[en] Drawings of a profet

[Darius]

Hey guys

You propably all know what I'm talking about, the drawings of the profet Mohammed. With the current situation growing out of hand, I would like to know your thoughts on this subject. I've only heard the goverments speaking on the matter, nothing about how the people feel.

So, how does people in the world feel about this?

[Webmaster]

the muslime people are taken offensive of it. maybe christians would feel the same, if there are such drawings of jesus or the pope.

mohammed is for muslimes untouchable. the freedom of speech should respect such feelings.

but riots against european nations isn't the answer. it also feeds the common but senseless conclusion: muslimes are terrorists!

we, as citizens of western world, have to learn to respect and accept the muslimes as people ... not as fellows of bin laden or sarkawi.

maybe the muslimes need a bit more sensitiveness about western culture and their perspective of humor and terror.


// note
due to it's explosiveness moved to the DMZ!

[Traveller]

For now I can say that these caricatures prove to be right - Islam, in its minority (because this radicalism and fanaticism is obviously the minority of the active Islam), is a barbaric and explosive teaching. And even if we consider these drawings to be disrespect to the Muslim people, then the Muslim's own reaction is an even bigger disrespect and IMHO justifies these drawings. And I wonder if it was some other power doing such demonstrations, f.e. if angry Bulgarians started burning Danish, Norwegian, French or other European countries flags and block the respective embassies in Bulgaria, armed to the teeth, how would Europe react? I really doubt that for us Europe would show so much patience! So the only conclusion, which comes to my mind is that Europe is afraid of the Muslim world and with this case it shows its weakness once again. And all its bragging about human and civil rights, freedom of speech etc. counts just for the normal situations when Europe has the upper hand...

[Xuca]

I remember when we arrested their terrorist who was accused for the attack in Madrid. Some people feared that we may become the target, but it was long time ago, and nothing happened...yet...
But I'm not sure that the goverment forgot it, in the last few months you could see men from Zandarmerija (some kind of special ops) all over Belgrade, they always hang out at the local subway (actually, there is only one subway station in Belgrade, rest is normal railroad) near Kalenic market and law college. I don't know why are they there, but it may well be the reason...

[Webmaster]

right, it's dangerous to react short sighted ... diplomacy is sometimes a blinded gamble to a achieve a higher goal.

the arabic tradition eye for an eye, tooth fo a tooth maybe also a part in how the arabic muslimes react.

the real dilema are the business relations. europe and the rest of the world needs their oil and the arabic nations buy other products from the western nations. you cannout shut down this so easily.

@xuca
normally the government want to show strength in such measure. the same evening on 9/11 i went home. the whole afternoon police sirenes were heard in frankfurt. later all skycrapers were evacuated and darkened.
at home we have american neighbors. they are higher officers on a apache airbase. as i arrived there were to humvees with a dozens soldiers out partrouling weapons ready and monitoring every person closely

[Heretic]

Maybe someone could show me how do these caricatures look like?

[Elvain]

I try to understan their reaction. There are several reasons why the reaction was as it was:
1) muslim (or moslem to spell it correctly) societies are much more religious than ours. The prophet Mohammed is for them much more untouchable than Jesus in our secularized societies

Though I can eastily imagine what would be a reaction of people in Poland if the would see caricatures of the pope John Paul II. being the same as those of Mohammed.

2) discompatibility of symbols:
prophet Mohammed means much more to all muslim societies than flag of their nation. National flag is a symbol that came from Europe and was imported to all other states of the world. But each civilization understand the flag in a diferent way. (there is even a large diference between meaning of flag of the USA for USAmericans and meaning of flag of any european state for it's citizens)
And prophet mohammed means uncomparably more to muslims all over the world than a state symbol for us!
for this point of view, burning our flags is not as big disrespect towards us as those caricatures are

3) freedom of the speach:
in most of MiddleEastern states there exists a cenzure, even in democratic states such as Israel! Most of us consider Al-Jazeera as probably the most objective arabian TV, but to get politicaly objective information from Qatar(whwre Al-Jazeera is from) you need to watch TV Al-Arabia which is not from Qatar.
For ordinary muslims it is normal that the state controlls media. So the think that it is the state who is responsible for such thing. So they protest against Denmark (and then France and others) instead of protesting against the Papers.
They don't understand that the state has no right to influence what will and won't be printed in the newspaper. It is the same like we don't understand many things that are normal in muslim world and have own logic we don't understand

these are main reasons of why do I think what I think about this topic.

