18 May 2008

Bashir and Tourists


This is old news but I just found this cartoon while surfing the Internet for other interesting cartoons to publish and offend my readers with. It is OK to publish cartoon depictions of Muslims, right? Just not of the Prophet, right?

Bashir (Ba'asyir) is somewhat renowned for his calls to violence against the infidels and his desire to form a pan-Islamic Caliphate in Southeast Asia. So, his comments implying that foreigners are nothing more than worms, snakes, and maggots is hardly surprising! Pretty tame stuff really. I would have thought each of these things are one of God's creatures and have been created with a purpose in mind. I might have been a little more offended if he had have called me Satan's love child or something similar!

However, his calls to violence and statements to the fact that it would be OK to beat tourists up is extreme and must be considered as an incitement to violence. He should be called on this and be punished according to the law if the alleged statements are proven true. There is supposedly a video of this speech but in a quick search before writing this post I could not find it. If I do track it down I will post it as a link.

This is not an issue of free speech. As I have posted many times, with free speech comes great responsibility. This is not a man exercising his right to free speech but rather an abuse of free speech to preach hatred and violence. Free speech must be protected and hate speech and vilification must be prosecuted. This is simply not a case of one person's free speech being another person's vilification!

I have been pinged recently on another forum for quoting from the movie Forrest Gump! Apparently, quoting from a movie casts some degree of doubt on my ability to make rational or logical argument -- essentially I was an intellectual minnow in the big scheme of things, oh well.

Anyway, as Forrest would say in this case "stupid is as stupid does!"

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

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