The test for this is simple. Ask yourself would the drawer of this cartoon have Muslims for dinner and repeat in a verbal way the message of the cartoon?
I think not. The MSM and the Internet permit insults and egregious ad hominem arguments to be hidden by either anonymity or hiding behind a mass media banner. In both cases cowardice and bad manners are portrayed as "freedom of expression" issues.
Good manners are required in a workable, civil society.
Dinnertable conversation is not a free-for-all debate, or you wouldn't need FR.
Yep, and now we have people on this very website encouraging newspapers to print the cartoons. The only reason I can think of they'd want that is to egg Muslims on, hoping that they'll riot so the cowboys will have an excuse to bash some heads.
Rioting over cartoons is silly, but so is going out of one's way to piss someone else off!!
The cartoonist didn't do this out of a whim. He and others were tired of the muslim attempts in Denmark to stifle the press. Did he go overboard? Check out the palestinian papers and see what they do to Jews and Christians and then get back to me. Or go to Detroit and see how workable and civil you feel.
Understanding goes both ways and I don't see any coming from the muslims.
Why not? The cartoons basically ask why Muslims have tolerated terrorists. It is a serious question, and the right people could hold a serious discussion around the dinner table.
Good manners are required in a workable, civil society.
No, good manners are DESIRED - but not required, for a workable, civil society. It just requires the emotional maturity to save taking offense for matters that require it.
There was nothing wrong with the cartoon showing an arab face with a bomb in the turban. Anyone who considers that justification for killing is not stable enough to be allowed to roam free in a workable, civil society.
No, this is not a "manners" issue.
Denmark has a free press. It was not the Danish government that printed the cartoon. Nor did the Danish government have the authority to stop the cartoon from being printed.
Yet, the Muslims are torching Danish government property, NOT that of the offending newspapers.
This is an issue of Muslims seeking an opportunity to assert their authority. A weak and apathetic Europe is the perfect victim to bully around. The Danes are trying to show some backbone with this pathetic (and perhaps somewhat rude) demonstration, but the Muslims are slapping them back into submission.
A strong and enraged America is not the country to bully around. Which is precisely why there have not been similar demonstrations in this country.
Ask yourself would the drawer of this cartoon have Muslims for dinner and repeat in a verbal way the message of the cartoon?
Now *That would be bad manners. But the cartoonist didn't invite any Muslims to dinner, did he..
The Hamilton Spectator
Hamilton, Ontario
editorial cartoons
By Dianne Rinehart
The Hamilton Spectator
Feb 4, 2006
We are all Danes now, as Paul Belien, editor of the Brussels Journal
said in his editorial this week.
Or we should be.
Because today Denmark is taking a beating for us all, fighting for press
freedoms that can mean the difference between democracy and
totalitarianism, between free speech and terror, between sleeping at
night and being afraid of the knock on the door, between light and despair.
And that tiny democracy is doing so under threat of economic sanctions
-- and death for its citizens and those of other Western countries where
news media have rallied to the defence of free expression.
Think I'm overstating the danger of the outpourings of threats, violent
protests and intimidations from radical Muslims over the Danish
government's refusal to shut down Jyllands-Posten -- a newspaper in the
Free World, after all -- after it published 12 cartoons depicting
Mohammed, including some that appeared to be commenting on terrorism
carried out in the name of religion?
Consider this news sampling: Fatah gunmen took over the French cultural
centre headquarters in the Gaza strip to protest the refusal,
Jyllands-Posten received bomb threats, its cartoonists death threats,
Libya announced it would close its embassy in Denmark, and Pakistan's
ambassador -- eeek! --urged the Danish prime minister to "penalize the
cartoonists!"
Meanwhile one Muslim leader noted if Satanic Verses author Salmon
Rushdie had been killed for his writings about Islam -- "this rabble who
insult our Prophet Muhammad ... would not have dared to do so."
This is a powder keg of violence, we should note, created by Danish
Muslims who enjoy Danish freedoms -- including the rights to pen their
own opinions for publication and to hold protest rallies, if they'd
cared to -- who toured Arab countries in January denouncing Denmark and
demanding a boycott of Danish products.
(They got that. Arla Foods, Denmark's biggest exporter to Arab
countries, announced this week it would lay off 125 staff as a result of
lost sales.)
And what did some publishers of newspapers -- which are supposed to
defend free speech -- do in the face of terror?
Fold.
Ironically the first "beheading" occurred in the homeland of the great
French philosopher Voltaire whose views were once summed up as: "I do
not agree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to
say it."
Would that the publisher of France-Soir had remembered those words
before firing his editor after the paper republished the original
cartoons along with another depicting Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and
Muslim gods sitting on a cloud that said: "Yes, we have the right to
caricature God."
Meanwhile a Jordanian newspaper reprinted the cartoons to show readers
"the extent of the Danish offence" -- along with an editorial entitled
"Muslims of the world be reasonable."
"What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures
of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the
camera?" wrote editor Jihad Momani -- before he was fired.
Whether you find the drawings clumsy, offensive or dead on (they're on
the web) is not the issue.
The issue is that the paper had a right to print them. And a proper
response is to write back to express views -- not violence.
It's called democratic debate, and there's too precious little of it in
this so-called Free World anymore where governments and powerful
institutions, including religions, use politically correct blankets to
smother debate and criticism -- for their own purposes.
Ironically, the world's most beloved religious leaders -- who so often
fought despotic rulers for the right to freedom of religion, expression
and peace -- must be mourning this turn of events from the heavens.
And so in the spirit of the solidarity in which the Danes defended Jews
in the Second World War -- by suggesting if the Nazi's ordered Jews to
wear armbands in Denmark they would all be Jews.
And in the spirit of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy's "I am a
Berliner" speech -- defending democracy over Communist tyranny.
And in the spirit of the editorial in the French paper Le Monde after
9/11- "We are all Americans."
I agree with the Brussels Journal: We are all Danes.
And I for one am going out to buy some Danish cookies and jams today.
And if you care one fig for freedom, so should you.
Dianne Rinehart is a former magazine editor and news correspondent who
has worked in Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver and Moscow.
* Freedom of the press includes defending the right to criticize religion