Murder isn't a protest - its a crime.

Submitted by Logan Berry (United States), Feb 13, 2006 at 23:11

With all respect Dr. Gajewski [Abuse of Moslems in the West], you simply miss the point. It is not that "we in the west" believe that free speech has no limits, but rather it is the response to free speech that is at issue.

While Mayor Giuliani sought (unsuccessfully, mind you) to have a painting removed from a city museum, he did not call for the artist to be murdered. Similarly, Jewish groups are alert for what they deem anti-Semitic acts, yet they too, refrain from calling for the writers' hands to be lopped off at the wrist. The response from the NAACP to percieved racist and descriminatory acts is met with peaceful protest and perhaps a boycott, should the offending party be a commercial venture, while not demanding--literally--the blood of the offender.

Contrast this with the response of the Muslim world. What we see is an ideology at work which refuses to allow a whiff of criticism, stifles dissent, and threatens to murder any who dare challenge a medieval world view in which women are property, non-Muslims are legally considered second-class citizens, and semi-literate imams distill "news" through their own purposely distorted prisms to a largely uneducated and culturally intolerant audience.

Further, Dr. Gajewski, please don't make such sensational claims as "abuse of Muslims in the West," without taking a carefully considered look at the plight of non-Muslims living in Islamic-dominated societies. You want abuse? Try bringing a bible into Riyadh. You'll see abuse firsthand. In the West, Muslims enjoy greater freedom of worship, greater economic freedom, greater freedom of to pursue education, greater legal rights, and yes, greater freedom of speech than non-Muslims (and even most Muslims themselves) do in any Islamic land.

No one in the West would mind if Muslims were simply protesting the offending cartoons. It is the immediate escalation to calls for violence and murder (from "religious leaders" no less) that has swept the Islamic world, that we must fight. And I'm not alone in calling attention to the blatent hypocrisy of the Islamic response, since cartoons, editorials, television broadcasts, and sermons routinely mock, insult, and denigrate Jews, Christians, Hindus, and members of every other faith--and do so with the full blessing of the Islamic governments of their respective nations, since these governments sanction, and often outright control, what is said, printed, and broadcast.

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