embassies burned

[winterbadger]

The Danish embassies in Beirut and Damascus and the Norwegian embassy in Damascus have been burned down, in what is just the latest escalation of hysterical violence following publication of cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4682560.stm

For those who haven't seen them, the cartoons are online here:

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/698

My own feelings? Could the cartoonist have been more respecful of Mulsim feeling? Of course, but then they would not have been doing their job. Political cartoonists by their nature work to use satire to deflate the self-important amd the over-mighty, to attack injustice and hypocrisy, to shame, to ridicule, and to shout out a position. Is everyone always going to agree with every cartoonist? I think the whole point of cartooning is that they're not. People will alawys be made angry by such things, and thus made to discuss them and think about them and debate the underlying issues.

But there's a huge, massive bright line between debate and violence used to suppress the right of others to speak their mind. Free speech is a fundamental right in a free society. It must be allowed with as few constraints as possible. If people prefer not to live in such a society, that's their choice; they can go somewhere else (note that people who do NOT live in such societies often do NOT have such a choice!) But people in other countries do not have the right to decide what we will allow ourselves to do in ours, nor do they have the right to inflict their religious principles on us.

If anything, this seems to me to be yet another example of the harm that religion can do, and the hypocrisy that human beings can sink to. Supposedly Islam is a religion of peace, but I don't see anything peaceful about burning and destroying and threatenening people with murder, as Muslim protestors all over the world, including in Western countries, are doing. The last I find to be a supreme example of irony: to exercise the right of free speech by marching with placards calling for the murder of someone who exercised the same right.

I'm afraid that this is visible evidence, if anyone really needed it at this point, of the cultural divide between the umma and the modern, progressive world, and the danger to civil society posed by Islam in this case, but in my view any religion that seeks to set itself above the commonwealth.

Comments

[blueinva.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone is going to argue that Syria is a free country.

I was shocked to see the protestors placards in London, because I was under the belief that the government had made the kind of statements put on them illegal, and therefore there should have been a number of arrests. Perhaps they feel since Nick Griffin of the BNP got a mulligan the portestors can too.

[winterbadger]

I don't think anyone is going to argue that Syria is a free country.

?? Including me.

I was shocked to see the protestors placards in London, because I was under the belief that the government had made the kind of statements put on them illegal, and therefore there should have been a number of arrests. Perhaps they feel since Nick Griffin of the BNP got a mulligan the protestors can too.

When did this mulligan take place? I've seen a fair number of people posting that they feel there's a double standard, that if such sentiments were shouted and waved about by right-wing racists that they would be arrested, but that the Muslims get off because... ? I don't know anyone who thinks that the extent to which the Blair government have taken curbs on free speech is a good thing, but what's sauce for the goos e ought to be sauce for the gander.

[flyingwolf.livejournal.com]

If anything, this seems to me to be yet another example of the harm that religion can do, and the hypocrisy that human beings can sink to

yeah.

[blueinva.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone is going to argue that Syria is a free country.

>Including me.

Which is why actions like the burning on the embassies in Damascus is allowed to happen with no police interference.

>When did this mulligan take place? I've seen a fair number of people posting that they feel there's a double standard, that if such sentiments were shouted and waved about by right-wing racists that they would be arrested, but that the Muslims get off because... ? I don't know anyone who thinks that the extent to which the Blair government have taken curbs on free speech is a good thing, but what's sauce for the goos e ought to be sauce for the gander.

This week.

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=16649615&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=-griffin-has-right-to-tackle-sensitive-issues--jury-told-name_page.html

Griffin got what was the equivalent of a mistrial. The CPS to their credit are going to reapply the prosecution, and try him again.

[winterbadger]

Which is why actions like the burning of the embassies in Damascus is allowed to happen with no police interference.

Indeed. One can only take that as, at the least, a willingness of the government for it to happen and, at worst, that i may have been managed/arranged by the government.

Griffin got what was the equivalent of a mistrial. The CPS to their credit are going to reapply the prosecution, and try him again.

So, he's not getting a mulligan from the government.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1701246,00.html

I would call that a mistrial too, but on the grounds that the jury deadlocked, not from a legal technicality or the Crown deciding to withdraw.

Somehow I don't see any of the imams that have been calling for more bombings or for the deaths of journalists getting a call fromt he CPS. Maybe I'm wrong, whihc I would be glad of.

[blueinva.livejournal.com]

>So, he's not getting a mulligan from the government.
I would call that a mistrial too, but on the grounds that the jury deadlocked, not from a legal technicality or the Crown deciding to withdraw.

Nope, not from the government, but from a British jury...

>Somehow I don't see any of the imams that have been calling for more bombings or for the deaths of journalists getting a call fromt he CPS. Maybe I'm wrong, whihc I would be glad of.

That was what I said originally. I'm surprised there haven't been arrests, but then maybe the police are gathering enough evidence to do so. There have a been a few examples of this happening, and some don't think it's fair, poor dear(jk)...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=358382&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

[peaceful-fox.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not religion that's doing it, per se, but the people who are following and interpreting the particular religion that are doing it. There are, of course, bad elements in any society/religion that are going to be violent, mean, closed-minded, and fanatical. On the flip side, there are those that aren't.

[winterbadger]

Religion, to my mind, though, is an enabler. It provides another excuse, on top of all the basic human ones, for people to behave poorly (or well) and an additional raft of grievances for people to hold against each other, on top of nationalist, ethnic, and racial ones. And it provides a means of organizing and inciting people. Sometimes these tools are used for good but, at least in my opinion, that doesn't seem to happen in many ways these days for which there aren't a whole lot of secular mechanisms that will do just as well. Sometimes religions preach peace and tolerance, but I know of very few religions that claim to be about peace and tolerance that haven't been perverted into vehicles for intolerance and hatred. If Christianity and Buddhism, which have at the root of their philosophy a profound core on nonviolence, can be turned into edifices of oppression, war, and bloodshed, then I don't see how any other faith that has a substantial following will be able to resist. I just think (and it's just my opinion, which I expect and require no one else to subscribe to) that by and large most of the organized religions have caused more harm than good through the professed actions of those who claim to be devout followers, no matter what the philosophical underpinnings of the faith are.

[selki.livejournal.com]

Religion, to my mind, though, is an enabler. It provides another excuse, on top of all the basic human ones, for people to behave poorly (or well) and an additional raft of grievances for people to hold against each other, on top of nationalist, ethnic, and racial ones.

So do sports.

[winterbadger]

Yep, they often do, and they can have the same characteristic of irrationality in their followers. They don't generally get the same level of culture-wide respect and status, though, which IMO makes religion much more dangerous.

And let me be clear: I don't think all religion everywhere, or all religious people, are automatically bad or harmful. I'm just very, very disturbed at its potential for being a vehicle for division and strife and hatred that's (to me) totally without the bounds of rationality. Many people are willing to accept unquestioningly what their religious leaders tell them in a way that they would never, IMO, blindly follow a political leader, celebrity, etc. (Though there are those who would do that as well.)