29
Mar
Update on the controversy of the caricature
Written by: pkchukiss (Go to Comments)
29th March, 2006
It is extremely ironic that the monotheist religions themselves demean other religions in their preachings, yet themselves cannot tolerate criticisms and caricature. A law student writes about this double-standard with more alacrity than I did.
[tags]islam, muis, caricature[/tags]
on March 31st, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Butterflies and Wheels was also very good on the cartoon controversy. One of the things Ophelia pointed out was that when so-called ‘community leaders’ step forward and say stupid things, everybody assumes they represent the ‘community’ - but noone seems to ask HOW they got that position, and whether the people in that ‘community’ elected them, or elected to identify with that community. Most of the time these people are self-appointed, and in the case of religions, the followers of that religion are afraid to speak out for themselves against that person, for fear of being seen to be ‘not good Christians/Muslims/etc.’ I know if someone claim to speak for the ‘expat community of Japan’ I’d want to know who they were, and what made them qualified to speak for me, and did I elect them? If I read ‘the expat community of Japan thinks/feels blah blah blah…” I’d be saying “SAYS WHO?”
This sort of thing is NOT democratic, and has no place in a democracy. Criticism is healthy, and if a religion is all it says it is, it should be able to stand up in the face of criticism. I think most religions can’t live up to their own claims, and that’s the problem.
(I have become rather anti-religion in the last few years, I’m afraid, or perhaps I should say pro-reason…)
(Oh, and also the word/number verification thing you’ve got here is REALLY annoying when I get it wrong - it deletes what I wrote and I have to type it all again. I’ve had several long comments deleted so far… can’t it be set to let me try again without deleting the entire comment? It also does this if I ask for a new ID. My screen is quite dark and I often can’t see the letters well!)
on March 31st, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Sorry for the Captcha (that’s what these things are called) if they are unreadable.
I could mess with the plug-in, but I don’t have the confidence to do that, because I took like 2 whole days just to set up this whole thing. I’ll try, but promise you will re-write everything you wrote if I broke it?
To pass this examination, you need to know that the Captcha will only use the numbers 0 to 9, and alphabets A to F in the squiggly picture. Meanwhile I will look into getting the program to keep the originals if things go wrong.
And as all nice webmasters would say, “We apologise for the inconvenience caused!”
on April 1st, 2006 at 1:00 am
To be frank, I was peeved when I read the local Muslim governing authority’s (known as MUIS) official comments in the newspapers. The spokesman was expressing his outrage that the cartoons were a disrespect for his religion.
I don’t think he has yet to grasp the idea of satire. The world would be a very bad state if satire was banned because of “sensitivity”.