Monday, February 06, 2006

Danish cartoons

Publishing cartoons, satirizing Prophet Muhammad was a culturally insensitive thing to do. However, from whatever context I've been able to gather, tiny liberal Denmark (5.4 million population - roughly two parliamentary constituencies in India) was laboring a self-censorship of fear, where any criticism of Islam or Muslims might be met with violence. If these are indeed the same people as they were, when they all donned Stars of David in defiance of Hitler, then this is something rather serious. Their perception of a threat against free speech is not to be dismissed lightly.

In the same spirit of free speech, Muslims all over the world, including those in countries with no protection for free speech, are no doubt welcome to protest. Rock-throwing, rioting and arson however cannot be condoned.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

See the article by Chris Moore -

http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/

Arun said...

Rajan, The story just gets stranger and stranger! It reminds me of those shadowy intrigues from a spy novel.

Perpetual O:
The Gandhi of South Africa might strike us as racist by today's standards. He wasn't very sympathetic with towards the South African blacks, to say the least. The interesting thing with Gandhi, however, is not where he began, but where he ends up, what he grew into. He made mistakes along the way, too.

I'll gather his thoughts on caste and post them by and by.