mandag, februar 06, 2006

Everyone Is Afraid to criticize Islam

foto © webmaster, nov 2005
SPIEGEL Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali February 6, 2006
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch politician forced to go into hiding after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, responds to the Danish cartoon scandal, arguing that if Europe doesn't stand up to extremists, a culture of self-censorship of criticism of Islam that pervades in Holland will spread in Europe. Auf Wiedersehen, free speech.
Hirsi Ali: "The cartoons should be displayed everywhere."
The Burka Project & The Clash of Cultures
those frenchmen...............
So they have thin skins. That shouldn’t stop us poking fun at them
Now it’s very easy to murmur “I am not a Muslim/Christian/Jew/Hindu” as though not being something was terribly inoffensive — a sin, at worst, of omission; a way of avoiding an argument — the suggestion, perhaps, that “your” religion may be “true for you” but, as for me, I’ll sit this one out. But let us not duck what that “I do not believe” really means.
It means I do not believe that there is one God, Allah, or that Muhammad is His Prophet. It means I do not believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, or that no man cometh to the Father except by Him.
I do not believe that the Jews are God’s Chosen People, or subject to any duties different from the rest of us. It means I do not believe any living creature will be reincarnated in another life.In my opinion these views are profoundly mistaken, and those who subscribe to them are under a serious misapprehension on a most important matter.
Not only are their views not true for me: they are not true for them. They are not true for anyone. They are wrong. Cutting through the babble of well-meaning souls who like to speak of the “community” of belief among “people of faith”, this must also be what the Muslim is saying to the Christian, Jew or Hindu; or what the Christian must be saying to the Jew, Hindu or Muslim. These faiths make demands and assert truths that are not compatible with the demands and truths of other faiths.
To assert one must be to deny the others. Nor is it possible to reply, as some nice Anglicans try to, that “my faith does not exclude yours”. But if other faiths do exclude their Anglicanism, then those Anglicans must exclude those faiths because they must regard it as wrong of them exclude them. There is no faith-based equivalent to the “different strokes for different folks” maxim, unless other folks subscribe to it too.
They do not.We should never, therefore, relinquish, nor lightly value, our right not to argue in the face of other people’s gods — but to fart.The Times

posted by Steen at mandag, februar 06, 2006

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