It is a big misunderstanding caused by diferent values.
We (the people in the West) have almost no respect towards religious people. And if we have some, it's mostly towards christians. Furthemore this "respect" is mostly hypocritical (it is like: "don't provoke them they are bigotic religious-blinded people, let's not talk about religions with them. They are dumb)

We know how impulsive they are towards religious topics. We should respect them. We always talk about oursleves that we are smarter than muslims, we are not blinded by any religions etc. that we are more ahead, more objective and that we respect values of others.
This issue is a proof that we are nopt better. It shows again that we respect only the things we understand. And as we don't understand their religiosity, we don't respect it (or at least those who printed those caricatures) as they don't uinderstand our freedom of speach and other our values and so don't respect them.
We disrespect them coz they don't live in democtaric societies and that religion regulates everything in their world. We disrespect them because they are not very tolerant.
They disrespect us because for them we are not religious enough. They don't understand how can we live without faith.

It was pointless provocation (from their point of view. We have the right to release what we like, but when it disrespects somebody we shuold find whugh correctness in ourselves to apologize.
Apologize of Danish government at the beggining (thought it is not responsible) would make the things calmer. Now it tured to emotional way.

and last words:
islam is not a faith of radicals. There is over 1 billion of muslims and if there are several thousands among them who support terrorists it's ridiculous to make connections between Mohammed and Bin Laden and Zarkawi. It's the same like making connections between Jesus and Hitler

btw. Has anyone ever seen any carricatures of Jesus in muslim newspaper?
they make jokes from our values that are ridiculous to them. We do the same. We(both we and muslims) are all the same. We(people of the west) are no way better than they. We disrespect them the same way they do. And furthemore they feel being endangered and furthemore we need them. So let's respect someone we need, please

almost forgot to say:
though I think that the guild is on our side, the way they react is little too much. Though I think their reactions were better than our reactionon Iranian president Ahmadinejad speaking about Holocaust being made up. They are proud of their religion but we are not even proud of our humanity. Or did we already lost it too?

They protest by boycotting our goods and burning our flags. We normaly protest by peaceful demonstrations (if we protest), but we can't afford to boycott their goods - oil. It's easy. If we could we would do it. But in our eyes Holocaust is not worth the comfort we live in...

sorry for the longth of the post :blush:

[Xuca]

Freedom of speech is disputable, I think (but i'm not 100% sure) that in Germany it's forbiden to to have nazi symbols. Here it's not forbidden, but when some skinheads broke in an anti-fashist convention in Novi Sad, they were all arrested.

I dislike western society for the same reasons the muslims do, among others. We are here all moderately religous, maybe because it was first the muslims who tried to kill our faith, and than the comunists.

And not all the muslims are so religous, look at the Bosnians. I don't know, but they probably aren't more religious than us. And what about north African Arabs? Egyptians were victims of attack from their brothers.

Freedom of speech is just a mask, Bush is one imperialist religious fanatic, who wants to kill all muslims and seize their oil. It's like a mixture of the Crusader wars and I and II world war. I can just see comunism comming back, I heard that they did quite well on the last elections in Russia, finished second right after the Putin's party.

[Elvain]

Freedom of speech is disputable, I think (but i'm not 100% sure) that in Germany it's forbiden to to have nazi symbols. Here it's not forbidden, but when some skinheads broke in an anti-fashist convention in Novi Sad, they were all arrested.I think that's good that something is forbidden but stil it's not a cenzure as it works in muslim world.

And not all the muslims are so religous, look at the Bosnians. I don't know, but they probably aren't more religious than us. And what about north African Arabs? Egyptians were victims of attack from their brothers.

Freedom of speech is just a mask, Bush is one imperialist religious fanatic, who wants to kill all muslims and seize their oil. It's like a mixture of the Crusader wars and I and II world war. I can just see comunism comming back, I heard that they did quite well on the last elections in Russia, finished second right after the Putin's party.not all muslims are such religious but generaly you can say that Americans are much more religious than Europeand and Muslims are much more religious than Americans. You can't apply it on everybody of course (you'll find many muslims that are more religiously open than many europeans)
Just want to say that those muslims who demonstrated their anger were withuot any doubt more religious than most of europeans

And Bush himself is a separate topic.
And communists... ehm, even here the last unreformed communist party in post-socialist states was for quite long time 2nd most supported party. Fortunately they now fell on 3rd place. But still some 15-20% of voters would support them what is in post-communist country IMO little too much

but we shuold open a separate thread to discuss it..

