I just can't agree. It is my understanding that what sparked all this was a cartoon depicting the Gods of several faiths, including Islam. When Islamic readers had a fit, saying that you aren't allowed to depict Allah, and becoming obtuse and threatening, the editor stated that in a free society you have the right to lampoon God or anyone else. He then solicited readers for caracatures of Mohammed.

When you are dealing with freedom, you can't pick and choose. "Hate speech" labels are just a sanitary way to decide what ideas can be expressed, and that is wrong. In the end this is a cartoon, in a newspaper, with a lot of people saying the paper isn't allowed to run it because it offends people. The fault isn't the paper, it is the people who believe they have the right to impose their values on their fellow Europeans.

Islam should not be coddled. What next? Depictions of Mohammed are blaspheme, so should all the books with artists depictions of him be taken from the library for fear of insulting Muslims? We all believe in the same God, so our depictions of God should be insulting and blasphemous. Should we tear down the Sistene Chapel?

Who decides what is demeaning and respectful? Should we deem "Life of Brian" or "History of the World Part 1" hateful because they depict CHristian figures from the Bible in a funny way?

What if Christians decided that the Jesus character on South Park was disrespectful and hateful and they should be forced to remove it? What if next week they do Mohammed? Should the government bar the creators of South Park from creating a Mohammed character?

It's easy to place blame, but it should be really, really hard to be the guy to call the paper and tell them they can't run a cartoon because the Muslims might pitch a fit. That's living with a gun to your head,and frankly that isn't freedom. We have the right in a free society to hate, and to express that hate. I don't even believe this is hate.

That was long, and I know it might have seemed a little obtuse with all the Christian parallels, but think about it. We can parody the Jewish G-d. We can parody Jesus and the Christian God. What kind of society would this be if we said no, we aren't allowed to laugh at them, though, they might blow something up.

That will be the reason, after all. We don't care about hurting people's feelings. South Park did the "Dum dum" Mormon episode. Do you really want to live in a society where you can do that, but you'd better not mess with Allah? It won't be because we are sensitive. We aren't. It will be because we are afraid of them.

If this is hate then I guess the guys in Monty Python, Douglas Adams, the writers for Saturday Night Live, George Burns, Jim Carey, Gary Larson and Disney are the biggest hatemongers out there.

There are hateful cartoons, but simply parodying something (including someone's god) doesn't automatically mean hate.

Insensitive? sure. Un PC? Definitely. Maybe even in bad taste... but to jump straight to the hate card is small minded.

I don't think Kupe means that the caracatures are necessarily hateful, Ted, but rather the reason they are being posted when the newspaper knows how they will be taken. I think Kupe is saying that the newspaper posted them basically for race or religious baiting purposes because there is an undercurrent of hate toward Muslims in Europe now.

Frankly, I don't think so. Even if they did respond spitefully to pressure to be "respectful" by being even less respectful, does that mean they hate Muslims, or that they just resent being told what to print? Won't an environment where you have to walk on eggshells promote MORE spite and resentment?

Hi, guys. I included the link for the cartoons (http://www.di2.nu/files/Muhammed_Cartoons_Jyllands_Posten.html) they are NOT funny and are pretty ugly. But, I further referenced from an excellent articel by Rachard Itani. Let me quote the salient passages:

"In many European countries, there are laws that will land in jail any person who has the chutzpah to deny not only the historicity of the Jewish holocaust, but also the method by which Jews were put to death by the Nazis. In some of these countries, this prohibition goes as far as prosecuting those who would claim or attempt to prove that less than 6 million jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. In none of these countries are there similar laws that threaten people with loss of freedom and wealth for denying that large percentages of gypsies, gays, mentally retarded, and other miscellaneous "debris of humanity" were also eliminated by the Jew-slaughtering Nazis."

"The spirit of the law, which would extend this protection to Muslims as well, if not indeed other religious groups, is nowhere to be found in the Western legal code. You can curse the Prophet of the Muslims at will and with total impunity."

