"I've suggested that the purpose of the cartoon was the illustrate the way in which muhammed's teachings have been hijacked by these terrorists - it seems to fit in better with the nature of the article it accompanied."
I have agreed with you on alot in this particular thread, but you cant seriously believe that these cartoons came out as a way of saying "mohammad wouldnt want this".......the message is clear "mohammad condones and inspires this"
It took a week or so for governments to say what i and many others were saying from the beginning. I orginally said that the main reason there is all this violence only because of cartoons was not because they are just so outrageously insulting that any non-muslim is too ignorant to understand, but rather it was just an excuse or trigger or spark that blew up this powder keg of disdain to the west.
the US government finally announced that it will be investigating whether this violence was fuelled by the influence of extremists, i think that would have been the obvious starting point, but many seemed to think (especially at the first few pages of this thread) that muslims were just angry that they were being mocked.
also there are countries like syria and iran that are supporting the violence just so the people support the dictators.
i hope we can all now acknowledge that the violence is wrong and motivated by a deep rooted mistrust of the west (well especially in middle eastern countries, you dont see any australians or americans violently protesting because they were published in europe). its not purely a thing of "insult us and die"
that said, that does NOT mean that the Danish newspaper was the angel in all of this. why should freedom speech mean reckless spouting of inflamatory communication.
the media was irresponsible, what good could have possibly came out of this, if they truly wanted the extremist "muslims" to look at themselves and how they are not following the life of mohammad, there would have been far better ways than showing him with a bomb on his head. the foreign minister for pakistan had a good point, she said that the newspaper was extremely insensitive or just ignorant.
i saw news reports where many jews and christians also show disdain to such "freedom" since it basically insights violence. the "muslim" world and the west have not been the best of buddies at late for a few ignoramouses to start mocking the other, just giving the "crazies" an excuse and actually allowing them to recruit more people into their terrorist cells.
You here of political correctness gone mad, but if "freedom" causes all this, i think it would be better for some level of control to what some whack thinks he wants to say.
Gavarillo Princip killed Franz Ferdinand, but he should not be eternally tortured for triggering World War 1. Similarly, the danish cartoons made mindless and mocking signals, where extremists can hi-jack them, just like the teachings of mohammad, and use it to their own ends. They use a protest against denmark to say "death to europe" and "death to america" even though it is basically targetted against denmark.
a far more annoying thing is, people say muslims (thats the billion of us) should NOT be offended to such a scale since "we" were not so angry after 9/11 and Bali. Such comments are stupid and only reinforce the image that a billion muslims support the actions of a few "crazies" that blow themselves up. heck it was the WORLD trade centre, i heard that there were some muslims (i think from turkey or sumthing) that were killed, to these terrorists no price is too big just so they can get 24/7 air time, at the end of the day the terrorists win because we report their actions and thats just what they want.
i heard a few "crazies" its okay for children to be blown up since they are innocent and won't go to hell or anything. and then he said a few muslims blown up in a bus full of jews is worth it.....like the guy is a hack and is lost (kinda like george lucas) but such comments liken the mainstream muslims to the few fanatics.