[Darius]

<3 Elvain! I allmost absolutly agree with everything you say. The danes are very divided on this subject, but with the recent attacks on the embassies, people are turning against the muslims.

Personally I beliefe, the editor of the newspaper had some mental issuses. And I support the muslims who want an apology from the newspaper, however, those who one from the danish goverment - I'd say they are insane and that their request is preposterous. The danish goverment has got nothing to do with this.. Fogh could had done many things to prevent this crisis to occur, but if he apologieses, he goes against our consistution, it's as simpel as that..

Btw Heretic, I'll try and find those pics for you.. I'll talk to you on msn later on.

[Traveller]

Elvain, yes, maybe we're not better than them (although I personally think that we're much much better, but hey - I'm just stupid and narrow-minded, right?), but do you think they're better than us? Yes, I admit that f.e. Arabs had some sides during the middle ages, in which they were much more advanced than the Europeans. I admit that they had quite a good culture. But when I watch them being fanatically controlled by their own leaders (who btw I bet they don't give a sh*t about their own brain-washed people), when they burn flags and foreign embassies, when they kidnap foreigners and even in the other cases - when they blow themselves up in the middle of a crowded market, when they follow so blindly and fanatically "those above", all in the name of this very same Mohammed and the "one true God", and I don't even want to mention everything, which the Ottomans did again in the same name, well... I'm sorry, but even the Catolic Crusades, even combined with the Inquisition (which had nothing to do with Islam), were nothing compared to the Islamic fanaticism. And I really keep a very deep hatred and disgust to this! Well, you might say, these radicals and fanatics are just a small part of the Moslems, just as the Inquisitors and the fanatic Christians were/are a small part. And yes - I agree that Islam is just a weapon in the hands of the "Moslem" leaders, just like Christianity is a weapon for control of the masses. But I don't see Christians blowing themselves up or demonstrating, all masked up, with automatic guns raised high, shouting the name of Jesus like brainless idiots! And with all the respect I have for the true (or at least true for me) and peaceful Moslems (and the same with the peaceful Christians, cuz I also despise and hate the Christian hipocricy and the cases of blind fanaticism), I have to say that for me Islam is the religious gunpowder, which ignites the most easily of all the religious gunpowders humanity has ever invented! And their reaction now proves this for me. Yes, if they want apology, I agree that they have the right to want it from the papers. But they don't! Is this because they're blinded only by anger or is it because they're blinded, but not only by anger, but by controlled anger? And an anger controlled not by them...

And once again I ask - what would Europe's reaction be if it wasn't Moslems, but Bulgarians, burning foreign flags (and doing it quite intentionally and provocativelly on the mass medias), blocking European missions and kidnapping foreigners? And I'll give my answer - we would have been claimed to be savage terorists and in the best case we would suffer a total embargo. In a worse case we would follow the fate of Serbia and the NATO bombings... Why? Because we have no oil! Consider it weakness or just political hipocrisy, however you like it, but the Moslems (especially the Arabs) have something, which "the West" wants and the know and use this to wave their ... wherever they want - be it because of some drawings, which offend them (btw these same drawings were first printed in September. Why's all this noise now?) or because the people in Paris feel discriminated...


P.S. And yes, I admit that I don't like at all Islam in its radical and fanatic form, which btw might be a small part, but it's active enough for twice of it all. But, hey, I also don't like any monotheistic big official mass-controlling religion, so don't mind what I say - I'm just a hater!

[Xuca]

I'm sorry, but even the Catolic Crusades, even combined with the Inquisition (which had nothing to do with Islam), were nothing compared to the Islamic fanaticism.
I disagree.
But I don't see Christians blowing themselves up or demonstrating, all masked up, with automatic guns raised high, shouting the name of Jesus like brainless idiots!
You haven't seen the Yugoslavian wars.
And once again I ask - what would Europe's reaction be if it wasn't Moslems, but Bulgarians, burning foreign flags (and doing it quite intentionally and provocativelly on the mass medias), blocking European missions and kidnapping foreigners? And I'll give my answer - we would have been claimed to be savage terorists and in the best case we would suffer a total embargo. In a worse case we would follow the fate of Serbia and the NATO bombings... Why? Because we have no oil! Consider it weakness or just political hipocrisy, however you like it, but the Moslems (especially the Arabs) have something, which "the West" wants and the know and use this to wave their ... wherever they want - be it because of some drawings, which offend them (btw these same drawings were first printed in September. Why's all this noise now?) or because the people in Paris feel discriminated...
True. I don't know about Bulgaria, but if we did this, well, we have something they want, but it can only be used in two ways: war and alliance. In case of burning flags, it would be war. You ask yourself what do we have, and I say to you - a great strategic position.
P.S. And yes, I admit that I don't like at all Islam in its radical and fanatic form, which btw might be a small part, but it's active enough for twice of it all. But, hey, I also don't like any monotheistic big official mass-controlling religion, so don't mind what I say - I'm just a hater!
It looks to me that the radical Islam is Middle-eastern Islam.


