Should These Cartoons Be Banned?

[P.K.]

Well get this. The UK is NOT a muslim country. It is predominantly Christian. Our culture is one of tolerance and making fun of religion. If these insulted muslims think that the culture here is incompatible with their own then they can leave.

P.K. do you see anything wrong with the bits I bolded? Tolerant yet ready to kick them out if they don’t follow local culture?

 

I do agree that everyone should be more tolerant of others; Christians with Muslims and Jews and Jedi knights for all it’s worth, but tolerance works both ways.

 

I know that some Christians would be insulted by such an image, P.K. Is your question more about whether they would burn embassies and murder the publishers because of it? There are fanatics in all works of life. We went to a cat show recently. You ought to see the skull doggery (sp) that goes on there.

I really like that - "skull doggery" at a cat show! Excellent.

 

I know of no christians who would be anything other than highly amused at that cartoon. I'm one and I live with a sunday school teacher and it really made me laugh. I had also heard that various parties added some more insulting material to the Danish cartoons and then deliberately touted it around to whip up racial hatred. Frankly all those demonstrating in London just showed how narrow-minded and intolerant they and their religion can be. If their culture clashes with UK culture (and it does) then they can leave the UK. Although like the BNP they are almost certainly a very small minority although that doesn't make them any less dangerous.

[mollag]

From Mollag

It is difficult to critcise any of the previous posts as this is a subjective topic and all have merit…SNIP

. I don’t quite understand the origin of this comment. Why does it’s subjectivity invite a restriction to criticism? I didn’t set out to criticise anyone, merely to put my points of view across; whether they be right or wrong

 

 

 

In my own stumbling way i was trying to say that i was impressed by the quality of the postings on this issue.

And i agree with you on your point on restriction to criticism, what impressed me most was that the thread did not descend into personal criticism because of a particular point of view,

[joeyconcrete]

Oh dear

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4684652.stm

 

Two people died when protesters turned on the American airbase at Bagram, even though the US has had no involvement in the cartoons' publication

[Rog]

 

Star of David superimposed on the Third Reich flag.

Al-Yawm (Saudi Arabia), November 30, 2005

 

 

Al Ahram, one of Egypt's leading dailies.

 

But why go to the Middle East? Closer to home ----

 

 

The Independent in 2003

 

the UK's Political Cartoon Society awarded it first prize in its 2003 "Cartoon of the Year" competition, choosing it over 34 other entries. When an Jewish news watch organisation wrote to protest the award, the reply we received was:

"You have all taken this award completely out of perspective and context. Shame on you! We do so much good."

 

 

And these are the tip of the tip of the iceberg. You will find worse and many more every day - for the benefit of the many who can't read but to whom the 'message' must be communicated.

 

a FEW More similar at http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArabCartoons.htm

 

It’s to say the least interesting that arab newspapers and moslem fellow travelers seem to feel free to publish what they want yet if a newspaper in Denmark publishes a relatively harmless set of cartoons some months later all hell breaks out.

[FCMR]

If in a Muslim state the muslims expect you to do what they say, The British Government are to soft with the Muslims, if they dont like it then they should F*** of back to were the belong too.

[ans]

What about British born Muslims? They ARE where they 'belong' to.

[P.K.]

The demonstrations in London showed that their Muslim culture is at odds with U.K. culture i.e. one of tolerance and making fun of religion. So no, I don't think they 'belong' here at all.

[FCMR]

What about British born Muslims? They ARE where they 'belong' to.

 

 

Would you like me to post the link to a vidio posted by Muslims in which a Liverpool Man is beheaded. And is that not what some of the British Born Muslims were asking to be done during their protests

[knowitallknownothing]

I'm fed up of people crying 'racist' all the time - chill out!

These are sections who just have chip on their shoulder about western life.

I'm a regular attendee of church but I didn't go rioting or buring down buildings or calling for beheadings when they made the film the last temptation or cartoons of Jesus etc etc.

 

It's just people looking for a reason to kick off -

 

you don't see other races behaving like this, no reasonable person would behave like the scenes shown on the TV. God look at some of the crap in The Sun newspaper.... just cause a newspaper prints soemthing, doesn't mean everyone in that country should be beheaded!!

 

They all need to just calm down and realise that the world isn't against them. Quite honestly we wouldn't complain if they were so unhappy they all moved to errr Australia. If I don;t like some where - I move - I hated Bolton and that's why I moved back here. xx I love you all. PEACE AND TRANQULITY WILL REIGN SUPREME O TENDER ONES SO ANGRY

[Wayfarer]

It might be interesting to note the nation with the most Muslims, Indonesia, hasn't given this issue much currency. There's been some minor protests there, sure, but nothing on the scale that would support what theintellegentthug writes. Take the number of Muslims, and divide it into the number of protesters and say to me this is a majority.

