The recent ruckus about the caricature drawings of Mohammed is curious.
The reactions seems a bit misplaced considering that there have been much harsher criticism published of Islam and Mohammed in various books, papers and tv programmes over the last few years than these drawings.
One thing is clear to me. If there is anything that needs to be kept it check through public criticism so is it religion. The Church too used to try to keep criticism silent by calling upon blasphemy. They
didn’t stop with the calling upon though, but had people arrested or killed too. Either directly our through local governments under their sway. Luckily Europe has left the dark ages behind and through public criticism of the church and christianity the era of englightenment came about.
Today I was shocked to find that the Catholic church dared bring forth a statement that they want to bring back the bad old times where they and Christianity where impossible to critisize. The Vatican stated the following – The right to freedom of thought and expression … cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers. Right, so let the book burning start again eh? I guess they would love to burn the Da Vinci code for instance.
That there are violent reactions in the Islamic world is of little suprise, most of these countries are poor underdeveloped dictatorships, rallying against the evils of the free world is the bread and circus those governments provide for their populations, to keep the population to occupied to wonder why their glorious political and religious leaders are unable to provide them with anything but anger and poverty.
