Back in February, 2008 “three men with a Muslim background” were arrested by the Danish police on terrorism charges, suspected of having plotted to murder Kurt Westergaard, a cartoonist for Jyllands-Posten. Westergaard is one of the 12 cartoonists who on September 30, 2005 published cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to protest the tacit enforcement in Danish society of Islam’s taboo on depictions of Muhammad, no matter how banal or inoffensive, through intimidation -- a clear violation of Western freedom of expression.
The Turkish Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) stated, “By reprinting these cartoons [in protest of the threat to Westergaard’s life] we are heading toward a bigger conflict and that shows that both sides will be hostages of their radicals.” Continuing he further demonstrated both the complete absence of self-criticism and the triumphalism of the Islamic worldview that seeks to impose its Sharia-based conceptions – antithetical to true freedom of conscience and expression – on all humanity. He concluded with a thinly veiled threat of violence: “It is not a way of improving of improving your rights and exercising your freedoms when you use these rights for insulting the most sacred values and symbols of others and inciting hatred…This is a very wrong, provocative path – unacceptable.”
February 24, 2008
Universal Islamic 'Blasphemy' Law ?
By Andrew G. Bostom
No comments:
Post a Comment