Free speech or just harassment?

Italy's Reform Minister Roberto Calderoli has had T-shirts made emblazoned with cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a move that could embarrass Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government.

today.reuters.com...
Looking for opinons whether this should not be allowed in a free society.

I know it's inappropriate but because of that should he not be allowed to?

Ferretman, this may be a little difficult for you to grasp, but there's a different between "allowed" and "appropriate".

There's a reason that newspapers don't refer to blacks using racial epiteths, or call politicians liars, or show pictures of decomposing bodies. 1, there's no real value in it, and 2, it causes a certain group of people pain.

These cartoons making fun of Mohammad are an example of something that a good editor would have said "What good comes of publishing these?" The paper in Denmark that published them was a right-wing publication that thought they could incite anti-muslim feelings after there were violent reactions by people to the cartoons. There was no news value in the cartoons, no informational value whatsoever, just the purest purpose of doing damage. This is very much the definition of free speech.

What is there to gain by wearing something mocking another person's religion?

I'd rather just give them a Chick tract.

Originally posted by Amethyst
What is there to gain by wearing something mocking another person's religion?

I'd rather just give them a Chick tract.

Hee!

It's be just as effective and less offensive.

What I think a lot of people here fail to understand is that there's a religious law forbidding the depiction of Mohammad and God, etc. It's based on the Old Testament (remember that the OT is also one of their holy books) verses about not worshipping idols.

The Jews also follow this, though the Christians allow depictions of God/Jesus/the disciples/angels, etc. Jews and Muslims do not permit depictions like this because their religious teachers say it leads to worshiping a certain idea (most Christians, if asked what Jesus looks like, will say he's got long golden-brown hair and a golden brown beard and looks English and has blue eyes. God usually looks like a variant of the way Michaelangelo painted him.)

So it's offensive to them if one of their own does this. When an outsider group (from countries that send missionaries to convert them to Christianity) does it, it's extremely offensive.

It's like... well, as if the Muslims somehow printed up cartoons showing Jesus engaged in homosexual activities with his disciples... and put that in the national press of (say) Iran.

How many Christians would go ballistic over that?

Well, Pilgrim, that's about how many Muslims went ballistic over the cartoons (and the answer is that not all of them did.)

Originally posted by Byrd

Originally posted by Amethyst
What is there to gain by wearing something mocking another person's religion?

I'd rather just give them a Chick tract.

Hee!

It's be just as effective and less offensive.

What I think a lot of people here fail to understand is that there's a religious law forbidding the depiction of Mohammad and God, etc. It's based on the Old Testament (remember that the OT is also one of their holy books) verses about not worshipping idols.

The Jews also follow this, though the Christians allow depictions of God/Jesus/the disciples/angels, etc. Jews and Muslims do not permit depictions like this because their religious teachers say it leads to worshiping a certain idea (most Christians, if asked what Jesus looks like, will say he's got long golden-brown hair and a golden brown beard and looks English and has blue eyes. God usually looks like a variant of the way Michaelangelo painted him.)

So it's offensive to them if one of their own does this. When an outsider group (from countries that send missionaries to convert them to Christianity) does it, it's extremely offensive.

It's like... well, as if the Muslims somehow printed up cartoons showing Jesus engaged in homosexual activities with his disciples... and put that in the national press of (say) Iran.

How many Christians would go ballistic over that?

Well, Pilgrim, that's about how many Muslims went ballistic over the cartoons (and the answer is that not all of them did.)

muslims actually belive in jesus so they would never make a picture of jesus either becuase they see it just as illegle as making a picture of mohammed.

[edit on 16-2-2006 by iqonx]

It's freedom of speech. Government has no right to restrict someone from saying something offensive to someone else. It's only offensive because they believe it's wrong to have pictures of Mohammed. The cartoons weren't even moderately offensive. They were remarkably tame compared to U.S. political cartoons. If you restrict things like the Mohammed cartoons, then true political cartoons - ones that actually harshly criticize people and mock others - would also have to be banned.

Freedom of speech is freedom of speech. It's not "freedom of speech unless someone is offended."

Funny thing is, your typical picture of Jesus most likely doesn't resemble Jesus. He didn't have long hair, for one thing. He was a Nazarene, not a Nazarite.

There are many who state that Muslims should not feel offended due to the infinitude of pictures degrading Jesus Christ, however, we fail to actualize that these are spawned in the west, and not the Middle East. Had Al Jazeera published pictures of Jesus in a degrading manner, we here in the west could expect tatamount retribution.

The further perpetuity of these images products a much larger inticement of anti-western thought in Islamic followers, and continues to fuel the waves of protests. It's simply irational at this point.

We know news media has freedom of speech, now express your rationality for once.

Luxifero