Freedom for All or for None

Explain to me, if one will or possibly can, why? Why did the Danish not think before publication, knowing fully the passion of the Muslim world? Why does the Muslim world have to be so blind to the reaction of their own actions? Why should the Free world care?

The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten was undisputedly wrong in the publications of twelve cartoons that depicted the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, especially, one which showed the Prophet with a bomb for a turban; that is, if we live in a tolerant world--a world of political and religious correctness.

Obviously, any practitioner of Islam should, based on his or her books of faith, be outraged. Furthermore, living in this world of tolerance we must give every religion (tested creeds and unestablished oaths) the courtesy and respect we ask for our own, whatever it may be.

Let us flip the tolerance perceptive. Should the Muslin world be tolerant of another individual who, apparently, does not believe in the Islamic faith and sees it quite fitting to make a joke or draw a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad or Allah, in that case?

Back in the 90’s a so-called artist placed a crucifix in a jar of urine, capped it off with a lid, and proclaimed it art. Did the Christian world rise up and riot, destroying buildings and causing deaths? No, they did not. The other month when the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the Holocaust was a “myth.” Did the world watch in horror as the Jews burned embassies? No, we did not.

Yes, there was a cry, however, in both cases from these two different faiths, but violence was not their answer. Here in the West, we acknowledge now, thanks to Gandhi, that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

The Muslims world--in this event--has shifted the attention from the ignorant display of Jyllands-Posten’s religious intolerance to themselves. They moved the focus of the initial victim (the Muslin community) to the Danish newspaper and the Danish people as well as neighboring countries. Did they not think about the repercussions to their actions, just as they asked of the Danish?

“One assumption behind some of the debate,” states Andrew Sullivan, a journalist and blogger, “over the Danish cartoons is that blasphemy is always antithetical to religion. But, of course, many great religions began in what was then deemed blasphemy. Jesus was a blasphemer, and he died in part because of his blasphemy. Religions that enforce rules against blasphemy are defensive, cramped faiths, closed to the possibility of error, which is to say, closed to the possibility of a greater truth.

We live in the West, Sullivan adds, we can depict anybody without people rioting. This is about the freedom of speech.

Is it a freedom to blasphemy, even if it is not one’s own faith? Is it a freedom to decry someone for blaspheming against one’s personal faith? We cannot live by double standards; either freedom for all or freedom for none.


The only time I did not have a title is when I get ask for one. I told Rasmi she could look at the last sentence and she worked with it. When I called to tell her I found a couple errors, she asked if she could remove a paragraph (second to last) for length’s sake. It was hard to go with but I did. I added it here.