I don't think we have any discussion about the Danish Muhammad cartoons....

of course, but that's part of what i've been trying to get at in this thread: from my perspective, you can criticize the manner of the critique only if you first accept his right to make it, and that your critique can only be part of an ongoing conversation of which his critique is also part. in other words, your critique cannot be, from my point of view, that he shouldn't have been allowed to say that, only that you think he's wrong and here's your reasons a,b,c why he's wrong.

when kofi annan is out there trying to calm things down by saying that freedom of the press includes the responsibility to respect religious beliefs, i am not convinced that the underlying principle is being protected. (and the vatican joining that chorus gives me even less comfort.)

Meanwhile, the New York Press editorial team resigns.

That couldn't be more untrue, at least you're using jihad in the sense in which the Islamists use it, which in its essentials is this:

1. It is the duty of muslims to bring the whole world muslim rule
2. infidels may either convert to Islam, or
a) live as subjugated second-class citizens (dhimmis), or
b) be killed.

The thing is, although the sunni 'salafist' Islamists do differ from orthodox sunnis, they are both in complete agreement that the above is immutable Islamic doctrine. (where the Islamists differ is in some areas of arcane theology, in the fact that muslims who do not agree with their particular theological interpretation are to be treated as infidels and subjected to jihad too, and in their willingness to resort to terrorist attacks against civilians in pursuance of the muslim supremacist cause.)

Islamic jihad, over 1400 years, has claimed billions of lives (including the worst genocide in history - against the Hindus in India, and one of the worst genocides of modern times, that of the Armenians, for resisting the second-class dhimmi status mentioned above.(http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4436).

"By the time of the classical Muslim historian al-Tabari’s death in 923, jihad wars had expanded the Muslim empire from Portugal to the Indian subcontinent. Subsequent Muslim conquests continued in Asia, as well as on Christian eastern European lands. The Christian kingdoms of Armenia, Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and Albania, in addition to parts of Poland and Hungary, were also conquered and Islamized. When the Muslim armies were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683, over a millennium of jihad had transpired. These tremendous military successes spawned a triumphalist jihad literature. Muslim historians recorded in detail the number of infidels slain or enslaved, the cities and villages which were pillaged, and the lands, treasure, and movable goods seized. Christian (Coptic, Armenian, Jacobite, Greek, Slav, etc.), as well as Hebrew sources, and even the scant Hindu and Buddhist writings which survived the ravages of the Muslim conquests, independently validate this narrative, and complement the Muslim perspective by providing testimonies of the suffering of the non-Muslim victims of jihad wars."

On the one hand, all that proves is man's capacity to violence, and obviously all races and peoples within all civilizations have been capable of horrible brutality under appropriate circumstances.

What *is* thorougly exceptional though, and what makes for an unrelenting, unavoidable, history of violence within one group, is for a major religion to have been founded by a brutal murderer, for that religion's holy book to urge that followers must 'slay the unbeliever', and for a religion to have as orthodox doctrine a codification, based on the example of the murderous prophet and the words that murderer put into the mouth of God, of how to go about waging war until the whole world submits to that religion.

And if you don't believe me, take it from the mouth of Islam's most respected scholars -

Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), renowned Islamic jurist, philosopher, and historian, summarized the consensus opinions from five centuries of prior Sunni Muslim jurisprudence with regard to the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad: "In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force… The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense… Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations."

The thing is, although the sunni 'salafist' Islamists do differ from orthodox sunnis, they are both in complete agreement that the above is immutable Islamic doctrine.

I'm not convinced this is true. Practically speaking, I suspect that millions of Sunni Muslims, who would be considered by other Sunni Muslims, are not serious about bringing the world under Islamic rule. Even if they would pay lip service to the ideal (which, admitedly, is bad enough), most Muslims, like most people in general, are more interested in getting on with their immediate lives: employment, love, family, etc.

