The government, due to be announced next week, will not introduce sharia or other Islamic concepts to alter the secular nature of the constitution in force when Tunisia's Arab Spring revolution ousted autocrat Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January.posted by Abiezer at 6:02 AM on November 8, 2011 [11 favorites]
"We are against trying to impose a particular way of life," Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi, 70, a lifelong Islamist activist jailed and exiled under previous regimes, told Reuters.
"It's much easier to do comics attacking Christians than other religions. Without a doubt because we're in a Catholic country. You can't crack on a minority religion like you can a majority religion. The hysteria provoked by these comics is a strong as it because there's anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism in Europe,"It sounds like he gets it. (I'd also point out that another of their regular cartoonists, Riad Sattouf is French-Arab, though I don't know if he's Muslim. There's a review here in English with a couple samples of his strip.)
May they all blow a cerebral artery next time they take a shit, and fall face-first into their most holy relics [emphasis mine]....seemed to indicate a bit of a wider brush with his first comments than you're seeing. That could have easily been cleared up with "yeah, you're right, that was a dumb knee-jerky way of putting it", that's all.
What bothers me the most are Muslims who are caught in the trap of their own religious chauvinism and can't step back enough to consider that this satirical magazine is worthy of little of artistic or comic interest. And I confess I was disappointed. I was hoping for some spark, some acuteness of sarcastic genius. Instead of that, I'm aware of how distant it is from minds like Voltaire making me laugh treacherously at my own religion ... [you could] start by learning Arabic and come read some of the tanbirat on our dear compatriots' FBs. We don't have great resources, just the ability to laugh and transfigure our own reality, whether sad or joyous.Sorry for the really poor translation. I know it's somewhat garbled, but hopefully not too far off.
Censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body.But check any definition you like and you won't find that censorship is ever defined as being the exclusive property of governments.
Censorship is still practised and in its most appalling form, violence and murder. Journalists continue to die, not only when covering events on the battlefield, but mainly because of their profession when they try to throw light on darker sides of the society such as corruption, financial abuse, drug trafficking, terrorism or ethnic conflict. Most perpetrators of such crimes have not been caught and brought to justice, which casts serious doubts as to the independence of the judiciary and as to the real willingness of the authorities to disclose the truth.And then adds:
Attacks against freedom of expression can take many other forms, such as threats, intimidation, arbitrary closure of media outlets, power cuts, bomb alerts, police searches and confiscation of material, damage of printing facilities or television and radio transmitters, heavy taxes, monopolies on paper and distribution, unequal conditions for state media as opposed to other media and pressure on advertisers.The absence of the concept of terrorism is something that struck me as odd (I mentioned the term terrorism above - this is not very good terrorism, however). Fundamentally, though, this was arson - it's a felony. That's more pressing on a juridical and investigative level than whether or not it conforms to a strong or weak idea of censorship. "Terrorists" or "censors" are good labels for tablets or broadsheets (respectively) to put on the perpetrators, but the gendarmerie will be investigating a crime, not a scary word.
For Muslims, the caricature of the prophet is unacceptable and offensive. We understand that this view is not universal, however.So - it's not illegal, and they support the right to do it, they think it is clearly done for the purpose of upsetting and alienating Muslims but they don't think anyone should break the law in response to that.
We believe that freedom of expression applies to artists, but also to those who disagree with the art, as long as the disagreement is expressed in accordance with the laws and the integrity of people and property. There is no reason to act outside the law.
That said, we will continue to denounce drawings of the prophet, because they are not acceptable to Muslims. But at the same time Muslims must acknowledge that in our society the sacred is not the same for everyone.
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posted by mikelieman at 5:41 AM on November 8, 2011 [2 favorites]