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there are no justifiable limitations to freedom of speech
some people may lack the desire or ability to manage others' feelings or institutions' agendas due to whatever reason, but they need to have the right to express themselves as they see fit even if it hurts our feelings or it's classifiable as "immoral" or other such nonsense. we can shun them, ignore them, fire them even in some cases, but we should in no way restrict them by laws and regulations
otherwise, it becomes an uncontrollable avalanche of abuse and it only leads to ignorance, violence and so on and so forth, as seen everywhere around us today
"why upset people for no good reason"; well, besides the above, humor of all means of human expression needs to be uninhibited.
people need to learn that until we can take ourselves a little more lightly we can never establish clear lines of communication and interaction amongst extremely different cultures, and, indeed, amongst each other at home, wherever we live.
why should i ever get upset if someone is mocking the things that i am most passionate about in life ? a man's poison is another man's nourishment after all, i may have an argument with the person and either try to explain the respective passions/things w/e, or just ignore him. i'm not gonna make it my personal goal to convince him my pov is correct, or try to forcefully shut him up. that's fascism, aggressive communism, absolute monarchy, is that what we want for our world, seriously
today's world lacks the ability to clearly delimit areas of relevance or be able to function in a framework of proper , let's call it, since it isn;t necessarily constructive, functional criticism - that applying to humor as well, ofcourse, since humor serves a few important functions in society, and across societies it should alleviate some of the inter-cultural tensions by means of a very relatable human process, irony and laughter - if grossly outdated political and religious systems didn't get in the way that is
you can't get further as a species if the only way you can think of to protect the beliefs and customs of your people is to go like "fuck you you don't understand us, and you must make illegal whatever we find insulting to our people". see, this kind of argument gets old as early as the schoolyard years between children, and that's what's happening all over the world between states - or rather governments.
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Here is the thing. Islam is the religion whose believers reacted the harshest to so called funny drawings about the particular religion. In fact, islamic people are the ones that are told to grow up about the reactions, because we got the "freedom of speech". Until this point, everything seems right. Really.
But, after this point, nothing seems right. If yet another caricaturist shows up and makes drawings about Lars Vilks or pope or Jesus, he'll immediately find himself at ECHR* because the caricaturized person will think that he's insulted and ECHR will agree with him, which is the same thing that will happen to someone who talks about one of the people mentioned above in a TV channel. What about the freedom of speech? Where will it be?
Answer: It will hide in a safe house until another islamic person reacts to yet another so called funny drawing and that islamic person will strictly be told to grow up and learn about the freedom of speech.
*European Court of Human Rights
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if a kid in school draws your parents, or you girlfriend or someone you care about in a offensive way people will have different way of handling it, some will scream bloody murder and beat your face in, some will tell the teachers, some will just walk away in shame and hate him for it. but out of the billion of people living in this world there will always be a kid that pick up a gun and say Hell it's about time.
well i hope you guys get my point
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On December 13 2010 23:00 Sanjuro wrote:
well i hope you guys get my point
I understand that you seem content with the idea of the threat of violence dictating how you lead your life.
The rest of us try not to be pussies though.
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On December 13 2010 23:00 Sanjuro wrote:
if a kid in school draws your parents, or you girlfriend or someone you care about in a offensive way people will have different way of handling it, some will scream bloody murder and beat your face in, some will tell the teachers, some will just walk away in shame and hate him for it. but out of the billion of people living in this world there will always be a kid that pick up a gun and say Hell it's about time.
well i hope you guys get my point
Yes we should thread these people like children and teach them to ignore those things. They need to be taucht not to overreact and not to take everything as serious. If it doesn't work you gotta punish them.
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On December 13 2010 22:58 Metalwing wrote:
But, after this point, nothing seems right. If yet another caricaturist shows up and makes drawings about Lars Vilks or pope or Jesus, he'll immediately find himself at ECHR* because the caricaturized person will think that he's insulted and ECHR will agree with him, which is the same thing that will happen to someone who talks about one of the people mentioned above in a TV channel. What about the freedom of speech? Where will it be?
I have seen people making fun of the Pope and Jesus in so many ways and so many times that you have no idea, and I am Italian (you know Italy, where the pope is and has a huge political influence). Never even heard of that ECHR thing though.
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Out of all the misery that occurs in third-world countries, a muhammed cartoon is what really rally the people? People dying, people getting raped, oppressive governments and general misery, but an insult is way over the line. We can't accept that can we?
