[mjn.mixael]

[Mongoose]

when someone reacts inappropriately violent we should do what ever they say.

When we know someone will react inappropriately violent and then provoke them anyway, we're assholes.  It's like poking a tiger with a stick, then being upset when it decides to eat your face.

[An4ximandros]

I think this video sums up what I think about these scandals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jc-x0w_oEY

[Bobboau]

I would ignore them.

the plan is to keep on insulting them till they get over it. till they have the same attitude toward us we have toward them, that is "they are just going to do whatever the **** they want to do"

they cannot riot perpetually, eventually they will need to eat.

[Flipside]

Intolerable behaviour does not generate Tolerance, never has, never will.

What happens when it turns out that people in the Middle East aren't 'little Americans' and that they actually have a different set of values to the US, where their religion, even compared to Americans, is far more important to them than people seem to assume?

It's a very dangerous way to be playing the game of International Relations, just to annoy someone until they give up even trying to find common ground. It's basically saying 'we're setting out to make enemies of them'.

[Polpolion]

I would ignore them.

the plan is to keep on insulting them till they get over it. till they have the same attitude toward us we have toward them, that is "they are just going to do whatever the **** they want to do"

they cannot riot perpetually, eventually they will need to eat.

Excellent idea, we troll them so hard and often that they get bored of retaliatory killings and change their beliefs. It's almost like I'm six years old again.

[Scotty]

It seems to me like the people poking deliberate fun at Islam are missing the point entirely.

That approach only works if they value your (collectively speaking) life more than their (again, speaking collectively, but this time for the smaller group of violent rioters) beliefs.  The ones that riot don't.  If push came to shove, they wouldn't just give up because you pissed them off too many times.

[Flipside]

Must admit, the part that confuses me is the fact that there are many non-Muslims who would rather go down fighting than have Islamic values forced upon them against their will. Does it not, therefore, follow that they have counterparts in Islamic society who would rather go down fighting than have Western values forced upon them against their will?

[Bobboau]

it's like you are using your values as some sort of pawn in some elaborate cultural chess game. we value free speech. we will not censor ourselves just because someone is threatening us.

seriously, if we did bow on this, they WILL find something else to riot about. for example gay marriage. what would you suggest if three years now every time a gay couple married there was a chance that the Islamic world would blow up?

[Bobboau]

Must admit, the part that confuses me is the fact that there are many non-Muslims who would rather go down fighting than have Islamic values forced upon them against their will. Does it not, therefore, follow that they have counterparts in Islamic society who would rather go down fighting than have Western values forced upon them against their will?

what part of drawing a stick figure is forcing anything upon anyone?

[Scotty]

seriously, if we did bow on this, they WILL find something else to riot about. for example gay marriage. what would you suggest if three years now every time a gay couple married there was a chance that the Islamic world would blow up?

I think you've got a wire crossed here.  They're not rioting because "Grrr westerners!"  This has nothing to do with personal freedoms.  This has nothing to do with what goes on in the US.

This has everything to do with people outright mocking their religion.  It's a verbal attack on one of the very few things that's a bastion of security and solidarity to them.  It's being a dick for the stated purpose of being a dick.

There's a big difference between reacting to a personal attack and commenting on something you don't like.  I'll give you a hint: one of them is typically more violent than the other, and isn't really justified.

[Flipside]

It's nothing to do with what the figure is, it's about what it is intended to represent.

You yourself said 'the plan is to keep on insulting them till they get over it. till they have the same attitude toward us we have toward them, that is "they are just going to do whatever the **** they want "'.

Sounds to me like what you want is for them to accept Western values, and the intention is to keep on trollin' until they do so.

Quick Hint, won't work, each wave of insult is remembered for generations to come, insults don't open doors, they close them.

[Flipside]

seriously, if we did bow on this, they WILL find something else to riot about. for example gay marriage. what would you suggest if three years now every time a gay couple married there was a chance that the Islamic world would blow up?

