{"id":194,"date":"2006-02-05T09:41:49","date_gmt":"2006-02-04T23:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=194"},"modified":"2006-02-06T17:25:35","modified_gmt":"2006-02-06T07:25:35","slug":"sacred-cows-make-the-best-hamburger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=194","title":{"rendered":"Sacred cows make the best hamburger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

 \"image: <\/p>\n

Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten<\/a> on 30 September 2005 published editorial cartoons critical of Islamic prophet Mohammed and equivocating violence and oppression of women with Islam, angering Muslims. The response of the aggrieved parties was to threaten bomb attacks on the newspaper’s Danish offices. On 4 February 2006, rioters in Syria set fire to Danish and Norwegian embassies<\/a> in Damascus, with no apparent interference from Syrian authorities. <\/p>\n

On the face of it, the cartoonists’ points appear to have been validated. The western world does not accept management of free expression by violence. Regardless, Jyllands-Posten has issued an apology<\/a> to those who may have been offended by the cartoons, but stands by the position that it advocates freedoms of speech- and religion. <\/p>\n

The short and sweet of it is that freedom of expression trumps politically or religiously motivated violent intimidation in all cases. If Muslims were offended, letters to the editors of Jyllands-Posten rebutting the expressions in the cartoons were appropriate. While it may not have been appropriate to characterise all Muslims as bombers, violence based in Islamic dogma is well known. It should<\/strong><\/em> be well known that not all Muslims are mad bombers; if this isn’t clear, then there’s not enough moderate Muslims putting their views in print. <\/p>\n

One of the primary strengths of true secular democracies is that a valiant attempt is made to accommodate freedom of expression- and religion- by all their citizens. No person’s cow is more sacred than any other. Rights are not merely assertations of what sort of acts one may inflict upon others; they are also the defined limits upon one’s actions. Your right to scream ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre ends when that expression needlessly harms others. Your right to raise your fist stops when it hits my face. <\/p>\n

\"image:However, the use of western mass communications to freely propagate inaccurate, narrow stereotypes is an abuse of the Fourth Estate- and deserves an equal limitation. This has been a valid criticism as long as there has been mass media. Deregulation of media ownership results in fewer people being in editorial control of publishers and broadcasters, limiting the breadth of opinions they transmit. <\/p>\n

When one is offended by the free expressions of others, the only acceptable retort in a society which can ultimately survive and grow is more free speech. If wholesale characterisation of Muslims as bombers is inaccurate, Muslims should make comment which corrects the public record. Bombing and burning representatives of the offence is not a correction- it’s a reinforcement of the idea. <\/p>\n

-weez <\/p>\n

UPDATE: See also this opinon piece<\/a> by Charles Moore. Bit more cynical than me, but makes some good points.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If your only defence is to burn an embassy, you’ve probably got it very wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}