Rally and throw out your corrupt manipulative governments instead
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On December 13 2010 22:22 sekritzzz wrote:
The problem isn't even freedom of speech since most people are hypocrites when it comes to freedom of speech. When it was the Mosque close to 9/11 people called it insensitive, when its Muhammad pics its freedom of speech, when its the holocaust its insensitive, when its wikileaks its freedom of speech. All the same crap, different opinions. Whenever the opinion swings in your favour you pull the freedom of speech card. When its offensive to you or people you know its insensitive. Well one day it'll all be solved and I look forward to it.
I don't mean to offend you, but I strongly suspect that you only have this "feeling" because you don't really listen to the arguments. Sure, a lot of people play the "freedom of speech card" only when it serves their interest, and certainly one can often argue about whether a particular statement is/should be protected by freedom of speech. Nothing of this changes the fact that Muhammad is not only a religious figure, but also a political figure and his name and teachings are used to justify a vast amount of actions which have a strong social impact. He is therefore a "public" figure of authority - and, yes, he is also dead. But have you ever seen a caricature of Lenin, Stahlin, Marx, Engels, Roosevelt or any of the countless other political characters which are very often subject to parody even after their death? There is a reason why this is found acceptable under freedom of speech, while the liberty of showing pictures or drawings of random people who died in 9/11 might very well be considered inappropriate and not worth protecting. Can you guess why?
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Someone mentioned earlier about religious upset and death threats, I'm a christian (not a very good one i mite add) but christians in general do all sorts of horrible shit in the name of the religion. Someone already referenced buddy christ from the movie dogma. When that film was released, the weinsteins got sacks of hate mail, and Kevin smith (the director) got 2 and half death threats despite being catholic (one started as a death threat and softened it's stance as the letter went on) The religion is never the issue, there are extremists in every religion. They are the issue, you can't demonise all muslims for what the extremists do. Do you think i'd want to be lumped in with the Phelps family because I happen to be christian too? It's a difficult situation and no one has a solution or likely ever will for dealing with extremists in religion. As long as there is religion people will do dumb shit in it's name.
Saying that, if there wasn't religion people would still find dumb shit to fight about, just seems to be human nature. (see the Aethism episodes of south park for some good satire)
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I read in the Economist that Arab-bloc countries very often put forward resolutions at the UN to denounce "religious defamation". At least, that's what the English translation is in the UN documents; the arabic version of the same documents use the word "blasphemy".
Muslims aren't stupid, they know that their arguments won't get far if they use a religious basis (blasphemy against Allah or Muhammad doesn't mean much if you aren't Muslim yourself). So instead they use the international language of religious tolerance and human rights to suppress sin in parliament and in the courts.
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No doubt people would find excuses to kill each other, but religion is like giving an angry man a loaded gun. Too easly abused.
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On December 13 2010 18:58 PaPoolee wrote:
You guys are retarded
Great start
On December 13 2010 18:58 PaPoolee wrote:
I don't get it, you are refusing to do something about people who insult other peoples religions?
yes
On December 13 2010 18:58 PaPoolee wrote:
I mean would you be okay with it if you were a Christian and somebody made stupid drawings of Jesus or something and spread it around the world?
yes
On December 13 2010 18:58 PaPoolee wrote:
By saying "Many countries have a policy of not negotiating with terrorists" do you mean that all the Islam religion and Muslims are terrorists just because of the doing of some retarded suicide bomber who thought he is something but really he isn't and he deserved to die?
no
On December 13 2010 18:58 PaPoolee wrote:
if you are then you've got serious problems, every single country and religion has some fucked up people! you cant judge everyone by the doing of one person. I'm not going to argue about this here because I'm easily out numbered... but seriously! grow the fuck up!.]
Freedom of mockery is one of the cornerstones of free speech. Your religion violates basic civilised decency if it can't be mocked. Every edified establishment can and should be mocked. The only establishments which don't usually permit mockery are authoritarian- fascism and communism. Islam is in this group because of the large amount of undiplomatic, unsavoury, unworldly individuals that run the gamut of importance in this religion from lowest to highest postings who are extremely outspoken and refuse us the right to mock their completely unsubstantiated claims as to the true nature and origin of the universe and life.
Being respectful to religions in the political arena is one thing- diplomacy is king there. But in mockery the king is freedom.
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In response to this, Sweden should issue an award to people who have drawn Muhammed cartoons. A "Courage in Religious Freedom" or something like that.
