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Showing posts from February 5, 2006

Equal Treatment or Special Treatment?

I have two questions to Moslems about their fury about the Danish cartoons. 1. Why do you expect expect to be treated better than Christians and Jews in their own countries? Religous satire is part of our Western culture and history since the Enlightenment. Apparently, Moslems want to receive unique, special treatment for their religion, upon threat of violence to Western culture in which they live as a minority. 2. Why do you expect Islam to be accorded special respect, when Islam does not give such respect to other religions? In many Islamic countries, other religions are frequently insulted in state controlled media, especially the Jewish religion. Furthermore, Islam does not grant equal rights to members of other religions, nor the right to proselytize others. As an extreme example, the Taliban destroyed historically and artistically valuable statutes of the Buddha in their effort to eliminate any trace of competing religions. It seems clear to me that these Moslems who a

Calvin and Hobbes and the Religion of Peace

By Ann Coulter Wed Feb 8, 8:16 PM ET As my regular readers know, I've long been skeptical of the "Religion of Peace" moniker for Muslims -- for at least 3,000 reasons right off the top of my head. I think the evidence is going my way this week. The culture editor of a newspaper in Denmark suspected writers and cartoonists were engaging in self-censorship when it came to the Religion of Peace. It was subtle things, like a Danish comedian's statement, paraphrased by The New York Times, "that he had no problem urinating on the Bible but that he would not dare do the same to the Quran." So, after verifying that his life insurance premiums were paid up, the editor expressly requested cartoons of Muhammad from every cartoonist with a Danish cartoon syndicate. Out of 40 cartoonists, only 10 accepted the invitation, most of them submitting utterly neutral drawings with no political content whatsoever. But three cartoons made political points. One showed Muhammad tu

Freedom of the Press Abandoned?

NY Press Kills Cartoons; Staff Walks Out FILE UNDER: Newspapers The editorial staff of the alternative weekly New York Press walked out today, en masse, after the paper's publishers backed down from printing the Danish cartoons that have become the center of a global free-speech fight. Editor-in-Chief Harry Siegel emails, on behalf of the editorial staff: New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to