Posted on 02/11/2006 7:56:37 AM PST by Dark Skies
A battle for Western freedom is being fought overseas. The specific object of the battle is merely a handful of cartoons. The outcome of the struggle, however, will reverberate for years.
The conflict began when the leading Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed twelve cartoons of Mohammed to expose and challenge the country's existing climate of fear of criticizing Islam. Confirming the newspaper's nightmares, the response was the deluge of Islamic rage, death threats and violence now sweeping the world.
The issue at stake is the right to speak one's mind.
Recognizing this, many European newspapers reprinted the cartoons. Echoing the story of the defiant slaves, who, when the Romans came for Spartacus, the leader of their rebellion, each proclaimed "I am Spartacus"--this was a clear show of support for the Danish paper and a symbolic affirmation of the right to free speech.
In the United States, however, fear of Muslim anger has suppressed a similar show of support. Indeed, the Bush administration and the mainstream media have generally sided with the raging religionists; while dutifully paying lip service to the First Amendment, their main concern has been for the "hurt feelings" of Muslims. Bush cautioned that we have "a responsibility to be thoughtful about others." Offering similar reasons, major U.S. newspapers like the New York Times refuse to print the cartoons. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the world that "of course freedom of speech is never absolute."
Well, is freedom of speech absolute?
Absolutely.
The right to free speech means the right to express one's ideas without danger of coercion, of physical suppression or interference, by anyone. This freedom includes the right to make movies, write books, draw pictures, voice political opinions--and satirize religion. This right flows from the right to think: the right to observe, to follow the evidence, to reach the conclusions you judge the facts warrant--and then to convey your thoughts to others.
To demand special status for any idea or ideology--to declare Judaism or Christianity or Marxism or Islam off-limits, above public criticism--is to negate these rights. No rational mind can function under the order: Follow the evidence wherever you think it leads, but don't you dare come to a negative conclusion about the philosophy of Marxism or the religion of Islam.
The consequence of making submission to authority and not thought--faith, not reason--the sacred value of a society can be observed throughout the Middle East, where censorship, state propaganda, intellectual stagnation, forced compliance with religious edicts and medieval punishments for religious offences are part of everyday life.
Unlike the Muslims now raging across the world, however, many Americans do cherish free speech--yet may be wondering, when so many other Muslims appear to be offended, is this really the issue on which to make an intransigent stand? The answer to this question is unequivocally yes.
Even if it were true that many Muslims are angered by the specific nature of the cartoons, not by the mere fact that Islam was criticized, their anger is irrelevant. Is a Jew to be silenced because Christians find it offensive that he refuses to accept the divinity of Jesus? Or are the Christians to be silenced, because the Jew finds the Trinity offensive? Is the atheist to be silenced, because Jew, Christian and Muslim alike find his ideas offensive? Maybe all the scientific heirs to Galileo should be silenced, as Galileo himself was by the Church, since those who take the Bible literally are angered by the claim that the earth moves?
If we allow anyone's feelings to reign, we destroy freedom of thought and speech.
In a free society, anyone angered by someone else's ideas has a simple and powerful recourse: don't buy his books, watch his movies, read his newspapers. If one judges his ideas dangerous, argue against them. The purveyor of evil ideas is no threat to those who remain free to counter them with rational ones.
(Note that many European nations have laws limiting free speech, all of which should be repealed; to protest these, however, one does not demand "equal censorship.")
The moment someone decides to answer those he finds offensive with a gun, not an argument--as many Muslims have by demanding that European governments censor the newspapers or by issuing calls for beheadings and other violence against Europeans--he removes himself from civilized society and any rational consideration.
And against this kind of threat to free speech, every free man must stand up. We must vociferously condemn the attempt by religionists to impose censorship in the West. We must extol--without apology or qualifications--the indispensable pillar of a free society: freedom of thought and speech.
The U.S. press should do so by immediately publishing the cartoons, declaring that "I, too, am Spartacus."
Dr. Onkar Ghate, PhD in philosophy, is a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. Christian Beenfeldt, MA in philosophy, lives in Denmark and is a guest writer for the Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/).
http://freedomforegyptians.blogspot.com/2006/02/cartoons-were-published-five-months.html
Same cartoons were printed in Egyptian newspaper, 2005.
Islam wants to own the franchise on free speech, and a few other things. Some day they will start harrassing carpet-makers for not having an over-supply of prayer rugs in their inventories.
You might agree with Denmark's censorship on those two topics, but it IS a curtailment of free speech. They just happen to think that insulting Mohammad IS free speech, while other issues AREN'T.
It IS their country and they DO have all the right in the world to choose what they censor. But they can't have it both ways. If they do censor SOME speech, then then don't have "free" speech.
