15 febrúar 2006

Málfrelsi vs. Múslimar - Símakosning (99kr per sms)

Biblían fer meira í taugarnar á mér en nokkur önnur skáldsaga. Og þá er reyndar ansi mikið sagt.

Og þessi 'svarskrítla' er vissulega ósmekkleg, en hún er líka alveg jafn ófyndin og skrítlurnar sem störtuðu þessu rugli. See how you like it, one-upmanship kjaftæði. Það er einhver leikskólabragur á þessu öllusaman.

3 Quarks Daily hafa fjallað nokkuð mikið um þetta mál, og þessi pistill er þess virði að maður lesi. Samt þykir mér grundvallarlíkingin varla standast.. þ.e.a.s. þessi hér:
Imagine this: a small group of white supremacists collects in Strauss Park near where I live in New York City, and then marches up Broadway, past 125th Street, into the heart of Harlem, all the while chanting anti-African-American slogans of the vilest kind. They have a permit from the city for their march. They use the n-word, they call black people monkeys, they taunt them with reminders that their ancestors were slaves owned by the white people's own ancestors. They call black people lazy, stupid, and repeat every stereotypical epithet from the centuries of historical insult and injury to which African-Americans have been subjected in this country. An angry crowd gathers around the marchers. African-Americans yell some threats at the marchers, vowing to hurt them. Words are exchanged, and a shouting match erupts between one of the march leaders and a black man. The black man's mother is subjected to a particularly repulsive and obscene insult by the white man. Suddenly, the black man cannot take it anymore, and lashes out at the marcher, striking him down to the ground and kicking him until he is seriously injured. A few other young and hot-blooded black men jump into the fray and attack some of the marchers. The black men are arrested for assault and battery and taken to jail.

..einfaldlega vegna þess að þú getur ósköp lítið gert við því hvernig þú ert á litinn, en það að taka bækur á borð við Biblíuna eða Kóraninn jafnalvarlega og fólk gerir augljóslega er eitthvað sem þú átt algerlega við sjálfan þig. A.m.k. ef þú ert fær um að lesa blöðin.

Að vísu bendir höfundur á þetta í framhaldi:
What is of importance to understand here is that (however unfortunate this may be) one of the few remaining sources of dignity for many in the largely impotent world of Islam, unable to compete militarily or economically with the West and unable to remain free of interference from the West because of the curse of holding much of the world's oil-supplies, is their religion. This is the last redoubt of their pride.

Þetta finnst mér mjög sorgleg kenning, hversu rétt sem hún kann að reynast.
Restin af sömu efnisgrein hittir hinsvegar í mark, og ég held ég geti litlu bætt við:
Those of you who cannot stop yourself from loudly and continually proclaiming the right of newspapers to publish whatever they want (no one serious is really arguing with you there), please take a few minutes to condemn the cheap provocation of the Danish newspaper which published the revolting cartoon of Mohammad as a terrorist. If the New York Times publishes a vulgar and racist cartoon about African-Americans, for example, my first reaction will not be to proclaim that they have a right to do so, which of course they do. My reaction might be to boycott the paper and otherwise bring attention to what they are doing. Do this, condemn the racism of the Danish newspaper, then lecture me about free speech. If the Muslim world saw large-scale Western condemnations of the cartoons and demonstrations in which white Christian Danes stood shoulder to shoulder with their Muslim fellow-citizens in protesting these racist insults, it would have a much needed calming effect and demonstrate that the Danes truly are a well-meaning people. Instead, the endless prattling-on about principles of free speech and how Islam doesn't care about it, only serves to confirm to many in that part of the world that the West sees all of the vast and diverse landscape of Islam only in terms of crude generalities of contemptuous enmity.

-b.

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