Not-That-Bright said:
Um ok... Why?
When someone criticises a religion... they are usually criticising some sort of belief or practice which permeates through the religion. There are no permeating beliefs throughout a race, there are no practices which permeate throughout a race... If you criticise a race you are just being racist as there is no substance to your criticisms - practices/beliefs do not go along with race.
Also as MLS pointed out, you can't change your race - You can change your beliefs.
Here's what you don't understand. I don't think there's anything wrong with criticising a religion in an intelligent manner. However, there is a difference between criticising and downright insulting. You can criticise Islam without depicting our holiest figure in such an insulting way.
The reason I think it's worse to insult somebody's religion is because they themselves chose that religion and agreed to it's scriptures/teachings etc. Therefore, they have a much stronger bond with their religion than they do with their race because they had no choice in their race. That's not to say racism is ok, racism is just plain foolish. But when you insult somebody's religion, it's insulting something which they hold very close to their heart. I'm not saying you can't be critical of the religion, but care should be taken in not being rude and insulting their religion or their God or whatever.
Not-That-Bright said:
Well the prophet or someone from his family can then sue the newspaper. However even then I imagine it could be easily argued that muhammed in this sense is not a 'person' but a mythical figure and symbol of the religion of Islam - while there may have been a person, the person was not what was being portrayed in the cartoons.
It's just cowardly to mock someone who is no longer alive. They aren't here to defend themselves against any claims made by them, nor is his family.
Not-That-Bright said:
Well I don't support such laws, however your reference I believe points out the confusion...
This is not an example of those laws in practice... Universities can sack professors whom are doing poor quality research or even fabricating research. Another point to make is that there should be restrictions on freedom of speech when it comes to teachers due to their position.
I don't think the problem was with poor quality research, but simply the fact that he was questioning the holocaust. I think you're right about the rest though.
Not-That-Bright said:
ALL of the protests that I have seen are about violence and call for ends to freedom of speech. If the muslims were simply protesting because they didn't like it and were perhaps asking for an appology I imagine alot of people on this board would be on their side - but they're not. They're asking for the newspaper to be severely punished, they want to hurt the people of denmark (and now europe) and they're going on like a pack of babies that need a good spanking.
The reason why Islam is portrayed close to terrorism is because... well it is. There's no denying that Islam has been hijacked by alot of fundamentalist terrorists whom we all should hate... Does this mean all muslims are evil? No. Does this mean Islam is severely tainted by terrorism? Yes.
I think the reason why the protests turned violent wasn't simply over the cartoons but alot of these people have been under years of persecution, occupation etc so it all adds up. Also, I think it has alot to do with crowd mentality and behanviour. People tend to get more violent in a crowd or they try and impress their mates or whatever. I'm not in any way saying that that is a justification for their behaviour, but it is a reason. I think the best thing for Muslims to have done would have been to protest peacefully, request for an apology and boycott the newspaper until they got their apology.
Unfortunately, you're right in that alot of Muslims have the terrorist mentality. I was discussing this with a friend last night. It's like, they go from clubbing to abstaining from anything and everything - things which aren't even forbidden in Islam. These people are what you would call wahabbi's, and they need to go off to their own little island and they can all kill eachother there because civilised people want nothing to do with them (not all wahabbi's, some are not as bad as others, and others only identify themselves as wahabbi's but don't actually follow all wahabbi teachings). But wahabbiism is a small sect in Islam (maybe 2% of all Muslims?)and of those 2%, I'm guessing only about 30% are hardcore extremists and possibly about 10% would, in reality, have the potential to become terrorists or involved in terrorist activity.