But ask yourselves: what is more valuable - lives of innocent people, or an appology? I think the lives.

[NaVatar]

But ask yourselves: what is more valuable - lives of innocent people, or an appology? I think the lives.

Do innocent people have to be punished for a drawing/apology?

[Xuca]

I thought that they should appologise, otherwise innocents will suffer. I don't know how clear I was.

I just remembered some thing - Mohhamed appeared in South Park, along with Jesus, Moses, Devil, God and others. I was little back then when I watched it, and thought it's cool, but I don't think that way anymore.

[hawk_knight]

i would like to say that we in holland also have a tv spot where the gate of heaven is over run by people who had drink redbull and that the yoverthrow the gate keeper and run fly to heaven

and there more TV-spots of that sort.

some people here are complaining about that but they dont go outside and riot, burn flags etc.

They discuss it with the company who is involved and they will change the tv spot

[hawk_knight]

I just remembered some thing - Mohhamed appeared in South Park, along with Jesus, Moses, Devil, God and others. I was little back then when I watched it, and thought it's cool, but I don't think that way anymore.


you got a point there Xuca but look you sayed that mohammed was in southpark right
but did they complain about that ?

they complain about a drawing but what is wurse a drawing or southpark where they really take realigion down to its knees


i know that is is not good that drawing but if they coplain about that but why did they not complain about southpark ?


this is just a thought
it is not offensiv to anyone

[Angryminer]

When talking about "riots" you have to take the momentum of a riot into account. When lucky/unlucky a wave of anger goes through the population or, if not, people become uninterested within some minutes. A reaction of that size and complexity has no deterministic nature.

Angryminer

[hawk_knight]

When talking about "riots" you have to take the momentum of a riot into account. When lucky/unlucky a wave of anger goes through the population or, if not, people become uninterested within some minutes. A reaction of that size and complexity has no deterministic nature.

Angryminer


sorry did not knew the meaning of the word riot :wink: :rolleyes:

i had to translate something from dutch to english so i could had chosen the wrong word :silly:

thanks for pointing it out angry :go:

[Elvain]

Traveller, I say yes you are the same like them.

They protest against whole Denmark because one danish journalist decided to print pictures on which he makes fun of the most respected person of the second biggest world's religion. And what is reaction of us (those who are in your opinion better than THEY)? Let's put all muslims into one big group. They all are fundamentalists, they are all fanatics who attack foreign embassies, right? so I say that you do the same what they do.

The journalists did much worse thing (for muslims-from muslim point of view) than those muslims who burn our flags (for us-from our point of view). For them making fun of the Prophet of their religion is much more important than making fun from our lord Jesus.

I'm sorry, but even the Catolic Crusades, even combined with the Inquisition (which had nothing to do with Islam), were nothing compared to the Islamic fanaticism.based on what? what is worse? killing in the name of god or killing in the name of the same god?
One kills innocent people that had the bad luck and live in a city that lies on a road to someone's saint city, the other one kills innocent people who had the bad luck that they live in the capital of a state which armies occupy someone elses land. Tell me what is the diference.

(what is the diference between Hitler and Stalin? I say there is no diference. There is no diference between those 2 and Bin Laden, there is no diference between those 3 and church inquisitors, they just were and are killing on the name of something else)

But I don't see Christians blowing themselves up or demonstrating, all masked up, with automatic guns raised high, shouting the name of Jesus like brainless idiots!
you cxan't see them. But believe me, if army of Saudi Arabia would occupy Bulgaria and Bulgarians could do nothing against it, there would emerge enough people doing not the same but very similar things.
Furthemore, you also don't see students killed by their classmate in the moslem world, you don't see it in India nor Zimbabwe, but you see it in Germany, in the USA etc.
Our criminality is just little diferent - not so brutal in most of cases. But even several years ago we didn't seem to be much better as our secret polices ordered to kill religious leaders in the name of some other ideology. And it was not caused only by the evilness of that ideology.

