Watching this issue snowballing in the past week into a humongous mess was something surreal, I found myself wondering is this really happening?
The funny thing is that the cartoons were published back in September or October 05, I don't understand why the issue has just picked up so much steam lately.
The cartoons were tasteless and offensive, provided that what's considered tasteless and offensive is a matter of viewpoints. But there are many many tasteless and offensive things out in the world that we really have no control over, what we can control however, is the way we react to such things. The reaction to the cartoons in the Arab and Muslim world has been outrageously extreme. And as always it's unfortunately the people with the most extreme views that get heard, some in the west retaliated with their own extremism through websites that preach hatred towards Muslims.
We in the Arab world have a long way to go before understanding concepts like free press and free speech, I can see people justifying boycotting everything Danish because the Danish government would not FORCE the newspaper to apologize, or they wouldn't themselves apologize, people don't understand that in the free world, government has no control over the press. As Muslims we need to stop being overly sensitive about religious issues, we can't force our beliefs down the throats of others, we can't expect others to hold our holies in the same regard we do, and we seriously need to stop wanting to kill anyone who doesn't hold them as such.
What I don't understand is that if the Jyllands-Posten was going to cave in and apologize, why did they wait until the situation deteriorated to this level? Maybe a publicity stunt. Hopefully this is the last we heard of this issue, yes, I'm completely ignoring the bomb threats that were made at the newspaper's offices today.
This post intentionally does not include any links.
Technorati tags: Jyllands-Posten, caricatures, Danish Cartoons, Muhammad
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