I don’t like to get too political on here because it always ends in tears, but I guess since I write this site from the whole journalism angle I should give my perspective on those cartoons that are driving the Muslim world apeshit at the moment (they’re here if you haven’t seen them).
I’m really in two minds about it – on one hand I absolutely believe in press freedom and that they should be allowed to print the cartoons without fear of prosecution under draconian “religious hatred” laws of whatever crap they’re pushing; on the other hand they know how volatile these groups are and had to know that printing them would stir things up.
What can’t be forgiven is the reaction of the Muslim groups around the world who call for murder, war, and terrorism over a stupid fucking joke. The irony seems to have escaped them that they’re protesting the association of their religion with terrorism by burning down buildings and calling for the murder of half of Europe, and why don’t we see the same indignation when some idiot blows himself up in the name of his religion? If we did maybe we wouldn’t have jokes to make about Islam.
While newspapers probably shouldn’t have reprinted what aren’t actually particularly funny cartoons to raise controversy, it’s no excuse for the violence over them that we’re now seeing. What, on the other hand, is a funny and insightful cartoon on the subject is this one. I wonder how much hate mail that’ll get me.
i agree with you about the irony of muslims protesting about being associated with terrorism by acting like terrorists! also, have you seen the signs they had on their protest marches, like the one that said “freedom go to hell”? it’s also ironic that they hate free speech, but at the same time they are using freedom of speech to express these things.
i love that last cartoon you linked to – it’s very true, as there’s muslim magazines printing caricatures of jews, which a lot of jews have found very offensive.
interestingly, the mohammed cartoons have been around for months, it’s strange that they’ve only caused riots recently. apparently they were distributed in the east by islamic preachers (imams i think?) who were trying to gain support by stirring up anti-west hatred, and apparently they added some other cartoons which were intended to cause offence (one shows mohammed as a pig, one shows him being bummed by a dog, and one says he’s a paedophile) and said they were also printed by that danish paper (they weren’t), to make sure they caused enough offence to cause anti-west hatred.
btw i found yiour blog from a link on the daily mail letters blog which im a fan of, youve got a good blog too. sorry if my typing isnt very good, it’s late and i’ve had some cider!