As far as I know, we don't have the Internet Nanny blocking any sites here in the U.S. and it is NOT a crime to deny anything.
We do have hate-crimes, as you well know, but those involve other things. People can say what they want, though, on the Internet -- so far.
Btw, the freerepublic.com WAS censored by the Internet Nanny in Amsterdam. I was there last June. The entire city is wifi and I couldn't get on to the freerepublic.com on any of the hotels' free-access-to-Internet computers. An INTERNET NANNY popped up and blocked that site.
Odd.
I could get yahoo, navyseals, (places where one could play bandwidth-consuming games and post on websites) google and a variety of other sites.
Someone has been reading my blogs.
Does that include capitalism which is another way of demonstrating free speech and expression? You should see what Cafepress is doing right now.
http://kokonutpundits.blogspot.com/2006/02/visions-of-mohammed-in-3d.html
Yep. First it was McCain / Feingold Campaign Finance Law, now we're to refrain from saying anything that may hurt the muslims "feelings".
MEMRI.org - Special Dispatch Series - No. 1089 "Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi Responds to Cartoons of Prophet Muhammad: Whoever is Angered and Does Not Rage in Anger is a Jackass - We are Not a Nation of Jackasses" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "In a February 3, 2006 Friday sermon, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, who is head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, president of the International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS), and the spiritual guide of many other Islamist organizations across the world (including the Muslim Brotherhood), exhorted worshippers to show rage to the world over the Danish paper Jylland Posten's publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The sermon was aired on Qatar TV on February 3, 2006.") (February 9, 2006)
News.BBC.co.uk: "CARTOON PROTESTER WAS DRUG DEALER" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "A Muslim demonstrator who imitated a suicide bomber in London to protest over cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad is a convicted drug dealer. Omar Khayam, 22, of Bedford, was jailed in 2002 and released on licence last year after serving half of his sentence for dealing heroin and cocaine.") (Last updated February 7, 2006)
BRUSSELS JOURNAL.com: "'THE WAR IS ON'" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Yesterday (Thursday) Mullah Krekar, the alleged leader of the Islamist group Ansar al-Islam who has been living in Norway as a refugee since 1991, said that the publication of the Muhammad cartoons was a declaration of war. "The war has begun," he told Norwegian journalists. Mr Krekar said Muslims in Norway are preparing to fight. "It does not matter if the governments of Norway and Denmark apologize, the war is on.") (February 3, 2006)
ISLAMONLINE.net: Cairo - "WARNINGS CARTOONS RISK VIOLENCE" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by a Danish daily and other European newspapers are risking to trigger acts of violence around the world, officials and commentators warn." (February 2, 2006)
This is what bothers me more than anything else - that is, that Bush has been very weak on this. I suppose he feels that he is protecting the troops in Iraq by kowtowing to the Muslims, but I think they'd be much better protected by strength than by weakness.
But I do think that calling Islam a relgion of peace AND love is over the edge. :(
Nice site.
Well, the world has definitely gone mad, and the fact that the Prez is getting no support from half of the elected government - in fact, he's getting nothing but obstruction and personal attacks - is certainly not fortifying things. Still, I wish we'd been more direct in condemning the Muslim actions in this hyped-up and manipulated "crisis."
The fact that we were weak in our response is what is now encouraging all these Muslim organizations in the US to come out of the woodwork and start demanding that we not publish or display these things here. I think the Bush administration had a good moment to stand up to the Muslim radicals - thereby supporting not only the West, but what ever Muslim "moderates" are out there - and they blew it.
I'm with you on this. Though I support the President and understand that we all have grown in our realization of exactly what the enemy is, I think ultimately it will have been a mistake to assume that this enemy can be fought only with arms.
Somehow, the west needs to expose islam for what it is. A by-product of saving the world from the evil of islam will be the liberation of many from that cult. Somehow, muslims have to come to understand that their identity isn't only as followers of a false prophet...that they will have much greater value once freed from the chains for mohammed and his false. religion.
Tall order, I know...but somehow that is what must be done.
That's a good point. Like you, I don't know how we could do this, unless we turn it over to the private sphere and have thousands of Christian missionaries ready to set forth telling people the Good News - that is, that we are all free and can choose good or evil, death or life.
But the problem with all Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, in the US is that we ourselves have actually been beaten out of the public sphere by the ACLU and others. In addition, the weakness of Christian churches because of their adaptation to modernism has left many of them with no Good News preach. All you hear is "go along to get along," and that's not only un-Christian, it's simply an invitation to the Islamics to walk right in and sit right down. Which they are doing...
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