detano inipo wrote:nimh, I don't quite understand what you are trying to say.
I don't quite understand how your post relates to mine... ?
I was quite specifically addressing the claims of Ayaan Hirsi Ali that I quoted (which you had posted here). I've already expounded my views on Muslim rioters burning down embassies (bad) and marching with placards demanding death and destruction (also bad) at length in the ten or so threads about this subject. Here, I was specifically answering to Hirsi Ali's claims.
She says "a culture of self-censorship of criticism of Islam pervades Holland". That is bull. If there has been one issue dominating every single day's headlines on TV and in the press in Holland, it is the real and perceived wrongs of Islam, Muslims and Moroccans. Not least thanks to the ample media coverage she herself can be sure to get, month in, month out.
I dont necessarily
begrudge her that attention; unlike the white crypto-racists that pervade the far right, she is obviously a woman on a heartfelt, fundamentally idealistic mission. But you can not get the media spotlight every week with your criticism of Islam, and simultaneously claim that a culture of self-censorship regarding criticism of Islam pervades the country. If that were true, she wouldnt be quoted or featured every week.
On the second count, Der Spiegel suggests that Muslims, too, should be able to protect themselves against slander, just like the Jews, say, and she counters with an argument that IMO is inconsistent - in two ways, no less.
She says derisively that when radical Imams deride Jews and Christians, we "say they're just exercising their freedom of speech", and she calls this attitude "the West prostrating itself".
So she's against that, I gather; feels that we
shouldnt just accept that as an exercise of freedom of speech.
Then, her argument for that is that "the Islamists dont allow their critics the same right either". Thats two logical fallacies in one, IMO.
To begin with the latter one: since when is the argument that the
Islamists wouldnt allow
their critics the freedom of speech an argument for us to no longer allow it ours, either? Isnt the
difference between their values and ours in this regard the very thing we're fighting for?
Secondly, how can she demand a clampdown on what radical imams say, and at the same time demand freedom for our cartoonists to cause whatever offense? I mean, for sure you could set benchmarks of some sort (offending and insulting, yes, threatening with murder, no), but then you'd have to specify what you're talking about - as it stands, this argument is just not logical - and IMO wrong as well, and thats what I was responding to.
The things you mention, well, thats the whole general story, and we've gone through that a dozen times already. My post was about Hirsi Ali's claims here, specifically.