There's a large difference between having the right to not be Muslim and deliberately insulting Muslims though. If there were riots in the Middle East over the growing Gay Marriage laws in the Western World, I wouldn't give a ****, if there were riots over Western Women not wearing head-coverings then, once again, I wouldn't give a ****, because in both cases, it's nothing to do with these people. However, deliberately insulting something that IS close to them, their society and their way of life is a whole other story.

I'll also add that indignation about these things would be a side effect, Gay Marriage was not introduced to offend Muslims, it's just a possible side-effect, and not one that I care about, whereas these cartoons are deliberately designed to insult, and are deliberately focused on the core of their belief system.

Some would argue that the existence of the WBC is a prime example of how good America is at Freedom of Speech, and I'd agree, but the whole reason it is an example of this is because they are a bunch of obnoxious pricks, and even America struggles with dealing with them at times. Acting like obnoxious pricks might be a 'prime' example of Freedom of Speech, but it's still acting like obnoxious pricks.

[Bobboau]

ok, what if following riots in the mid east there was a wave of anti-gay sentiment in the western world, people saying we shouldn't do it because it is insulting to islam, and as a reaction to both of these a bunch of gay people, as publicly as possible had a bunch of marriage ceremonies as an act of defiance?

[Flipside]

Then they'd have to deal with it, like Anti-abortion campaigners. The whole purpose of Freedom of Speech is to give everyone a voice. You don't have to agree with them, and the odds are that they would get nowhere because such things have been tried before, but the whole idea that hurling abuse is some kind of solution to possible future problems is absolutely ridiculous.

And the fact is, if we hadn't been hurling insults, they wouldn't have got angry, so we are creating a problem, and then claiming that continuing to create that problem will somehow solve it.

With regards to the idea of mass Gay Marriages, as long as it is on soil where it's legal, there's not a damn thing that can be done about it, and they are within their rights to hold the ceremony, however, once again, there's a difference between defying religious fundamentalism and deliberately going out of our way to insult peoples religion.

[Bobboau]

I included the phrase "as an act of defiance" quite deliberately, they are doing it, with the intention of sending the message that they will not be stopped by this. that is equivalent to what is being discussed here, so, we know they perceive it as an insult, they do it anyway, therefore it is as much an insult as drawing a picture of Mohamed just because you were told not to.

[Flipside]

The difference is that the drawings and film were designed, first and foremost, to insult Islam and Muslims in general. Whereas Gay marriage is something that certain religious sects just happen to take offense to, but that is not the intention of the act of Gay Marriage, simply a side-effect. It's the difference between someone choosing to take offense at another group of people, and someone going out of their way to cause offense to another group of people.

[Bobboau]

first off, the original cartoons, were not intended to "insult" Islam, they were a part of a discussion on self censorship (of all ****ing things!) and criticism of Islam. basically they were talking about exactly the thing we are right now.

second we have the right to criticize or insult people.

third, again I will point out, in my example, the ceremonies are happening as an explicit act of defiance, they know it is perceived as an offense, they are doing it to say that they will not have their way of life dictated. now that the side effect is well known it's happening both in spite and because of that.

drawing Mohamed is something that certain religious sects just happen to take offense to.

[Flipside]

Drawing Mohammed, the centre of their religion in a deliberately insulting light is deliberately going out to offend every Muslim out there. Gay marriage, however, is slowly growing into an accepted thing, there is a massive, massive difference between the West standing up for Western Values, and the West attacking Eastern ones in the name of defending their values.

To be honest, it scares me, because the last time caricatures were used to represent an entire religion in bad light by the media, it was Der Stürmer in the mid 1930's and the caricatures that time were of Jewish beliefs and acts in the build up to the Jewish persecution of the 1930's-40's. It was a subtle thing then, and it is a subtle thing now, but that's how you De-humanise an entire culture, one step at a time.

[Bobboau]

drawing public figures in a deliberately insulting light is common in the western world, we poke fun at political leaders, historical figures, and fictional characters all the time, often to make a point, this is a common form of discourse.

and I hereby invoke Godwin's Law, I win, good day sir.