[Foundation-l] Racism in Commons

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Dec 5, 2007 3:06 PM, Waerth <waerth at 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