Prestwich_Blue said:
SWP's back said:
I don't have Muslims round for dinner as a rule bud.
Racist!
Look, I think we're all on the same page. None of us wants to let the agenda be set by the nutters of any persuasion. We all value freedom of expression, as long as that's within the law. But on the overall scale of things worth dying for to protect that freedom I don't think a cartoon was high on that scale. Journalists in many places risk their lives and liberty to expose corruption and wrongdoing yet this lot died because of a cartoon. Doesn't seem worth the right to mock someone to me.
Free speech is not what this debate has been about, right from the original Danish cartoons up to and including this thread. This is about asserting cultural superiority and hegemony. It is about us saying this our continent, and despite the fact that most of you were born here, speak our language, in the main think like us and dress like us, we don't want you to be part of us, and if you try to tell us that you are no different to us, then we will test you by mocking and disrespecting one of the things that you hold most dear to your hearts.
In other words,we don't like you very much and you can live under our cultural subjugation or you can fuck off.
If you still then decide you want to live here then you can but with the stigma of knowing that your fellow citizens do not extend the same respect to you as they do to each other. If I was a Muslim in these circumstances, I wouldn't be rushing out to embrace mainstream society, looking for a way out of this backward religion that I happen to have been born into. I would be introverting into my community where I would be meeting with more unconditional respect than I would find elsewhere.
I don't know what these cartoonist's were thinking, but they certainly weren't thinking of how they could improve integration, cohesiveness, peaceful co-existence and progress in our societies.
They have set back community cohesion on this continent by decades.
