"We have lit a fire and the wind could take it a long way"

[Benbow]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article342866.ece

Because Muslims believe that Mohamed was the messenger of Allah, they extrapolate that all his actions were willed by God. A singular love and veneration thus attaches to the person of Mohamed himself. When speaking or writing, his name is always preceded by the title "Prophet" and followed by the phrase: "Peace be upon him", often abbreviated in English as PBUH.

<snip>

But understanding of Islam is sorely lacking in the West. The culture gap has its roots in the fact that Christianity - like Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism - is essentially an iconographic religion. In its early years, the Christian world took the statues of the old gods and goddesses of Greece and morphed them into images of the Virgin Mary and the saints, which were worshiped in all the churches. Muslims, like Jews, take a polar opposite view. Islam and Judaism are religions of the word, not the image.

<snip>

The cartoons published first in Denmark and now more widely across Europe set out not to depict but to ridicule the Prophet. And they do so in a climate in which Muslims across the globe feel alienated, threatened and routinely despised by the world's great powers.

The combination of this with Islam's traditional unhappiness at depictions of any human form, let alone of their most venerated one, was bound to be explosive. The affair is an example of Western ignorance and arrogance combined. We have lit a fire and the wind could take it a long way.

"Freedom of expression" is not an absolute.

[FormerRepublican]

1. Regardless of the provocation, violence is not the solution.

[FlemingsGhost]

2. Easy to say, however, until the species evolves past

intellectualizing such truisms, (and actually starts living them) we tend to give what we get.

The primal conditioning is still too strong.

[Erika]

3. If Christ, the Prophet, had been equally ridiculed

You better believe the likes of the right wing republican zealots would have been encouraging the destruction of the Muslim world. They are doing it now, without Christ being ridiculed.

[tocqueville]

4. the Christ and the Catholic Church have been far more "ridiculed"

than the Prophet, and this by people from a Christian culture. The difference is that the Christians (at least in Europe) accept it (they don't like it) but most Muslims don't even understand that somebody could even think of attacking their religion. Even if the outrage is exploited for political purposes, their leaders can count on mobilisation.

When a Swedish homosexual painter depicted Jesus hanging on the cross but naked and with a 12' hanging penis and toured Europe with it, nobody here really gave a fuck. "Bad taste" people said.

that's the difference

The article in the Independent has a correct description but not very smart conclusions. Salman Rushdie and Martin Scorcese were treated in very different ways, basically on the same theme.

[Erika]

5. Were we at war and occupying these countries at the time?

That's the difference.

[tocqueville]

9. Ar we at war with the "Muslim" world ?

I just stated that the "Christian" enlighted culture in Europe has ALWAYS in the last 200 years ridiculed its own churches. More seldom Jesus or other emblematic figures, more often the Church itself, priests, popes.

I don't think that the cartoons have ridiculed Mohammed (extremists yes) but they were provocative in the two cases he was represented. Probably less provocative than some cartoons that circulate in the Middle-East and we never see.

But if tomorrow a Muslim cartoonist represented the Pope or Jesus slaying Muslim babies, it would cause outrage. But we probably wouldn't burn embassies, threaten to kidnap Muslim visitors and DEMAND that the author takes back its work and apologize. At least not in Europe...

But some US fundies would react exactlty like the Ayatollahs they condemn, wouldn't you bet ?

obviously the picture was shown on ABC

[FlemingsGhost]

7. European History and the Catholic Church is not a picture of ...

tolerance, by any stretch of the imagination.

Now that the church is more concerned with stealing folks money, than their souls, it doesn't make them a bastion of enlightened beings.

[tocqueville]

8. catholic or protestant same business

because you can't mean that 90% of US non-catholic churches are not business ? the Vatican is an amateur compared to Robertson, Moon etc... At least in Europe Churches pay tax like everybody.

but the point isn't there

in European countries the separation of Church and State has made that even violent ridicule of the dominating Catholic Church in the South and Protestantic ones in the North is accepted and violence as retaliation is very rare. Even threats are rare. They just protest in their newspapers and nobody cares.

And about tolerance.. Europeans INVENTED it, not the pilgrims. Europe didn't have lynching and constitutional segregation until 1964 to take only some examples, not to talk about the natives. On both sides of the Atlantic there have been tolerance and intolerance. Different periods of history. But NOONE has the monopoly, specially not in the last 200 years. And regarding the US intolerance is rule today and advocated by the power in place, not the contrary.

[FlemingsGhost]

10. The wealth of the Catholic Church is unmatched, I believe.

An exact figure is not known because the Vatican does not share that information. A look at its corporate and real estate holdings alone is absolutely staggering. Look it up ... Moon and Robertson are the amateurs.

As for European religious tolerance, I'll remind you of Ireland, Chechnya and the former Yugoslavia.

[tocqueville]

11. wealth and tolerance

Bankers' best guesses about the Vatican's wealth put it at $10 billion to $15 billion. Of this wealth, Italian stockholdings alone run to $1.6 billion, 15% of the value of listed shares on the Italian market.

http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,833509,00.html

Robertson's ALONE net worth is between $200 million and $1 billion USD. So add all of them and you'll see.

I wasn't talking about religious tolerance but if tolerance in general.

The examples you take are not relevant either : Checjnya is not representative for Enlightment's Europe neither is former Jugoslavia. The conflicts there are primarily ETHNIC, not religious. Regarding Ireland it was more question of a class and national struggle, mixed with religious differences.

[Lars39]

6. Are these the same extremists that blew up the ancient Buddhas?

[Hardrada]

12. People get just NUTZ about religious stuff.

Why is this anyway?? Seems like a lot of outdated superstition to me.