I think Ibn Khaldun is basically right about Jewish and Christian believers not being given a mandate (by the founders of their religions, or by their holy books or even central traditions) to attain some sort of world domination.

Oh, I agree 100% with this. The problem is with the religion itself, and the fact that when you have such a religion you'll inevitably have a significant proportion who *will* take the prescriptions seriously. And the fact that the moderates have scant theological ammunition with which to defeat the true believers.

And that in itself is a pretty serious problem, given the recent immigration of large muslim populations into the heart of the infidels' civilation.

someone might might have already linked this here somewhere, but this website has an interesting catalog of historical depictions of muhammad, everything from historical islamic texts up to and including political cartoons from just the last few years that apparently didn't raise any ruckus at all. (two things to note: that website takes forever to load in its entirety -- there are, it turns out, a lot of depictions of muhammad -- and it also includes a selection at the bottom of truly vile anti-muslim cartoons in response to this whole controversy, which make the things in jyllands-posten look like valentines.)

i think this is a largely manufactured bullshit controversy -- one that, obviously, plays on deep wells of existing resentment, distrust and misunderstanding, but that has been ridiculously amplified and manipulated by people seeking political gain for themselves by heightening the sense of muslim persecution. (with the interests being served varying from country to country, but with the common denominator that it plays into an existing sense of the West as an enemy of islam -- one that, of course, the west has been doing a pretty good job of feeding itself.)

all of which is why i think so much of the tut-tutting and disparagement aimed at the danish paper is just off-target. they're probably more guilty of being danish than anything else. i mean, what a convenient target, a small country susceptible to boycotts, one that the major western powers aren't going to feel too protective of because we can't even keep them straight from the dutch anyway. and so many western liberals fall right in line, wagging fingers and intoning about multiculturalism and "of course they're offended," like we're all fucking experts on islamic taboos and they just should have known better.

so kofi annan and the pope come out and lecture us all about how a "free press" has to "respect" establishments of religion (o rly? tell it to thomas jefferson), and the bush administration chides the danes for their thoughtlessness (can the bush administration find denmark on a map?), and the people who launched this entire phony outrage congratulate themselves on rallying their troops and further marginalizing the moderates in their midst.

i'm sorry, but it stinks.

I don't understand this. As you've pointed out, part of the stated reasons for publishing the cartoons was the problem getting an illustrator for the children's book about Muhammad (which I thought was because the artists feared representing Muhammad). (I think I knew about the prohibition, though maybe I'd forgotten, so maybe that doesn't count.)

And they'd know, cos they'd never do ANYTHING that would upset muslims...

i know, i'm not talking about them, i'm talking all of the people so knowingly going on about this prohibition as if this were something that everyone knows -- when i bet you a lot of these commentators had no idea. but the bigger point is that this prohibition does not necessarily appear to be the great big huge pierced-in-the-heart bugaboo that it's being painted as ("we can't imagine the pain this offense causes," intone the scolds), and in fact it appears to have been violated quite frequently even in recent years, including in political cartoons, without anyone rending their garments. but again, because of widespread ignorance about islam, coupled with assorted feelings of guilt, people are quick to accept the idea that some major mystical taboo has been shattered.

The cartoons are just one more excuse that radical Islam is using to spread its hatred of our western culture and values. The cartoons themselves are not really the point. The point is that each person in the West has to face what we are really up against and decide where we stand. Do we side with ‘reason’ and the application of a rational view of the world to determine how individual men and women live their lives, or do we side with the interpretation of ‘holy scriptures’ by ‘men of god’ to enforce a particular way of life upon us. Sooner or later (and I fear sooner) EVERYONE is going to have to face this choice and decide where they stand. This is not a game we are playing here—it is time to get serious!

Europe evolved out of a long dark-age and the fruits centuries of struggle and suffering gave birth to the Renaissance and “The Age of Reason” with its enshrinement of “The Rights of Man”. Reason, consistently applied, inevitably discovers and implements the rights we now take for granted. Through the application of ‘reason’ we banished, forever, theocratic tyrants dictating how individual free men and women should live their lives.