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On December 13 2010 23:06 Hatsu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2010 22:58 Metalwing wrote:
But, after this point, nothing seems right. If yet another caricaturist shows up and makes drawings about Lars Vilks or pope or Jesus, he'll immediately find himself at ECHR* because the caricaturized person will think that he's insulted and ECHR will agree with him, which is the same thing that will happen to someone who talks about one of the people mentioned above in a TV channel. What about the freedom of speech? Where will it be? I have seen people making fun of the Pope and Jesus in so many ways and so many times that you have no idea, and I am Italian (you know Italy, where the pope is and has a huge political influence). Never even heard of that ECHR thing though.
Interesting. Really. But, in Turkey, when I hear a news about Turkish government and christians, that news always includes ECHR in some way. And it's mostly about freedom of belief or freedom of speech and generally christians in Turkey claim that their freedoms of speech and belief is somehow violated (believe me, they are just as free as muslims if not, and the government is so muslim).
But in a similar news, Greek government forbade a Turkish village to build a mosque. That case also ended up in ECHR and they didn't even give a shit and Greek government just walked over. Greek government doesn't give a fuck to muslim citizens' freedoms of belief and speech but nothing happens.
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On December 13 2010 23:37 Metalwing wrote:
Interesting. Really. But, in Turkey, when I hear a news about Turkish government and christians, that news always includes ECHR in some way. And it's mostly about freedom of belief or freedom of speech and generally christians in Turkey claim that their freedoms of speech and belief is somehow violated (believe me, they are just as free as muslims if not, and the government is so muslim).
But in a similar news, Greek government forbade a Turkish village to build a mosque. That case also ended up in ECHR and they didn't even give a shit and Greek government just walked over. Greek government doesn't give a fuck to muslim citizens' freedoms of belief and speech but nothing happens.
Aside from the Greece VS Turkey debate which I am not getting into since its completely off-topic, all I can do is reinforce the fact that I never even heard of the ECHR. Perhaps it's something fashionable in Turkey due to the internal political climate.
So you can hardly claim that "If yet another caricaturist shows up and makes drawings about Lars Vilks or pope or Jesus, he'll immediately find himself at ECHR".
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Seeing it from a slightly different view, I'm having a hard time seeing how such a law would be limited or phrased. Where would the line be drawn and what would be the reason for such a law? If you try to formulate it, you'll soon see where I'm going.
Would it be "It is illegal to draw things that pisses Muslims off, because then they'll bomb us".
You can't put that in the constitution, no one would stand for that kind of reasoning.
Would it be "It is illegal to draw Mohammed, the founder of Islam, because Muhammed said so 1400 years ago.
Addendum: It is illegal to draw Lars Vilks, because he also said so.
Addendum: It is illegal to draw anyone in Sverigedemokratarne because they said so.
Addendum: Except for Jimmie Åkeson. He can be drawn between 10 and 16 monday to thursday."
etc.
No, that won't work.
Would it be "It is illegal to draw Mohammed, in keeping with the Holy Book of Islam and showing respect to Muslims.
Addendum: It is illegal to draw Mohammed, in keeping with the Holy Book of Islam, because Muhammed said, outside of the Quran that he should not be drawn, and thus showing respect to Muslims.
Addendum: It is illegal to draw Mohammed, in keeping with the Holy Book of Islam, because Muhammed said, outside of the Quran that he pictures should not be drawn because it leads to idolatry, and thus showing respect to Muslims.
Addendum: It is illegal to draw Mohammed, in keeping with the Holy Book of Islam, because Muhammed said, outside of the Quran that he pictures should not be drawn because it leads to idolatry, and thus showing respect to Muslims in Sweden."
Would it be "It is illegal to draw religious figures". No, because Christians are quite fond of having Jesus' drawings everywhere.
Would it be "It is illegal to draw religious leaders that did not want to be drawn, like Muhammed.
Addendum: And his immediate family.
Addendum: And all the Caliphs
Addendum: And all Ayatollahs
Addendum: And bin Laden
Addendum: It is illegal to draw Mulsims, in general"
So, if you want to draw someone, you'd have to find out if they're Muslim first.
I think it should be a general law about not insulting people very badly. At least in Norway, it's prohobited to spread information that is way over the line and I'm guessing Sweden has a similar law. And drawing a historic figure is not over the line. Drawing him as a dog is just bad taste, not funny at all, and a pity that someone should do anything like that, but still hasn't crossed the line. Drawing him in a guillotine and encouraing the killing on every Muslim on Earth, spreading hate among the population is way over line and should be punished. I don't believe in an absolute law, but rather that one has to consider each and every instance of drawing to find out if it merits punishment or not.
