Well, I’ve been following the Danish cartoon story involving the caricatures of the prophet Muhammad; it's been interesting seeing what the different reactions have been to the conflict.
Many different sources have had comment areas containing people from both sides of the story. Most Muslim contributors state that they feel it is oppressive to the Islamic faith, since it is blasphemous to make images of the prophet Muhammad as this could lead to idolatry.
This has a good meaning behind it, there is the issue of people of other religions and beliefs are they supposed to be accountable for other religions beliefs. There has to be a point where you draw a line between feeling insulted and realizing that they do not follow your faith and should not be persecuted for that.
The three major religions stemming from Israel, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all hold that you should not take the Lord’s name in vain, yet every day in movies, books, and in many other forms of media you see this done, whether the utterance of God or Jesus in anger or something more severe.
But you do not see Christians or Jews rising up in anger over this issue, why is this issue not addressed. That I don’t know, whether it is because of the areas and cultures of the people who follow those religions, or maybe the age of the religions. Both Judaism and Christianity are around or more than 2000 years old now, while Islam is only 1300 years old, while this seems old, consider that around between the year’s 1000 – 1800 is when such things as the Spanish inquisition and the Crusades occurred.
Back to the current issue, western sources have often stated that they feel that the Islamic community saying that they cannot print the images is a violation of freedom of speech. I feel this is correct as well. This gets us to the unusual situation that both sides are correct from their viewpoint; the question is what should be viewed as more important, freedom of speech or respect of religion.
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