bastardz are always rioting, it must be because of thier religio....
oh wait, there are white people.

sorry, forget it, nothing to see here. news.bbc.co.uk

you're absolutely right - that is the best comparison.

what i can't believe is the French reprinting this - to offend millions just to prove a point. it's more than a bit nonsensical. if they wouldn't print anything gratuitously racist then why this?

i think it says more about the status of religion - and the belief it inspires - in the west than about muslims.

www.thestranger.com


same thing i've been saying about the whole "n.gger-sand-n.gger" comparasent but with less cusswords

I guess so but yaar! u wonder !!!! everyone of us is so fined tuned..... :* :* :* get my drift...by the way where in the world are u sitting...

S: i wonder about it too. i wonder whether we have a chip on our shoulders and are hypersensitive (in a broader sense, i'm not talking about this issue before everyone jumps down my throat) about things.

a bit of six of one and half a dozen of the other i'd say. the truth is that if as a community we do feel attacked - which is increasingly the case - then we go into defensive mode. start sounding off and reacting emotionally when what is needed is an intelligent response that is articulated well. one which draws parallels with situations and highlights the situation.

on the other hand, some people are complete sh!ts, pure and simple. i heard today that there had been a meeting where this pakistani guy was discussed. at the time of the earthquake, he sent an email round the company asking fro donations. and apparently, today someone said "well i thought that that email was ridiculous - pakistan harbours al qaeda - why would i give a country like that my money?"

i wasn't there when this was said but it made my heart sink and made me absolutely furious.

i don't know. must be the sunny climates we've originated from, we have our own 'latin' temperament and it's nothing to feel ashamed off. apart from the lunatic fringe on the streets who are being egged on by the media

shazia! I have always wandered: Why Muslims are so emotionally charged and defensive?!! Me included...Is there a point we all have missed? or is that the point ....wandering ....shahzelle

Yup, what an idiot.

Bet he goes back to jail with a smirk on his face, showing off to his fellow "drug-dealing, islamic" inmates of his accomplishment, oblivious of the fact that ordinary law-abiding pakistani muslims outside must now deal with another backlashing session of... awww f*ck it!

did you hear about the guy who dressed as a suicide bomber in the demonstration? he's now been arrested - as he broke the terms of his parole (had initially been jailed for drug dealing).

it was racist - and was designed to be as provocative as possible. refusing the Jesus cartoon has shown them up. wonder where all of this is going though and where it will end...

Being anti-semitic can get you fired AT :D

i guess being anti-semitic can get you fired.

from slate.com

" Allan H. "Bud" Selig is the commissioner of baseball, and he has to decide soon whether Malek's group will be allowed to buy the Nationals. Selig happens to be Jewish, and it was Selig who suspended Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott and fined her $25,000 after she was quoted in the New York Times praising Hitler. (When she wouldn't stop making ethnic slurs, Major League Baseball's executive council forced her to sell the team.) You don't have to be Jewish to be offended by anti-Semitism, of course, but Jews naturally tend to take greater umbrage than gentiles. "

Look what *I* dug up: query.nytimes.com

Also, let's play a game: film.guardian.co.uk

"Tears will get you sympathy. Sweat will get you change."

-- Jesse Jackson, minister and activist

Plato: We have a right to protest but VIOLENCE WORKS AGAINST US. No one really listens to violent protesters. What has changed in oppressed societies that use that as their primary method? Nothing other than escalating cycles of violence followed by brief periods of re-entrenchment that the media likes to call "peace talks" What has happened in oppressed societies that used nonviolent resistance as their primary method (even if violence emerged later)? Let's see....India booted the British...South Africa abandoned apartheid...the Civil Rights Movement changed things in the U.S. for most of us, etc...

and let us not forget---Rasulallah (S) overtook the Quraishis and spread Islam to billions of people throughout the world :)

And what would a "clash" conversation be without a few words from "our Tariq": www.guardian.co.uk

"To describe the clash over the Danish depictions of the prophet as one between freedom and dogma will only fan the flames..."

THE PLOT THICKENS!!!! www.guardian.co.uk
"Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today".

Wow, do we have a right to be offended?
Tough question?
After some thinking, I've decided that I have the right to b*tch-slap any motherf*cker that offends my religion. ...though I'm not contractully obliged to excercise that right.

Anyway, looks like the survey is teetering towards the "yes" vote (59% yes, to 39% no - which is roughly what observers want, unlike that Egypt presidency debacle hehe). Apperas to me that this "democracy" thing can really catch on in the muslim world, where ever that is.

www.juancole.com There is a very good piece by Juan Cole on understanding why muslims are offended (more through analogy than understanding Islam). Essentially what he is trying to say boils down to the following:

"Thus, it is insupportable to say that the Nazi ideology was right and to praise Hitler. In Germany if one took that sort of thing too far one would be breaking the law. Even in France, Bernard Lewis was fined for playing down the Armenian holocaust. It is insupportable to say that slavery was right, and if you proclaimed that in the wrong urban neighborhoods, you could count on a violent response.

So once you admit that there are things that can be said that are insupportable, then the Muslim feelings about the caricatures become one reaction in an entire set of such reactions."

i'm not disagreeing with you in that people - all people - should be able to feel offended by whatever they want to be offended by. it's as much anyone's right to be offended as not - it's a purely subjective thing and as alia68 says, the question posed in that way does smack of imperialism - who on earth is anyone else to tell me what i should be offended by and not??

i do think you're right, none of this would have been acceptable in a major newspaper - and rightly so. free speech does have limits and i recognise that. but what does make my heart sink is people trampling over the Danish flag - those same people who talk of respect. or thinking that Danes/French/Germans should be killed because of this - that is completely nonsensical to me. and it fuels the people who could find that amusement in the cartoon.

but, having said that, then i read the article (link below) and they've quoted Steve Biko (from apartheid South Africa): ""Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked." - which made me think again. because that is so true - people are now tellign us how to protest, what is acceptable and what is not.

i just think that this whole thing has moved on from being completely unaccetable to an 'us' versus 'them' debate and people are painting themselves into corners.

we had a discussion programme the other night where the interviewer was asking someone from Die Bildt (German paper who ran the cartoons also) whether they would ever have published anything offensively anti-semitic. the editor's response was immediate and telling - "no of course not". there's not that much difference between the two types of cartoon. but it's the reaction and way of remonstrating that seems to open up a chasm of difference



www.guardian.co.uk