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Would it be wise to go to one of the most dangerous predominately black neighborhoods in the US and start yelling racial slurs? Should the person who decides to do that be surprised then if bad things happen to them? Granted they do have the freedom of speech protecting them, but going to do that wouldn't be too bright would it?
Whoah! Are you saying blacks are violent? Are you saying they would respond to someone's mere words with beatings and murder? Racist!
Drawing a cartoon of mo is not on par with shouting racial slurs in any event.
I thought it was. Falling piano, death, it was pretty straight forward.
It was very straight forward, and you still seem to have missed it.
The analogy was "falling piano" is to "cutting the ropes holding it up" as "Islamic violence" is to "sponsoring 'Draw Mohammad Day."
It was not "piano" is to something as "doodles on paper" are to something else.
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Originally Posted by Ceece
The problem is humanity. People. They are NOT going to kowtow to ideas that are considered strange and foreign. Give people a target, a sacred cow, and it's going to be poked with a stick and blown up until it's not so sacred anymore. And we can't force natural instincts to be stifled out of fear. I mean you can try, but your the HistorianDude so you probably know better than most how that kind of thing always turns out.
But are those really our natural instincts? I pose that question because until the invention of "exclusive" monotheism by Christianity and its later adoption by its dughter religion Islam, there was no historical tendency to poke at another's sacred cows with sticks. Polytheistic faiths had an inherent tendency to tolerance that neither Christianity or Islam possess, since they already accepted that more than one god could both be true.
Look at ancient Rome... did they suppress or evangelize against the religious beliefs of people they conquered? Hardly. Their most common reaction was to go back and build temples to those foreign gods back in Rome.
I am myself an iconoclast and love to poke at sacred cows with sticks. But I am reminded of the PETA activists who thought they were saving bison from being shot in Montana by shooing them back onto Yellowstone when they strayed off the park into brucellosis free Montana. Mistaking the brown thing in the bushes for a bison, they ended up getting killed by the grizzly bear they surprised.
It's one thing to poke at a cow. It's another entirely to poke at a bear.
The PETA activists made a mistake out of ignorance. This woman did not.
Would it be wise to go to one of the most dangerous predominately black neighborhoods in the US and start yelling racial slurs? Should the person who decides to do that be surprised then if bad things happen to them? Granted they do have the freedom of speech protecting them, but going to do that wouldn't be too bright would it?
Small problem is that there is nothing in the Koran against non-Muslims from drawing Mohammed....
I wouldn't have anticipated it and I'm not an idiot. She isn't a politician or lawmaker or diplomat, just a private citizen. I would have anticipated some chuckles and comments by my friends then having it fade to page 2 of my personal website. But that's just me. Other people picked up the ball and the internet made it a sensation. THAT is the real issue today, nobody knows what things they do or say will end up going viral on Youtube and getting their name on a hitlist. That's not something anyone should have to worry about.
You don't need sympathy for her, you just need to feel good when anyone who tries to make good on their threat gets whacked. If not feel good, at least feel confident that justice overcomes intolerance.
And that is exactly my position. This is why I do not consider Islam an existential threat. We are perfectly and completely prepared to deal with it when it causes trouble.
Because we are not them, and we behave differently. .
Yes - we follow our constitution. We dont kill people who disagree with our religion. In fact,most of the world is like this. About time the loons understood this.
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Originally Posted by HistorianDude
There you go! See, you just answered your own question.
You already understand that we behave differently. So does everybody else.
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You keep on harping on that they are different so we should behave. Agreed we should avoid such incidents, but they will happen and they are constitutional.
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Originally Posted by HistorianDude
And here we get into the penis waving again. We deal everyday with the certain knowledge that actions have consequences. We build homes in tornado alley, or on hurricane prone beaches, or on the San Andreas fault in full knowledge that those choices have consequences..
Are the people who make other choices and build elsewhere "obeying" the hurricanes and earthquakes? Of course not. They are simply accommodating reality...
A lot of flowery language to say actions have consequences. Move beyond that. If robbers come to your house in a remote area, dont call the cops but accommodate reality. If someone tries to kill you, simply accommodate reality because you are different and you knew you would be in this situation sometime during your life.
Here is another reality for you - if people threaten to kill people for burning a book, there will be some who wil burn it. Accommodate that.
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Originally Posted by HistorianDude
Different people make different choices. All of them must ultimately deal with the consequences of those choices.
Islam is the socio-religious equivalent of a natural disaster. Some people will deliberately incite it to violence, some people will not. Neither are "obeying." But both must deal with the consequences of their choice.
Everyone gets this. Again, see my earlier comments.
Go read the Wikipedia entry on the book. Pay particular attention to its sales before and after the fatwa.
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Originally Posted by Boxcar Overkill
Why would a British author of Indian decent believe the spiritual leader of Iran would issue an order to murder him for writing that book? That was pretty unprecedented at that time. And then the murder attempts? You think he foresaw all of that?
I do... except I think he anticipated the fatwas would come from Pakistan instead of the government of Iran.
"Norris was placed on a hit list by Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida-linked figure who has been tied to the Fort Hood, Texas, massacre as well as the failed bombing in Times Square, the New York Daily News reported.
But Historian Dude has said that Islamic threat is not existential to us.
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