I worry about the Afghanistan demonstration that's going on.
I especially worry because I'm not sure which stance to take, although I know I should have taken the obvious one.
We all heard about this...freedom of expression is limited only by other people's freedom (well, it's actually "rights" rather than "freedom", but anyway). Moslems strictly prohibit the drawing of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), then sudddenly Denmark comes out with these caricatures of him and published them on European newspapers.
Here's what I worry about: the outrage caused by this is deadly insane.
All of a sudden, thousands of people are protesting and burning Danish Flags and demanding to kill ("hang", in their exact words) the guy who drew the thing. Danish government has called this a global crisis. Even President Bush has already acknowledged it, even though the demonstration in the US is not exactly significant, and is thinking of ways to support Denmark without seeming like he just wants to kill everyone who dare caused a riot. Or maybe without the last part.
But anyway. A contradiction is maybe a little inappropriate to point out here, but this was the first thoughtful question I came up with.
Islam, as we know it, is a highly preventive religion. The regulations are done to avoid things, to try and stop it before anything happened. It's not a religion to be easily understood, having that kind of views, because what everybody else seem to think is that it's illogically, insanely preventive.
I remember this Oprah show when a Christian was set to live with a Moslem family for a month. The first thing the Moslem husband did was prohibit the Christian to stay in the house alone with the Moslem wife. It is, as some of you might know, not allowed in Islam to have a man and a woman (each is not the other's muhrim - look it up if you need to) together in one room, because when two people do so, it's believed that Satan will be the third person. I remember what the Christian guy said, "I thought it was insane...then I thought of the condition in our society now, with young teenagers having sexual relationships, and then I understood (the Moslem's) point."
The case with the cartoon is similar. Moslems don't allow any drawing of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) because "they fear that it could lead to idolatry" (as you will see repeatedly in any Yahoo! News). But now the drawing is here, and the incredible riots and the violence is here, but what I keep thinking is nobody is idolizing the caricatures.
So what does that mean?
The outcome that the Moslems were trying to prevent hasn't happened yet.
But it's a really, really, ridiculously stupid thing to do to try and fiddle with sensitive religious rules in such a public way, especially if you believe that the religion is the producer of many terrorists (I bolded the "if" to show that this isn't my opinion, but might be yours). It's stupid enough to try and fiddle with religious rules in the first place.
And now Denmark faces the consequences, with Moslems throughout the world protesting against them. They look and think, "Why are they that mad?". Honestly I agree with that question. Not because I don't understand how sensitive the issue is, but because I fear that this will bring more bad reputations to Moslems, especially since people are so perplexed by the anger that they're assuming there must be something else Moslems are angry about.
So what does this all mean?
P.S: I love the part where Iran is using the "freedom of expression" argument to make a drawing competition of the Holocaust images. Man, those people are good.