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The reason this is always such an "outrage" when the Muslim religion is parodied is historical. The religion was founded on the idea of spreading the itself as

by ErrantX 17y ago

The reason this is always such an "outrage" when the Muslim religion is parodied is historical. The religion was founded on the idea of spreading the itself as widely as possible. Certain leaders (the founder himself even) achieved this through conquering and control. Which was fine thousands of years ago when being invaded was just part and parcel of life. :) Nowadays the original edicts don't really have any answers of what to do when you get a detractor from the religious teachings (i.e. a parody such as this). Hence extremists turn to literal interpretations and go for violence. EDIT: hmm, not that I mean to suggest Islam is a violent religion - this was meant as an explanation to the other comments that were wondering why slamming Islam elicits such a violent response from extremists compared to other religions - it is historical. (I've scrapped all the respectful nonsense - it was a quick opinion at the end of a comment relating to something different. I never intended it to be taken so seriously :))

CWuestefeld 17y ago
Voted back up out of negative territory. I strongly oppose the sentiment (I'll avoid the colloquial "violently oppose"). But it's still an important viewpoint in a discussion like this.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
  - jazzdev 17y ago
    'censoring ourselves' is not 'ignoring them'
jerf 17y ago
If we're going to be that respectful of Islam, why are we not going to be that respectful of Christianity? Or, relevant to the current discussion, Scientology? Because they don't threaten violence anywhere near as credibly? That's a terrible, terrible incentive to set up. (But perhaps you have another answer?)
- ErrantX 17y ago
  [most of this was incoherent - sorry] Perhaps the suggestion of be respectful is the wrong choice of words; probably I mean "avoid inciting the extremist elements" instead (till they become irrelevant). What would you suggest as an alternate solution?
  - jerf 17y ago
    Are you familiar with the logic as to why we "don't negotiate with terrorists"? It is not because the people saying that are waving their dicks around and showing off. It is because when you do negotiate, you encourage other terrorists to try terrorism next week. Today's hostages may die, but they are saving tomorrow's hostages, and the next day's, and the next day's. It is brutal calculus, but it is the only sane answer. The cost of being nice here is death; it is a net cost of lives. My solution is simple: To tell the extremist elements that they can't dominate our discourse, and to meet both threats and any attempts to follow through on those threats with all the force necessary to dissuade them. The "nice" answer is wrong and has all sorts of "not nice" results. And however hard this may be to believe or accept, the potential losses of knuckling under to terrorism are unbounded. Because the thing is, it's not about the grievance they say it's about. There's an infinite supply of grievances, and even if there wasn't, if you leave the decision about whether you've discharged the grievance in the hands of the terrorist they can always decide you haven't done enough. What it is about is that they can get more benefit from the terrorism than it costs them. That is what you must be concerned about, ensuring that the costs of terrorism exceed the benefits, and one easy (and arguably necessary-but-not-sufficient) way to do that is to make sure they don't get benefits. Official "Draw Mohammed" day is a good solution on the side, by raising the costs of terrorism. Any policy that has the end result of moving the cost/benefit advantage of terrorism in the direction of "benefit" is wrong, especially any that cross from net-negative to net-positive. Regardless of how "nice" it is. Regardless of how well-cloaked in moralistic bibble-babble it is. And it will be so cloaked; the ability of humans to rationalize the short-term convenient answer is nearly unbounded. This is part of the basic contract of civilization and operates at a lower, more fundamental level than most people are used to debating at, in that if terrorists are allowed to tear apart civilization (the ultimate end result if this policy of appeasement is followed), most of the rest of our debates are rendered moot. The first order of business is make sure we still have a civilization in which to have our arguments about what it should be. I've gone down to this level because it's really important. The US remains a ways away from this being a serious problem, but I am concerned about the number of draws we're making against this account without depositing things; we're a ways from bankrupt here but the trend is strongly negative lately. I have carefully referred to "nice" policies rather than naming names, but in most cases there are, shall we say, correlations between political parties and the "niceness" of their policies; applying this discussion to their country's policies is left as an exercise for the reader. But there is definitely a time and a place for "not nice" policies, if you actually want your civilization to survive.
adrianwaj 17y ago
I will never respect Islam so long as it wants me and my society dead or radically changed for the worse. And it doesn't just stop at freedom of speech, as this story only points toward. The fundamentalists are what Islam is all about, it's not my problem that Islam hasn't reformed in the past 1000 years, or that the moderates can't moderate the fundamentalists. The fight for freedom never stops - and you don't win it by taking away someone else's freedom.

