Hind Samy...Respect

Submitted by Bryn (United States), Feb 4, 2006 at 18:34

Dear Hind,
Are you really so confused as to the issues here? Let me clarify them:

1) An independent, non-state run newspaper in Denmark by the name of Jyllands-Posten printed pictures of your prophet Mohammed.

2) Jyllands-Posten did this purposefully to force Muslims and Westerners to confront a paradox:

a) The absolute, inviable right of the press to confront all topics with free license

versus

b) The doctine of Muslims to never draw or allow drawn images of Mohammed

The issue isn't really to do with Islam…it is a broader issue essential to the vary existence of Western secular democracy. We are free even when our freedom offends others…free people learn to cope lawfully with those who are merely offensive…you just turn the channel, or argue with them, or if it's a neighbor you deal with it as you see fit within the law.

Hind, perhaps you have heard about some of the bloody history involving state religion in Europe?? RESPECT dictates you understand why a free press matters in the West.

Church indulgences, Martin Luther, 30 years war, etc etc. Blood, blood, torture, blood. Once upon a time, Europe lived much as your Muslim brethren still do…ruled over by corrupt priests and superstitious zealots. Yes, we'd have slit a brothers neck if they joined "the other side". One Holy Roman Emperor after the next killing one group of "heretics" after another. After some 1200 years of this garbage, we finally broke the chains of religion…now we practice as we want but, for the most part, we are governed free of religious dogma and forced ritual. And the free press, the pamphleteers of the last 600 years helped build the intellectual and ideological backbone to culminate in our modern secular society. Clerics no longer dictate how we view the world…unless we choose to allow them to.

RESPECT this history Hind. I believe it's your future. Do you really need to relive these dark ages in the Islamic world to finally see the light!! Do you need to reinvent the wheel?

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