One should be able to criticize ideas.

Forums: Politics
Email this Topic • Print this Page

3 die in new Pakistan protests

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/15/pakistan.cartoons/index.html

LAHORE, Pakistan (CNN) -- Deadly violence erupted Wednesday across Pakistan as several thousand demonstrators stormed through the streets of Peshawar and Lahore to protest the publication of caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, police said.

At least three people died in a third day of protests and clashes with police -- two in Peshawar and one in Lahore. Authorities said dozens had been injured.

There were smaller outbreaks of violence in five other Pakistani cities.

According to authorities in Peshawar, protesters, many of them students, set fire to a KFC restaurant, a cinema and several other buildings, including a Daewoo bus terminal that contained 16 buses, as they rampaged through the city. A number of cars and motorcycles were also burned.

Police used tear gas to try to break up the crowd.

At least two people were killed in violence in Lahore and Islamabad on Tuesday.

In Lahore, protesters burned more than a dozen buildings, including the provincial assembly building, two banks, the offices of Norwegian cell phone company Telenor and a KFC.

Police responded with tear gas as authorities called in Pakistani paramilitary forces to calm the disturbance.

In Islamabad, protesters attacked the Foreign Ministry building, as well as Telenor offices, police said.

Protests have escalated in recent weeks, more than four months after the political cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed were originally published in a Danish newspaper. Some Muslims consider his depiction to be blasphemy.

CNN is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of the Prophet Mohammed because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself.

Religion is a set of doctrines, and doctrines are ideas.
To criticize an idea is always meaningful, because ideas are always meaningful.

To criticize religion and tell of its effects (e. g. "it incites people to violence") is therefore meaningful, and one should be able to say that, in a comic strip or not.

Free speech should not be unlimited, because some forms of speech can be harmful and/or defamatory. For example, it should not be legal to tell people to kill people. But when it is something meaningful, it always should be legal, and that includes the criticism of ideas.

The pictures are not harmful. If something harmless incites people to do something harmful, it is the people who are at fault, not the thing that incites them.

If people run on the some philosophy or metaphysics we do not like, it should be legal to criticize the ideas. Of course, criticizing the person is another whole idea.

But criticizing the idea of a person is not the same as criticizing the person itself. To say that one's beliefs and one's person is the same is non sequitor. And non sequitor is what those people are doing right now.

They should stop committing non sequitor.

One and one's ideas are not the same. One is a human, and nothing else. When one commits non sequitor, it's his or her problem, and nobody else's. The one who is in the wrong is not the who who criticizes, but the one who refuses to inquire.

Topic Stats
Top Replies
Link to this Topic

Type: Discussion • Score: 1 • Views: 609 • Replies: 1

No top replies

Italian minister puts Mohammad cartoon on T-shirts

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Reform Minister Roberto Calderoli has had T-shirts made emblazoned with cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a move that could embarrass Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government.

Calderoli, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, told Ansa news agency on Tuesday that the West had to stand up against Islamist extremists and offered to hand out T-shirts to anyone who wanted them.

"I have had T-shirts made with the cartoons that have upset Islam and I will start wearing them today," Ansa quoted Calderoli as saying.

He said the T-shirts were not meant to be a provocation but added that he saw no point trying to appease extremists.

"We have to put an end to this story that we can talk to these people. They only want to humiliate people. Full stop. And what are we becoming? The civilization of melted butter?" Calderoli said.

The publication of the cartoons in some European newspapers, including one showing an image of the prophet with a bomb for a turban, have provoked widespread anger in the Muslim world.

Many Muslims believe it is blasphemous to depict the Prophet and there have been a number of violent protests in the Middle East and Asia.

The Northern League, which is gearing up for an April general election, has leapt on the controversy to promote its own far-right political agenda.

RELIGIOUS WAR

The League has long led the charge against illegal immigration and its leaders say the cartoon violence shows the dangers of allowing Muslim immigrants to settle in Italy.

"This is only the tip of the iceberg of the religious war Islamist extremists have declared on us," Calderoli told reporters earlier this month.

The Italian press reported that Berlusconi last week urged Calderoli to take a more moderate stance over the issue, but the minister said on Tuesday he had no intention of keeping quiet.

"As for Berlusconi, seeing as he has compared himself to Jesus Christ, I would call on him to follow (Christ's) example and think about evangelizing Christian values and not be evangelized by Islam," Calderoli was quoted as saying.

Berlusconi caused a storm at the weekend when he said: "I am the Jesus Christ of politics...I sacrifice myself for everyone."

Maintaining a steady stream of anti-foreigner invective, Calderoli earlier this month dismissed a Palestinian journalist on a television chat show, as: "that suntanned lady". He also said he was delighted newcomers to Italy would not benefit from a government scheme to encourage people to have more children.

"I am proud of the fact that the baby bonus will only go to Italian citizens. I say to all those Ali Babas that either Allah or their governments will have to think of them."

The League's anti-immigrant stance has found a sympathetic audience in the wealthy north of Italy, where many third world immigrants have settled in recent years.

League politicians say the immigrants are responsible for growing crime rates and are also challenging Italians for jobs.

Latest opinion polls say the League will get up to six percent of the vote in the April election against just 3.9 percent in the 2001 ballot. However, it is not clear what part the anti-immigrant rhetoric has played in this increase.

0 Replies

One should be able to criticize ideas.

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know