Jack Straw is a straw man

Submitted by Aidan Maconachy (Canada), Feb 11, 2006 at 02:47

Jack Straw did not reject freedom of speech as someone in here has been claiming. However he did wimp out by adding needless caveats with respect to "issues of sensitivity".

Where was Jack Straw when the icons and sacred personalities of Christianity were being defiled in the name of art? Silent as the tomb.

Speech is either free - or it isn't.

In the West we are not subject to the dictates and proclamations of mullahs who presume to tell a free people what they can and cannot say. The Canadian journalist Rex Murphy referred to such presumptions as "astonishingly insolent" - and I agree with this assessment.

If Muslims are unhappy with a society in which freedom extends to the right of an author or cartoonist to take artistic licence as he/she sees fit, then there are many countries in the world where Sharia law is practiced. If they feel so strongly about these issues maybe they should go to live in Nigeria or in rural communities in northern Pakistan.

I find it strange that Muslims come into democratic societies as relative newcomers and try to impose their taboos upon people who have a tradition of freedom of speech. They have no right to do this, and when they begin to resort to threat and violence they risk become criminals.

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