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Controversial Muhammad cartoons stir freedom of speech debate
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BY JONATHAN SAWMILLER
Opinion Writer
In Damascus, rampaging Muslim protesters torched the Danish and Norwegian Embassies.
In Gaza City, Islamic gunmen kidnapped a German citizen and hurled bombs into a French
cultural center.
In Ramallah, ten thousand Muslims rioted, chanting “Bin Laden our beloved, Denmark must
be blown up.”
In Pakistan, thousands of screaming protesters burned and vandalized whatever Western businesses they could find, including KFC, Pizza Hut, and a Norwegian telephone company.
In Afghanistan, Afghan police killed at least a dozen rioters, as thousands of armed Muslims screaming “Death to America” attempted to break into the US base at Bagram.
In London, Muslim protesters carried signs declaring “Butcher those who insult Islam” and warning Europe to “Be prepared for the REAL holocaust.” Hundreds of death threats poured into Danish newspaper offices, and protesters filled the streets of Paris with burning tires. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, the Muslim world is ablaze with howling mobs demanding blood.
The event that precipitated this latest militant -Islamic meltdown was merely the publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, one of which showed the great prophet of Islam wearing a bomb for a turban. Cartoons mocking Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and countless other religions are published around the world on a daily basis, but only Islam demands blood in exchange for ink.
It has become crystal clear to me that there is no room in Islam for tolerance of free press or free speech. Anyone who prints things contrary to the Imams’ latest interpretation of the Koran should be tried as a criminal, according to the top Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia.
Clerics in Gaza City went even further, as one Imam told 9,000 worshippers at the Omari Mosque that those behind the drawings should have their heads cut off. Even politicians in Islamic countries have joined the war on free speech.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told the International Herald Tribune that “Reprinting the cartoons in order to make a point about free speech is an act of senseless brinkmanship. It sends a conflicting message to the Muslim community: that in a democracy, it is permissible to offend Islam.”
I have news for you, Mr. President of Indonesia, you whimpering coward. In a democracy it is permissible to offend Islam, or any other religion, for that matter.
Free speech may insult and offend, but it is absolutely fundamental to the well-being of a democratic state. Any nation that allows religious thugs with suicide bombs to censor the media, is not a free or democratic nation.
Shockingly enough, the major TV networks and media outlets apparently don’t believe that America is a free nation. Citing concerns about “offending” Muslims, they decided not to allow the American people to see the cartoons which started all of this controversy.
This is America, people! We’re supposed to have a free press, right? CNN had no problem showing the “artistic” image of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung, to the disgust of millions of Catholics. Now, CNN refuses to show the Mohammed cartoons out of “respect” for Islam.
Is it because Catholics don’t burn down embassies and riot in the streets? Is that the kind of behavior that gains “respect” and “tolerance” for one’s religious ideas? Give me a break!
When the vast majority of American media engages in self-censorship because they are afraid of “offending” embassy-burning, window-smashing, violence-loving, hate-filled radical Muslims, our rights stand
in grave peril.
Americans have fought and died for our right to freedom of speech and press, and now we’re letting bloodthirsty religious maniacs censor cartoons. How sad.
Jonathan Sawmiller was recently elected ASBSU senator-at-large
BY RO ALVARADO-PARKER
Guest Opinion
The drawings of the Prophet Muhammad that appeared in a Danish newspaper in September 2005 offended the Islamic world. The cartoons that ran in 12 installments of the Jyllands-Posten paper were the result of the newspapers cultural editor making a statement about how difficult it was for Danish children’s author KA