I would agree with the point that the majority of Muslims would be upset about it, but it's not the majority who are protesting (violently or not) about it.

 

I too love the black irony of "we're not terrorists, watch us burn this building". I wonder though, is burning down a building under a banner of protest; qualify as an act of terrorism? Is it a riot, or vandalism, were they really trying to strike terror into the population? Would you call it terrorism if you stormed the steps of the Tynwald Chamber and knocking it's doors down because they closed Charlies ?

 

 

 

Quite honestly we wouldn't complain if they were so unhappy they all moved to errr Australia.

Well, that backfired last time, it seems the Australians eventually came out on top

[Crozza]

.

[Gladys]

Did anyone watch Newsnight tonight? The extremist Muslim just shouted everyone down, would not allow each contributor to contribute and, actually, just made an ass of himself!

 

And what a diservice he has done to the cause he purports to promote. Ludicrous! But the man who (briefly) talked about PC gving rise to this crazy situation has got a point!

[Rog]

What about British born Muslims? They ARE where they 'belong' to.

 

Although the people can justifiably claim to ‘belong here’, especially if born here, the ideology that is islam does not. It is incompatible with Western values.

 

Multiculturalism is the biggest social disaster that there has been. The concept is idiotic and fatally flawed,

 

The very notion that there can be more than one ‘culture’ extant in a society is daft. If there are a number of cultures trying to share the same turf then it is inevitable that there will be certain cultures who will dominate, some who will be parasitic, and some who will predate one from another.

 

That apart there is a damn fine culture in the UK – British Culture.

 

Apart from being amazing that some half wit came up with the daft idea of a multi-cultural nation it is a bloody impertinence that a bunch of socialist politicians grabbed the idea and made it a sacred cow which they then used to undermine and virtually destroy the British culture, something that they were elected to support and serve, not destroy.

 

A multi-ethnic society is another thing entirely.

 

A society that retains a single culture can be and frequently is a good and healthy society. The beneficial cultural values to the host country culture, not to mention customs and practices, will soon be assimilated by all, whereas the harmful aspects of incomers backgrounds will wither in the face of the host national existing cultural values.

 

The dreadful multi culture experiment has utterly failed as it was bound to do and we will now face the fall out.

 

It is also worth keeping in mind that ‘islam’ and ‘moslem’ or my preferred ‘mohammedan’ are not racist terms. The UK Home Office document relating to Racially Inflammatory Material on the Internet makes it absolutely clear that this is so in so many words.

 

http://www.iwf.org.uk/documents/20041020_r...he_internet.pdf

[The Old Git]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4687996.stm

 

 

Protester is returned to prison

A demonstrator who imitated a suicide bomber in a Muslim protest over cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad has been recalled to prison.

 

...

 

Meanwhile, one man has said he and a second man were arrested during the London demonstration as he attempted to mount a counter-demonstration.

 

The man, named only as John, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he was arrested as he handed out leaflets with the cartoons printed on them.

[Lonan3]

Whilst agreeing with Rog that 'multi culturalism' is an idea that was always doomed to fail in the UK, I would have to suggest that the inevitability of it's failure was, at least in part, due to the inherent xenophobia of many UK nationals.

Religion is a thorny subject for believers, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever - but Britain has a long history of showing tolerance even to strange (and sometimes dangerous) belief systems - Mormons, Scientologists and Jehovah's Witnesses being immediately recollectable examples.

Although it can be argued that people belonging to the Jewish faith(s) have been absorbed into the prevailing culture, it should also be recognised that they contributed, to a considerable degree, in changing it - albeit over a long period of time.

The smaller 'sects' have had a lesser effect because they haven't appealed to a large enough number of converts, but larger religious groups - such as sikhs, hindus and buddhists - have certainly contributed to the gradual change and development of British society.

Islam appears more threatening because it is a much more demanding and aggressive form of faith and - possibly because some of the divisions of the Christian church have proved so weak, so ineffective, and so determined to be all things to all men - Islam had made considerable inroads, not simply in terms of immigrants but also in terms of converts.

The action of the Danish newspaper was, in my opinion, deliberately inflammatory. Freedom of speech is fine - essential, even - but it also carries a degree of responsibility. Deliberately provoking the members of one particular religion (and there can be no doubt whatsoever that the newspaper knew exactly what the response to the cartoons would be) is a breach of the trust that is placed in the media - a breach that many perfectly innocent people may eventually have to pay for.