(no subject)

[kingandy]

Neil Gaimen on the cartoon controversy:

"Okay, for those who haven't been watching the news (or for those reading this blog long after these events have been forgotten), a Danish paper, on discovering that depicting the prophet Mohammed in pictoral form was considered blasphemous by Moslems, decided to challenge that idea and commission local cartoonists to draw cartoons with Mohammed in them. The cartoons, at least the ones I've seen reproduced, were fairly sophomoric. Then a Danish Islamic group, considering this blasphemous (see above), took the pictures, along with some more that they apparently made up, through the Middle East, in order to get people upset.

[...]

"What do I think? I think a bunch of things, many of them contradictory and some of them fuzzy (which is the main reason I don't do much on politics in this blog). I think the main thing I think is that doing something purely calculated to offend people, a small minority of whom have shown no compunction previously about killing and harming people who've done similar things, is something that you had only better do if you are prepared for all of the consequences. That doesn't have anything to do with freedom of speech, that has to do with cause and effect, in a post-Satanic Verses world.

[...]

"Do I support the ability of a free press to print whatever it likes? Hell, yes. Do I think it was wise, sensible, or even sane to print or to reprint those particular cartoons? Not particularly, no.

"Do I think reacting to the cartoons by burning down embassies, killing people, or, in the case of the UK, threatening more suicide bombers, is an even vaguely sane reaction? Of course not."