

They set our house on fire. Those bastards!

Favorite part:



Does anyone remember the famous Einstein quote?



So they basically just skipped WW3 and went directly for the fourth.

Edited, Sun Feb 5 07:31:11 2006 by Mazra

I was, actually, jsut about to quote this. Though I couldn't remember who to attribute it to.