This will really stir up a hornets nest. So much for the Jyllands-Posten being the standard bearer for freedom of speech!
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.
The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.
In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.
3 comments:
Mmmmm-mmmm!
That's some good double standard there, that is!
It's all BS. I was listening to NPR yesterday and some French editor was talking up freedom of speech and whining about other newspapers not reprinting the cartoons. Towards the end of the discussion, the editor got flustered and claimed that Islam was going to take over Europe if people didn't speak out, etc. If these types are really that concerned about Free Speech, they should advocate that European nations drop their restrictive hate speech and libel laws and conform to more liberal American standards.
I really don't endorse the idea of 'equal hatred' and 'the right to offend'; I would rather think, along with Simon Jenkins of the Sunday Times, that there is a responsibility to consider one's words before one speaks.
I'm horrified by the violent protests (and exaggerated by governments longing to 'release steam'), and repulsed by both the Iranian promise to mock the Holocaust in cartoon form (though I think that should test LGF's commitment to 'free speech') and the J-YP's pledge to reprint the same cartoons.
I'm also not amused by the revelation that J-YP had similar cartoons mocking Christ offered to them last year, and the editor refused them because he knew they'd cause an uproar - what?
Simon Jenkins article follows:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-160-2025511-1501,00.html
excerpt: "These cartoons don't defend free speech, they threaten it
Simon Jenkins
I think, therefore I am, said the philosopher. Fine. But I think, therefore I speak? No way.
Nobody has an absolute right to freedom. Civilisation is the story of humans sacrificing freedom so as to live together in harmony. We do not need Hobbes to tell us that absolute freedom is for newborn savages. All else is compromise.
Should a right-wing Danish newspaper have carried the derisive images of Muhammad? No. Should other newspapers have repeated them and the BBC teasingly “flashed” them to prove its free-speech virility? No. Should governments apologise for them or ban them from repeating the offence? No, but that is not the issue. '
Post a Comment