In short: No, I do not believe a new law prohibiting Muhammed paintings should be implemented. I'd rather people used their noggins for a change.
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On December 13 2010 18:11 lOvOlUNiMEDiA wrote:
...
Can it be doubted that depicting Muhammad in a cartoon would be enough to justify other suicide bombers? And if so, should Sweden clamp down on any more depictions of Muhammad in the interest of public safety?
Well, I do not doubt that depicting Muhammad is enough of a reason for some extremists to order or perform a suicide bombing.
However, forbidding such depictions in the interest of public safety is an absolute no-go for me.
The right to criticize not only by word, but also by drawing a satiric cartoon picture serves a useful function in a secular society by showing that there is nothing so holy or sacrosanct that it cannot be discussed with a smile.
If someone dislikes this, or is offended by it, that would be his right, and I totally understand if the offended person never buys a paper again that he felt had offensive content or asks others who hold the same religious beliefs to boycott it as well.
Anything further than that, however is not religious, but criminal. The freedom of religion does not include being allowed to kill for your religion. So for me this is more about fanatics needing to understand they are not holy warriors, but criminals if they break the law and commit serious crimes than about a question of free speech.
Also, other elements of our society also draw criminals, for example a bank will have to deal with the potential risk of a bank robbery, and innocent bystanders could just as well be killed in such an incident. But we do not consider banning banks for reasons of public safety, do we ?
I think we should no more consider banning cartoons than we consider banning banks.
I am not a muslim, so why should I live by the rules of their religion ? I have never in my life drawn any picture of Mohammad, and I will not do so because it offends others in their religious beliefs. But that is my own decision and it does not mean I am willing to give up the right to do it.
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I try to look at it differently, for me religion is not a fail-safe agaisnt anything or an excuse agaisnt anything either.
It is not "should it be allowed to draw Muhammed?"
It is "why should it be allowed to draw everything exept Muhammed?"
Was all the comic drawings about Clinton that circulated around the Lewinsky-time offensive to him? Yeah probably, but it should still not be against the law to make them.
In my opinion Muslims need to get off thier high horse, it is a shit world and you live in it like the rest of us, dont expect to be the only one one walking around without stains on your clothes. I see no point in making an exeption for you because you are upset about it, i have seen things that upset me aswell but i dont martyr myself because of it. I swallow the nice stinking coctail and move on.
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On December 14 2010 00:48 DND_Enkil wrote:
I try to look at it differently, for me religion is not a fail-safe agaisnt anything or an excuse agaisnt anything either.
It is not "should it be allowed to draw Muhammed?"
It is "why should it be allowed to draw everything exept Muhammed?"
Was all the comic drawings about Clinton that circulated around the Lewinsky-time offensive to him? Yeah probably, but it should still not be against the law to make them.
In my opinion Muslims need to get off thier high horse, it is a shit world and you live in it like the rest of us, dont expect to be the only one one walking around without stains on your clothes. I see no point in making an exeption for you because you are upset about it, i have seen things that upset me aswell but i dont martyr myself because of it. I swallow the nice stinking coctail and move on.
Funny that you say the following: "why should it be allowed to draw everything exept Muhammed?"
You know...In Islam, it's generally not a good thing to draw any of the prophets (Jesus, Moses, Abraham). In fact, I don't EVER recall seeing a muslim representation of Jesus or a cartoon parody of the prophets drawn by a muslim in a newspaper or anything of the like. I might be wrong but those things are usually condemned. So it's not as though the Muslims are ASKING for it.
Also, I really like how everyone here is all for freedom of speech and how they love hiding behind its silky veil after insulting others for no valid reason. What are you saying? That it's fine to baselessly insult Jesus and other prophets like Muhammed for the sake of "humour" and then run back and hide behind the freedom of speech cloak? Please...I find it very unclassy for ANYONE to randomly insult someone else's religion or belief. This type of thing should NOT be supported. Of course, the retards at the other end (aka the terrorists) are looking for an excuse as well but I say, instead of pissing them off, we kill them off...But that's another topic that I don't want to get into right now.
With that being said, all you freedom of speech people need to get off that pony of yours and smell the roses. EVERYTHING has its limits...Including freedom of speech.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2010/04/23/alg_south_park_censor.jpg)
