Intolerance to Respects..

An article I took from ..

Volokh Conspiracy

The Boston Globe on Speech Offensive to Different Religious Groups:

Here's today's Boston Globe editorial on the Mohammed cartoons controversy:

Freedom expression is not the only value at issue in the conflict provoked by a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons satirizing Islam's founding prophet, Mohammed. The billowing controversy is being swept along by intolerance, ignorance, and parochialism. The refusal of each camp to recognize and respect the otherness of the other brings closer a calamitous clash of cultures pitting Islam against the West.

No devotee of democratic pluralism should accept any infringement on freedom of the press. But the original decision of the Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, to solicit and publish a dozen cartoons of the Muslim prophet was less a blow against censorship than what The Economist called a schoolboy prank. . . .

Other European papers reprinted the cartoons in a reflex of solidarity. Journalists in free societies have a healthy impulse to assert their hard-won right to insult powerful forces in society. Freedom of the press need not be weakened, however, when it is infused with restraint. This should not be restraint rooted in fear of angering a government, a political movement, or an advertiser. As with the current consensus against publishing racist or violence-inciting material, newspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance.

Just as the demand from Muslim countries for European governments to punish papers that printed the cartoons shows a misunderstanding of free societies, publishing the cartoons reflects an obtuse refusal to accept the profound meaning for a billion Muslims of Islam's prohibition against any pictorial representation of the prophet. Depicting Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb with a sputtering fuse is no less hurtful to most Muslims than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance. . .

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Being openmindedness does not include being disrespectful to religious Icons albeit the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h), Jesus (a.s), Buddha, Confucious, Moses (a.s.). etc. Drawing the line to a certain extents is needed to continue advocating religious harmony and eases enminity between religious group.

A recent incident involving a friend of mine and myself sparked a some what embering thoughts i had a few years back, and recently only resurfaces in regards to the situation i had. The problem was being 'Openmindedness'.

I believe the word was far too often and abused and understatedly misunderstood in its usage. Yes, it is good to being open to certain new things and to certain new ides, but where do we draw the line from being too perverse or too destructive?

10 years I didn't even know bestiality let alone never could have imagine what it could be, but now there's not only bestiality but also necrophilia to name another. In some cases being in the western culture, having intimate relationship with an animal being physical relationship in this case is to some considered acceptable, but do we in the advocation of Openmindedness must accept the same notion?

........... Lost of words, ideas swirling in my head like vanilla chocolate ice-cream. a