Jews are often accused of being one dimensional in their analysis of the Holocaust. I don't think that is accurate, if anything it has left us empathetic to the suffering of others. They COULDN'T do similiar cartoons of Jews, it would be illegal in those countries. These cartoons are evocative of the days before the darkness in Germany. They are intended to incite anti-Arab feeling.

I have said this before. Europe's stance on the Arab world is schizophrenic. They will oppose the US actions in the Middle East, provide shelter to radical Muslims preaching Jihad against the US, but treat their own Arab populations like sub-humans.

Ted, last point. It is context. These are countries where real crimes take place, where there are real threats against the Arab populations.

Sorry, I dont agree.  It may be hate speech, but then that is still protected here.  Have you seen the cartoons by Ted Rall?  How can anyone not seen them as hate speech (and he is a flaming liberal).  Piss Christ?  Is that not hate speech?

Once you start banning hate speech, then you have to set up a group to decide what is hate speech, and then you get 1984, just a few years late.  We are getting close to that with Political correctness, but thankfully the only power they have is one of scorn.

I understand where the ban on Nazi stuff came from in France and Germany.  Still, they have started on a slippery slope.  Today Nazi, tomorrow American?  Who knows.

No, we abide a lot of objectionable material.  In my Religion, it is a mortal sin to eat mean on Friday's in Lent.  Should I then ban meat for you as well since that is sacrilidge to me?  Where does it stop? 

To knuckle under to the Muslims, regardless of the intent of the cartoons, denies us our freedom and makes us subservient to them.

Kupe, I adamantly have to disagree. There were cartoons there that made statements about terrorism, about Islamic treatment of women, and about the threat to free speech that Islamic threats of retribution creates. If anything I am more convinced you are wrong after taking some extra time and looking at them again. The harshest caracatures were of the white newspaper editor, weren't they?

I really think you underestimate the spirit, the Islamic spirit, that provoked this in the first place. The people who were originally outraged weren't interested in "hate speech" because they utter it constantly. Go read the Syrian governments statements and tell me they aren't hateful. Go see how the Saudis run their nation and tell me it isn't hateful.

On the contrary, the issue here is they say that NO ONE is allowed to portray Allah or Mohammed in ANY light. You have to see this as one party putting the world on notice, and holding them at gunpoint to get their way. Even if it were hate speech, they have no right to silence anyone, especially when so much hate comes out of Islam. More often it would be Islamic diatribes that would be silenced.

If what you say is true, then many mosques that preach sermons in Britain and elsewhere in Europe need to be closed, because they offer far, far more hateful and violent sentiments toward people of other faiths. If you want to make a state wherein you can't be hateful, the Press is no less a sanctuary than the Church. How will you feel when you see Mosques with their doors barred with police tape because they offended someone during their worship?

Let me offer some references and show you why I hold to my opinion. Hate speech on Wikipedia: Link

Definition: "Hate speech is a controversial term for speech intended to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence or prejudicial action against someone based on his/her race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. The term covers written as well as oral communication."

Further "In many countries, deliberate use of hate speech is a criminal offence prohibited under incitement to hatred legislation. Such prohibitions have parallels with earlier prohibitions on such issues as obscenity and blasphemy, which are or were also prosecutable offences."

Dr. Guy, you said "It may be hate speech, but then that is still protected HERE." (My caps.) But they weren't published HERE. They were published in countries that have laws against this TYPE of speech, but that do not protect this particular minority. That seems unjust.

BakerStreet, again the issue is not what would happen in the US, but what has already happened in Europe. "French authorities have expelled a dozen Islamic clerics for allegedly promoting hatred or religious extremism." Source Washingon Post, November 2nd, 2004. Same thing in other countries.

Don't apply standards of Americn law to this.

I just can't seem to say it enough "It is context. These are countries where real crimes take place, where there are real threats against the Arab populations."