The clash of cultures that we hear about so often today, is really an historical clash between rationality and an irrational view of the world, which is governed not by objective reason but by the rule of theocratic dictators (with their various random and inconsistent interpretations of religious texts), who are far too eager to visit the wrath of their ‘god’ upon those who disagree with them. They should observe that without their enthusiastic propensity to murder people who do not share their view of the world, this ‘god’ of theirs tends to leave us all alone. Perhaps it may be helpful if these ‘thugs-for-god’ took note of this divine silence and instead spent their time discovering why they are so easily offended by our open society and freedom of expression.

I refuse to have our open secular culture being dictated to by these theocratic tyrants who neither understand the “Rights of Man” nor their objective significance.

The response of the American Government and media is truly disgraceful. A small country like Denmark, who stood behind America in its war against terror when the rest of the world turned its back, is now finding that she is left alone to defend a free press and the Western cultural heritage in general. The American Press in particular is a disgrace and the timidity of our politicians in the face of Islamic violence is telling. With leaders like these and without a valiant and courageous press, the flame of reason will be extinguished and humanity will enter a dark age much worse and longer than the last.

Lord help us...

In response to Gypsy:

Rights can only be discovered through a process of reason and a rational view of existence. You cannot arrive at ‘The Rights of Man’ through any irrational means, such as 'feelings' or the word of god made known through 'feelings'. One man 'feels' something and another man 'feels' something else. ‘The Rights of Man’ are objective, self-evident and only discovered by the exercise of mans mind through a process of reason—they have nothing to do with 'feelings' or the rule of theocratic law which is based on a mystical and irrational view of the universe and the random and inconsistent interpretation of obscure ‘holy scriptures’. "The Rights of Man” have nothing to do with ‘democracy’ or the ‘will of any majority’, they are completely independent of any majority no matter how large that majority may be, and completely independent of any 'feelings' no matter how strongly they are felt.

Each person will soon have to decide whether they are prepared to make a lifelong commitment to rationality and the rule of objective law, or if they are going to cower in front of the violent threats of theocratic dictators by submitting themselves to the darkness of religious mysticism because it 'feels' right, or because they are too terrified of hurting anyone’s 'feelings'.

A lot of the best rational minds have seriously called into question the possibility of rationally (or for that matter, irrationally) arriving at objective values. (Kant's attempt started being pretty seriously called into question almost immediately, by Hegel.)

I don't think there are any "Rights of Man" floating out there in the objective ether, waiting to be discovered as fact.

Maybe you would like to check out the rule of 'subjective law' unstead--the rule of law as governed by peoples 'feelings? Go to Baghdad and let everyone know you are an American!

"CARTOON CRISIS: IRAN RENAMES DANISH PASTRIES

Tehran, 7 Feb. (AKI) - Iran has decided to rename Danish pastries "Mohammedan" pastry - a new twist in the crisis which has triggered protest by Muslims throughout the world against cartoons of Mohammed first published in Denmark. The name change recalls when some Americans started calling French fries, "Freedom fries" to protest France's opposition to the United States-led invasion of Iraq.

Iran has recalled its ambassador from Copenhagen, and on Tuesday announced a halt to all imports of Danish products. Demonstrators in Tehran on Tuesday attacked the Danish embassy with stones and petrol bombs, the second such assault in two days.

Denmark says it holds the Iranian authorities responsible for the embassy attacks.

A series of cartoons depicting the Prohet Mohammed published in a Danish daily in September has triggered protests throughout the Islamic world which in recent days have led to at least five deaths in Afghanistan, one in Lebanon and one in Somalia."

I'm sure someone will find it insulting to name something you put in your mouth after the great Prophet.

http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2006/02/a_plea_for_unde.html