c9 | It all becomes clearer.

Thousands of devout Muslims have been protesting in several countries because of cartoons that were printed in some European newspapers which depicted the Prophet Mohammed in a way that offended them. I've seen the cartoons that were printed, and seriously found maybe two of the twelve slightly troubling. They're just editorial cartoons. So the protests have really been perplexing.

Thanks to the Globe and Mail's Doug Saunders, I now understand the issue a bit more. According to the student who actually printed copies of the cartoons and brought them to the Middle East to share with religious leaders,

'his booklet contained not only the 12 depictions of the Prophet Mohammed that had appeared in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September. He also filled it with hideous, amateur images of the Prophet as a pig, a dog, a woman and a child-sodomizing madman.

Flipping through the book yesterday, he explained that these images had been items of hate mail sent to his colleagues by right-wing extremists who disapproved of their activism. These images, he insistently demonstrated, were separated from the newspaper cartoons by several pages of letters. "How could anyone mistake these for the newspaper images?" he asked. "It cannot be that anyone would make this mistake."

But protesters in Lebanon and elsewhere have cited these images in their actions.'

You might be wondering whether Canada is likely to be engulfed in these protests, given our huge Muslim population? The Globe's Michael Valpy suggests some reasons why we may avoid the conflict here.

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CNN did a story on this piece of information earlier in the week. According to CNN, some middle eastern governments and mullahs distributed the unpublished images to purposefully fan the flames of discontent and encourage rioting.

Yes, the Globe story goes into how the student brought the images to major religious leaders because he wanted to pressure the Danes to disavow and/or disallow their printing. Entirely predictable, this.

Entirely manipulative and entirely sad, this.

Thanks for the story link.

St. Mary's is currently embroiled in controversy at the moment over a cartoon. A professor placed a derogatory cartoon of Mohammad on his door and several students became enraged at this (apparently confronting the professor). Another professor I spoke to said that the professor (who placed the cartoon on his door) was planning on taking the cartoon to the philosophy class he teaches in order to discuss it in the context of racism (and the ongoing protests in the Middle-East). The prof is saying that it is his academic right to freedom of speech that is being threatened and that he has the right to put the cartoon on his door or bring it to class and discuss it. There is even a student protest in Halifax today against this man.
I am torn because on the one hand he does have the right to take the cartoon to class and discuss it but putting the cartoon on his door made it seem like he endorsed the caption (and beyond that, does this man not have a right to his own opinions, even if other people don't like them?). How far is too far in terms of freedom of speech? People say that freedom of speech is tantamount to our society but then they say that there has to be a line somewhere about what can and cannot be said....where's the line? Who decides where the line is?
It's all very complex and confusing and it's making my head hurt.

Aren't Canada's freedom of speech laws are trumped by its anti-hate-speech laws?

Something like that. If I recall correctly, and I probably don't, we have no freedom of speech in law. We just have it in practice. On the other hand, Americans have the opposite.

Yeah. I like how Canada doesn't really have laws so much as implicit codes of conduct. Didn't we only write Charter of Rights and Freedoms, like, last November?

*sniff* Now I'm feeling all homesick.

1982!

Quebec is completely different remember, with its civil law rather than common law. Still excellent and better than the USA, of course.

Ah, I always get that backwards and think Quebec is common law, though I know that makes no sense. I think I'll remember that now - thanks!

1982 - It's cool that we managed to wing it for 115 years with only a few dark shadows over our past.

I went to a BI product demo today and on all the demo reports on demo data (American, of course) ethnicity was prominently displayed. It turns out that knowing the ethnic makeup of your student body is critical BI information in the States. In Canada, it's illegal to make ethnicity fields mandatory on any intake forms.

I think that's an important cultural difference.

Let me clarify a point as a practising Muslim. Unlike Chirtianity, where Jesus Christ's image is portrayed commonly in the religion, Islam explicitly forbids any images of Prophet Muhammad to appear anywhere. I think the idea might be rooted in Muhammad's need to ensure that people didn't deify him.

By publishing the cartoons, whether offensive or not, the editor did something expressly forbidden in the faith and should, therefore, expect the strong reaction from an already disgruntled and alienated religion.

1. Yes, I was actually aware of that point, but thanks for mentioning it because it's not commonly known.

2. Yes, the mere publishing would upset those who follow that view.

3. I personally feel that something that upsets one group of people should not trump the free speech of another group of people. Hate speech is different from mere speech, and it is hard to draw the line, and I don't claim to know all the answers. But the cartoons that those protesting are most angry about were never actually published, which makes the whole situation so sad.

It all becomes clearer.

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