Dr. Guy, you said "It may be hate speech, but then that is still protected HERE." (My caps.) But they weren't published HERE. They were published in countries that have laws against this TYPE of speech, but that do not protect this particular minority. That seems unjust.

Granted I am applying American standards to foreign nations, but then I still maintain that any laws against hate speech are wrong for 2 reasons.  One is that it pretends to read the mind of the accused.  Something no one has been able to do reliably yet.  Two is it is rife for discrimination.  Calling a white man a "cracker" is just joshing.  Calling a black man a "nigger" is hate speech.  Without being able to read the minds of the 2 individuals, you cannot say which is hate and which is not, yet one is prosecuted as such, and the other is not.

Irregardless of whether it is hate speech or not, I think the Danish government said it best.  They refuse to appologize for something a private enterprise did, nor do I think they should.  Should Bush appologize for the rantings of Pat Robertson?

Kupe, freedom of speech is just that, the freedom to act like an ass if you choose. Once we start putting strictures on what we print or say we are in trouble. Censorship starts small, winds up big.

I see this caricature no more inflammatory than the one with a U.S. soldier with no limbs being used to make a point.

Kupe: The only reason I apply American law to it is because I see the European laws in question as unjust. Canada, if I am not mistaken has laws like the ones you speak of, which have been applied to ministers speaking on homosexuality.

In the US we have "racial intimidation" laws in some states. It has even been applied to protestors at gay pride parades, believe it or not. You are a very optimistic person, and if you were our Emperor, I wouldn't be worried about such laws.

In reality, though, we have a system of government that is constantly in flux. What you may define as "hateful" today, might be totally re-interpreted by someone else in a few years. Eventually someone would realize that you could simply use "hate speech" to squelch protest or political activism.

In Venezuala, it is illegal now to "disrespect" the President or his cronies. How that is applied is up to them. You may not be able to imagine people yanking books like Huckleberry Finn off the shelves, but if you recall we were very clost to that on many campuses back in the 90's.

So, as it always has been in America, we tolerate hurt feelings in the name of freedom. What you are doing is shifting the blame for a violent response from the violent to the people who are just speaking their mind. It isn't their fault they rioted, it is the fault of the person that "provoked" them.

Not in my lifetime, I hope. When we start saying that it is understandable for people to get violent in response to another person's expression, we are damning expression and excusing violence.

Kupe,

Did you consider "Piss Christ" hate speech also? Just wondering.

This was not "hate speech" (even if there WAS such a thing). This was a political OPINION.

I'd go further and say that this was a reaction to a population living with a gun to its head. "You can offend anyone else, but if you offend Muslims it will be YOUR fault if they kill people or riot."

Just ponder those words. They sound suspiciously like telling a woman that she provoked a rape with a short skirt, or a child that they should have known since their parent was abusive that they shouldn't have broken that vase. We can't create an environment where the blame for violence falls on anyone but the violent.

Otherwise, would we be blogging about this? If people hadn't started waving guns in the air, and a few sedate muslim clerics had just lodged protests, would we have bothered? No, we knew people would be violent. That's why these cartoons were printed, because after a while people recognize that these 'peace loving' Muslims sit idly while people are beheaded and then riot when they are offended.

Expect more, not less, unless more laws are passed to crush freedom and prolong our life at gunpoint.

I'm manhandling the converstaion, and I apologize. I feel strongly about this.

" I'm manhandling the converstaion, and I apologize. I feel strongly about this." No you're not and never have. You are always welcome to comment.

Hey, Gideon! Piss Christ, by "artist" Andres Serrano, is tasteless (don't you dare comment!) pseudo-crap art. (Puns intended.) I consider it distasteful in the extreme. But not hate speech.

But let me play turnabout. Here's a link to cartoons that appeared in Der Sturmer before WW II:

Link



This was the cover in 1943. Protected or hate speech? You tell me.

(By the way, this would be illegal in Germany today. But NOT the same caricature of an Arab!)