New Prohibitions on Muhammad Cartoons? - Page 23

On January 12 2011 06:54 RiotSpectre wrote:
Governments should have no right to ban depictions of Muhammad, but anyone who draws him does so at their own risk. That's what happens when you intentionally bait the crazy wacko extremists of the world, of which Islam has no shortage of (nor any other religion for that matter).

On December 13 2010 18:35 smokeyhoodoo wrote:
You have three options against Radical Islam.
1. Kill them.
2. Get killed.
3. Convert to Islam.

Banning cartoons falls under option 2.

On January 12 2011 05:57 Roe wrote:

you can't stop them, but you can entice them and provoke them and eventually drive them to doing things.
Try living somewhere else...
To quote Hitchens, "Just to stay within the letter 'B', I have actually had that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem and Baghdad. In each case ... I would feel immediately threatened if I thought that the group of men approaching me in the dusk were coming from a religious observance"

On January 12 2011 07:06 tdt wrote:


Hitchens should know about the B word as in Bigot. I can't stand that guy he groups and generalizes and blames religion for everything. Particularly Muslims. He ignores other isms like communism and fascism which have little if any pretext of religion and leaders killed hundreds of millions. Look, sick people will always find some twisted interpretation to do harm to others and it basically revolves around the same thing - they are not like us let's go get them. Guys like Hitchens perpetuate this idea of seeing people as a group to be attacked and feared rather than individuals adding gas to the fire.

On January 12 2011 06:13 Krehlmar wrote:
Fun fact;

Muhammed is as popelour to depict in Iran as it is southern USA... it's everywere. It's a western/extremist myth that it never happens.
My uncle is an Imam, so I got a deeper insight in the whole story than most people. It's depressingly simple and redundant to ever talk about free speech in the context of idiots.

On January 12 2011 06:43 LittleAtari wrote:
Honestly, it goes to show you that these 'Muslims' that are making these threats no nothing about their own religion because if they did, they'd realize that there is a specific way to react to this type of a situation in their own history, but do they follow it? No. They just end up making the rest of Muslims look bad.

On January 12 2011 06:43 LittleAtari wrote:
I'm an animation major in college and in my history of animation classes, we learned about cartoons that were banned for portraying stereotypes of African Americans and Asians. IMO, I dont see banning cartoons that are offensive to a religious group as any different. Especially when a lot societies have measures that they take against hate crimes. I mean if you harass a Muslim on the street by calling them something deragatory, that is a hate crime. It would be contradictory to say that a newspaper could do so, but an individual on the street cannot. In addition, by allowing such cartoons, you would be encouraging something that you are against in other contexts.

On January 12 2011 08:28 hypercube wrote:
FWIW, many legitimate arguments against individual religions are just plain offensive. Even ridicule is almost unavoidable sometimes. The classic example of Xenu's story in Scientology. How do you react to a story of aliens bringing billions of people to Earth, in spacecrafts that looked like cargo planes, no less, dropping them into volcanos and then detonating hydrogen bombs on top of them?

Asking people not to offend religious or ethnic groups isn't a trivial request. The consequences are much broader than many believers care to admit.

On January 12 2011 08:40 Electric.Jesus wrote:


Your point holds true for alomst every religion. I mean, just read the bible, especially the apocalypse. Seriously, that stuff reads like a b-move sci-fi/fantasy crossover.

On January 12 2011 08:28 hypercube wrote:


You can't justify a rule on the basis that a similar rule already exists. For one thing the existing rule might be unjustified. Or it could already rely on a fine balance of arguments where changing circumstances just a tiny bit changes the conclusion.

FWIW, many legitimate arguments against individual religions are just plain offensive. Even ridicule is almost unavoidable sometimes. The classic example of Xenu's story in Scientology. How do you react to a story of aliens bringing billions of people to Earth, in spacecrafts that looked like cargo planes, no less, dropping them into volcanos and then detonating hydrogen bombs on top of them?

Asking people not to offend religious or ethnic groups isn't a trivial request. The consequences are much broader than many believers care to admit.

On January 12 2011 07:04 Aequos wrote:
The thing is that if the Muslim community had politely asked as a whole, instead of having even a small group send death threats, this wouldnt have been an issue. Unfortunately, as death threats were made, the issue became free speech versus blasphemy, as opposed to one fool trying to anger others.

If the issue wasnt so large, or was solely online, I'd say the artist was trying to troll an entire religion.

On January 12 2011 08:07 Electric.Jesus wrote:


This is quite interesting. I would encourage you to share his inside views. Truth be told, I know very few muslims personally and those I know are rather secular and pretty Europeanized. But what you say makes a lot of sense. I guess the average muslim is about as funny or fun-loving as any other person, so they will have their share of drawing stupid mohammed pictures.



This. Although one has to admit that the extremist Christians and Jews are in no ways better. I think one can generally agree that extremists (of any kind) make the moderate and decent people (who, ironically often outnumber the whackos) look bad.

On January 12 2011 09:53 Jswizzy wrote:


The problem is moderate Muslims are not the majority in allot of Muslim nations.



I would consider anyone who thinks apostates should be killed a fundamentalist and if they though of acting on it an extremist.

On January 12 2011 10:27 Electric.Jesus wrote:


Oops. Do you happen to know whether that is a representative query? If so, I may have to rethink my current opinion of the average muslim. Maybe I am too biased due to the fact that I mainly have contact with Euro-Islam which is, on average, pretty well adjusted towards a liberal society.

On January 12 2011 09:46 Housemd wrote:
As most people are saying, Muslims do not have to listen to these cartoons or pay any mind to them. If they were religious people, they would learn that the Quran exceptionally punishes any form of killing that is not justified and people who commit suicide and violent acts against others are sent straight to hell.

If Muslims actually believed in their religion, they would understand that anyone trying to depict Muhammad would be sent straight to hell. They would also know that blowing things up and trying to kill people will not solve anything and is totally contradicting their religion.