Yes. That
same Danish paper rejected cartoons depicting Jesus as "offensive",
three years ago.
Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.
On what grounds did they do this?
Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."
Read the whole article. It's really good.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/...
Am I wrong or is this the clearest possible case of Hypocrisy on Earth?
I cringe everytime I read another comment or diary on Daily Kos that "celebrates" offensive cartoons as "freedom of speech." But I do understand that we live under a system where even the "freedom to be a racist asshole" is protected. Doesn't mean, I have to do it though.
Those who side with the right-wing and take this line of reasoning, should be prepared to defend all sorts of racist depictions in this country. You know, the ones that we have spent decades trying to eradicate.
Like everything else, these riots have a root cause, and I for one, am sure it's not the cartoons in and of themselves. These acts of violence are no more about cartoons than the 1992 LA riots were about Rodney King.
There is some deep-seeded anger, hostility behind this. And it was fully exploited by the Islamists, Saudi or otherwise (Frankly, I think Soj's intuition was very plausible). It was a powder keg, not unlike the earlier riots in France. And the evidence is right there in the Danish paper's hypocrisy.
The paper was simply amplifying local anti-immigrant hostility toward a growing -yet unassimilated- underclass of muslim immigrants all over Europe. I'm not saying we should honor the Muslim "law" not to depict the prophet. But the cartoons do stereotype and depict muslims as violent suicide bombers by saying that they follow a religion who'se founder was a violent extremist.
Just because some crossection of America may not think the equivilant of these cartoons in their own religion is a big deal, is no reason to think it's OK to make fun of other people's beliefs. There are some things that we do care about, and we don't like them to be rediculed. Can we extend the same courtesy to Muslims?