by ErrantX 17y ago

CWuestefeld 17y ago

Voted back up out of negative territory. I strongly oppose the sentiment (I'll avoid the colloquial "violently oppose"). But it's still an important viewpoint in a discussion like this.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- jazzdev 17y ago
  'censoring ourselves' is not 'ignoring them'

jerf 17y ago

If we're going to be that respectful of Islam, why are we not going to be that respectful of Christianity? Or, relevant to the current discussion, Scientology? Because they don't threaten violence anywhere near as credibly? That's a terrible, terrible incentive to set up. (But perhaps you have another answer?)

ErrantX 17y ago
[most of this was incoherent - sorry] Perhaps the suggestion of be respectful is the wrong choice of words; probably I mean "avoid inciting the extremist elements" instead (till they become irrelevant). What would you suggest as an alternate solution?
- jerf 17y ago
  Are you familiar with the logic as to why we "don't negotiate with terrorists"? It is not because the people saying that are waving their dicks around and showing off. It is because when you do negotiate, you encourage other terrorists to try terrorism next week. Today's hostages may die, but they are saving tomorrow's hostages, and the next day's, and the next day's. It is brutal calculus, but it is the only sane answer. The cost of being nice here is death; it is a net cost of lives. My solution is simple: To tell the extremist elements that they can't dominate our discourse, and to meet both threats and any attempts to follow through on those threats with all the force necessary to dissuade them. The "nice" answer is wrong and has all sorts of "not nice" results. And however hard this may be to believe or accept, the potential losses of knuckling under to terrorism are unbounded. Because the thing is, it's not about the grievance they say it's about. There's an infinite supply of grievances, and even if there wasn't, if you leave the decision about whether you've discharged the grievance in the hands of the terrorist they can always decide you haven't done enough. What it is about is that they can get more benefit from the terrorism than it costs them. That is what you must be concerned about, ensuring that the costs of terrorism exceed the benefits, and one easy (and arguably necessary-but-not-sufficient) way to do that is to make sure they don't get benefits. Official "Draw Mohammed" day is a good solution on the side, by raising the costs of terrorism. Any policy that has the end result of moving the cost/benefit advantage of terrorism in the direction of "benefit" is wrong, especially any that cross from net-negative to net-positive. Regardless of how "nice" it is. Regardless of how well-cloaked in moralistic bibble-babble it is. And it will be so cloaked; the ability of humans to rationalize the short-term convenient answer is nearly unbounded. This is part of the basic contract of civilization and operates at a lower, more fundamental level than most people are used to debating at, in that if terrorists are allowed to tear apart civilization (the ultimate end result if this policy of appeasement is followed), most of the rest of our debates are rendered moot. The first order of business is make sure we still have a civilization in which to have our arguments about what it should be. I've gone down to this level because it's really important. The US remains a ways away from this being a serious problem, but I am concerned about the number of draws we're making against this account without depositing things; we're a ways from bankrupt here but the trend is strongly negative lately. I have carefully referred to "nice" policies rather than naming names, but in most cases there are, shall we say, correlations between political parties and the "niceness" of their policies; applying this discussion to their country's policies is left as an exercise for the reader. But there is definitely a time and a place for "not nice" policies, if you actually want your civilization to survive.

adrianwaj 17y ago

I will never respect Islam so long as it wants me and my society dead or radically changed for the worse. And it doesn't just stop at freedom of speech, as this story only points toward. The fundamentalists are what Islam is all about, it's not my problem that Islam hasn't reformed in the past 1000 years, or that the moderates can't moderate the fundamentalists. The fight for freedom never stops - and you don't win it by taking away someone else's freedom.