Today I saw this headline, “Bounty offered on cartoonists as protests rage,” on the Reuters wire (article is no longer available, as of 7/4/2024). One million dollars for the head of an idiot cartoonist?
And the hard part of this, where neither side is right or wrong, is that I feel somewhat obligated to defend the Danish morons who thought this was a good idea because I believe so strongly in freedom of speech. The bitch about defending that right is that, in order to protect that right, you have to extend it to people who create stuff like the prophet cartoons. In order that we all might say what we feel, we have to defend the right of others to express bad ideas.
I really enjoyed this article on Slate, “The case for mocking religion.” In addition to making important points about freedom of speech, the author also writes:
“Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these.”
People seem to have forgotten that most Danes, Americans, and other westerners are not Muslim and the rules and proscriptions of Islam don’t apply to non-Muslims. The only thing that should curb our criticisms of Islam should be the respect that everyone should have for other religions.