But again tell me, who is better or worse? mass murderer who is killing in the name of some god or mass murderer that kills to have some fun and "true action" in his life?


I have to say that for me Islam is the religious gunpowder, which ignites the most easily of all the religious gunpowders humanity has ever invented! And their reaction now proves this for me. Yes, if they want apology, I agree that they have the right to want it from the papers. But they don't! Is this because they're blinded only by anger or is it because they're blinded, but not only by anger, but by controlled anger? And an anger controlled not by them...
And do you want some more reasons why you see those bombers originated mostly in islamic world?
there is so high social tension in their societies caused by high demograpichal growth that it is comparable to Western Europe in 1840's. And if you look into Europe of 1840's you'll see many revolutions fighting their governments and killing innocent people in the name of nation or social class.
The situation of our societies and their societies is completely diferent. You can't compare it, it is natural that there is much higher agresivity in their societies than in ours. And you can see the same violence not only in muslim countries but also in all other countries which population grows as much as muslim (example - Sri Lanka, african states such as Rwanda where are no muslims and many many more)
The enemies of terrorists are not only Western governments but also their own governments. They want to change regimes, but they can't. They would like to fight for their freedom but how can they fight tanks? Revolutions in Europe fought soldiers armed by the same weapons as they have. It'S incomparably harder to fight tanks. So they try to fight in other way. And terrorism was a weaopn of the Irish and Basques untill 2001 too. What was the diference between them?

And once again I ask - what would Europe's reaction be if it wasn't Moslems, but Bulgarians, burning foreign flags (and doing it quite intentionally and provocativelly on the mass medias), blocking European missions and kidnapping foreigners? And I'll give my answer - we would have been claimed to be savage terorists and in the best case we would suffer a total embargo. In a worse case we would follow the fate of Serbia and the NATO bombings... you are very wrong, mate

Do you know what would be the reaction of Europe when this happened in Bulgaria? There would come wery strong diplomatical note to Bulgarian government from touched governments and there would be said: pacify your people or we will understand it as attack against our state. The situation of Serbia was something very diferent.
And Bulgaria would give imediate apology and the government would pacify that part of protesters such as Czech government pacified pacified demonstrations against IMF and WB severalk years ago (and those demonstrants were also burning houses and such).
Such things really happen even inside our civilization, we just throw there eggs and tomatoes instead og granades and fired bottles.
But I know very well that people in my country did the same when their country was occupied by Communist armies. They were attacking the soldiers with the same weapons as muslim demonstrants used against european embassies. Thus you can see that those people are not terrorists but just angry people who live in much worse situation than we do.

And we even make fun from the symbols they really respect. I don't give a sh*t if anyone burns flag of my country, for me the symbol of my values and my country is not the flag, but The castle where my president lives and the rights I have. For them it is Prophet Mohammed.
Because we have no oil! Consider it weakness or just political hipocrisy, however you like it, but the Moslems (especially the Arabs) have something, which "the West" wants and the know and use this to wave their ... wherever they want - be it because of some drawings, which offend them (btw these same drawings were first printed in September. Why's all this noise now?) or because the people in Paris feel discriminated...
hehe. fact 1: they hold something we need
fact 2: they are much more religious than we are

what is the best to do? make fun from their religion? For me this is childish.

and you know very well that the situation in Paris has no religious context. It was a social movement, not a religious movement. And that social movement was done by people who were not educated in peaceful values of calm western society but partly western values and partly values of their parents who left countries with very high social tension

i know that is is not good that drawing but if they coplain about that but why did they not complain about southpark ?
one answer you got from Angryminer and here is another:

they probably haven't seen Southpark as they consider it as very decadent fun.

The violence emerged when such fun emerged in newspaper (unfortunately I don't know the character of the newspaper)

and it probably emerged so late because no muslim who would care seen it... maybe?

As I said. If you live in comfort things won't make you fire up buildings that easily. But when you live in constant social tension, you are under much harder social preassure, what leads into agressivity

[Webmaster]

the first danish newspaper printing them is considered left-conservative ...

// edit
every born human is equal in it's potential (if healthy)!