On Dec 5, 2007 3:06 PM, Waerth waerth@asianet.co.th wrote:
No it is exactly the same. I am not a Muslim myself. My parents raised me Roman Catholic.
One of the things I learned was that: It is considered a gross insult to depict the prophet Muhammed!
So by depicting him you are already insulting the Islam. which is just as heavy an insult to a Muslim as showing Blair's testicles is to some Brits. So these matters are exactly the same.
Any cartoon depicting Muhammed are designed for shock-value for a believing Muslim!
This may be so, but Ariel Sharon is hardly a religious figure, he's a political one. The fact that he happens to be jewish doesn't mean that an insult to him is an insult to his religion. It's the same as saying that an insult to George Bush isn't an insult to christianity. Religious figures are taken way more seriously then political figures are, and this is an artificial construct. Consider, if the mohammed cartoon depicted an ordinary person and the ariel sharon cartoon depicted an ordinary person, which of the two would be worse? If these were just cartoons of ordinary people, and we had to draw a line in the sand with one of them staying and one going, which would you choose?
The Ariel Sharon cartoon is far worse from the standpoint of general decency. Imagine a cartoon depicting Mohammed in the same position (bound, being urinated on and sexually assaulted), and imagine how much worse that cartoon would be then the one you linked to. There are degrees of indecency, and even though muslims can be touchy about mohammed, the ariel sharon cartoon has a much higher degree of general indecency.
--Andrew Whitworth