Posted on 04/12/2006 8:35:52 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
The USC Objectivist Club showed controversial cartoons of Muhammad
Leland Ornelaz
Posted: 4/12/06
The USC Objectivist Club revealed the Danish Caricatures of the prophet Muhammad Tuesday night at Davidson Conference Center - the images have rarely been seen in the West since inciting violent protests across the Muslim world in February.Jason Hoskins, president of the Objective Club, wrote in an e-mail the club revealed the cartoons because they point out that freedom of speech is absolute except when advocating violence.
"To say 'I stand up for free speech, except when it offends my group' is not to defend free speech," Hoskins wrote. "This would be a contradiction in terms. There is no right not to be offended."
Because of the controversy surrounding images of Muhammad, DPS, LAPD and security guards stood watch at the event, checking bags and inspecting visitors with a metal detector wand.
The club also held a panel and Q-and-A session to discuss the reaction to the cartoon by both the Eastern and Western worlds.
Panelists included Dr. Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute and Dr. Daniel Pipes, former Harvard professor and presidential appointee to the United States Institute of Peace. Both are staunch critics of Islamic fundamentalism who have written articles and lectured on what they view as a growing danger within Islam and the connection between Muslim fundamentalists and terrorists.
Pipes said the issue of the cartoons is not freedom of speech but rather if the United States will live under Sharia, or Quranic law.
"Are we going to give special privilege to Islam that it has in so many Muslim countries?" Pipes asked.
Pipes said the United States, especially those on the left, needed to condemn radical Muslims rioting against the Danish cartoon just as they condemned the order to execute a Christian covert from Islam in Afghanistan. But the response to the rioting and violence was partial and led to a weakening of freedom of speech in the United States.
"We need to demonstrate that we are free, and have no intention of living under Sharia law," Pipes said.
Brooks also said Americans need to stand up the to Islamic fundamentalists, and that every news outlet in the west should have supported the Danes and published all 12 of the Dutch cartoons.
Brooks said that Sharia law, like all religious law, abandons reason and demands total submission of people's minds.
The west folded to Islamic demands by not publishing the cartoons, Brooks said.
"Bush even said 'although we have right to free speech that we have to exercise it responsibly,'" said Brooks, who concluded that the president's statement sent a message of appeasement to the Muslims. Now when Muslims want something from the United States, they know that all they have to do is react violently and the West will fold, Brooks said.
Pipes said that radical Muslims are used to caricatures of Americans and Jews, but were completely horrified when there own culture was criticized. Islam is a culture that does not criticize its spiritual leaders and dealt with that shock with violence, he said.
He added that the reason for the violence is because Muslim regimes do not enjoy the same amount of free expression that Americans and Westerners.
As for the future of Islam and the west, Brooks said he predicts the United States will eventually lose its traditional Constitution and way of life unless American stand and reject Sharia law.
"The problem the west faces is the will," Brooks said.
The west lacks the will to use its military to fight Islamic fascism and reject its ideals Brooks said.
Pipes says he sees a trend of a mutual distancing between east and west.
"Twenty five billion in Saudi money came to the U.S. in 2000, now it's down to about two billion," Pipes said. " Tourist are traveling less to places like Tunisia and Egypt,"
The cartoons, which show an image of the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, were originally published on September 30, 2005 in a Danish magazine called Jyllands-Posten. The magazine published the caricatures because a demand by some Muslims for special consideration towards Islam has led to self-censorship, commented Flemming Rose, editor of Jylland-Posten, in a article accompanying the cartoons.
As newspapers in Europe and the Middle East began reprinting the cartoons between October 2005 and January 2006, protests flared up
Violent protests captured world wide attention, when rioters took to the streets of Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, and Nigeria.
News coverage was saturated with images of angry Muslims throwing Molotov cocktails at Danish embassies in Iran, Pakistan, and Syria.
Ultimately, the lesson Brooks said he wants students to take away form Danish cartoons that there is a real war going on and the riots are a part of it.
"We need to stand up for free speech and stand up for the right of America to defend itself, that we not change our lifestyle, that we not change our values to appease anybody," Brooks said. " Our freedom is not something we should negotiate out of fear."
During the lengthy Q & A period that followed the discussion, a number of students, some wearing head scarves, lined up to ask questions, almost all of which were hostile, but not one of them so much as laid a glove on either Pipes or Brooks.
Security for the event was heavy. There were three policemen in the auditorium, two guarding the door, and several outside.
I am not an objectivist--a follower of Ayn Rand's philosophy--but the USC Objectivist Club deserves kudos for having the courage to hold this panel discussion.
Very true, but tell it to the Whiners Club, starting with Cynthia McKinney, Je$$e Jack$on, and Al Sharpton, and include all those C.A.I.R. people. Some people are "offended" by the fact that other people exist.
go trojans! :)
I'm not QUITE an objectivist either; even though I read all of Ayn Rand's books at least once each every year, and LOVE Atlas Shrugged.
But as far as the cartoons: Big deal.
Who (of people who care about anything more than who wins American Idol) HASN'T seen them?
I would have liked to have been able to hear the speakers though.
>go trojans! :)
I'm sure you mean the team :)
Did they include the photo which (A) was not a cartoon, (B) was not a commentary on Islam, and (C) was an AP image of a man dressed as a pig at a hog calling contest?
The realitiy of the Dutch cartoons is not the only issue at hand. The images the riotous muslims were responding to were also at issue. They were manipulated into their rage by deceptive clerics. Expose the trick. For now the blame in the West is directed too often at the cartoonists. The other side fanned the flames. They prove the cartoonist who drew the turban with a fuse "correct".
A similar examination needs to be done whenever we consider the images from Abu Ghraib. Muslims were also responding to some deliberately hoaxed (by someone in the British military) images of a British soldier uringating on an "Iraqi prisoner" (as published in the Mirror) and some porn site sex photos that the muslim press (and Boston Globe) ran as "proof" of US soldiers "raping" "Iraiq women".
Even if you are not an Objectivist, their meetings are some of the most mentally challenging meetings on campus.
Daniel Pipes ping.
South Park tie-in!
The hard left Democrats and liberal Loons lack the will to use their US military to fight Islamic fascism and reject its ideals Brooks SHOULD have said.
I love that gif, it is almost perfect!! Your plane and explosion is really good too.
Gotta say, doing this at the University of Saudi California takes some brass ones.
(And I'm allowed to call it that-- I'm an alumnus.)
What is this South Park stuff about? I see it is a cartoon listing or something on satellite but it has as much a chance as Katie Couric does getting on my hugh projection home theater.
Go easy on me.
Another asked why the panelists used the term "anti-Semite" to describe Jew-hating Arabs, who are also Semitic. Pipes gave the questioner a brief history lesson--as to how the false notion of a "Semitic race" arose in the nineteenth century, how German Judeophobes began calling themselves anti-Semites in the decades preceding World War I, and how the term has become accepted as a description of Jew-haters.
I don't remember that one. The ones on display--blown up and placed on easels behind the panelists--were the cartoons published in the Danish daily. The one I remember best showed Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
Also on display was a Muslim protester holding a sign reading, "to hell with freedom."
And www.shopmetrospy.com don't sell them no more!
Waaaaahhhhh....
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