Reason‘s Michael Moynihan has the details (complete with video) of yet another attempt to suppress free speech in the name of religion:
Lars Vilks, the Swedish cartoonist who drew Mohammed as a dog, was recently told that a scheduled lecture on free speech, to be held at Jönköping Högskolan, would be canceled due to “security concerns.” This, of course, is a common evasion, intended to protect the brittle sensibilities of Muslim students while supposedly standing four square behind the right of free speech.
Alas, the administrators in Jönköping had a point. During a lecture in Uppsala today Vilks was attacked by a pack of feral fundamentalists, one of whom managed to headbutt the artist and break his glasses. Police intervened and waged a short battle with the religious nutters who can be heard in the video below, captured by the newspaper UNT, shouting Allahu Akbar!
The disruption was thuggish, and the physical attack on the cartoonist was revolting, but the thing that most struck me about the video footage was the level of hysteria displayed by some of the protestors, a hysteria made all the more disturbing by the fact that it was not the reaction to some sudden, unexpected shock (the protestors can have seen little at the lecture of a nature that they had not already expected) but was instead a manifestation of a deeper, longer-lasting rage that has long since lost any connection it may ever once have had with rationality.
“the level of hysteria…was instead a manifestation of a deeper, longer-lasting rage that has long since lost any connection it may ever once have had with rationality.”
Yes! That’s it exactly. Attempts to rationalize Muslim insanity is a fruitless and (dare I say) almost superstitious impulse. Whether it be liberals insisting that peace overtures will bring similar responses, or conservatives insisting that the 7th Century can be made democratic and civilized via military invasion, or ANYONE spewing rubbish about how Israel can negotiate with Hitler’s ideological progeny, the entire project of “understanding the nuances of Islam” has no more going for it than the proposition that the earth is 5000 years old.
What would happen if the next time a Jihadist head-butted a cartoonist (writer, speaker, etc.) the rest of the crowd beat the holy crap out of the Muslims? Ironically, a civilized society has to ask this question if it wants to remain civilized.
We should protest the thuggishness of some islamic fundamentalists and oppose sharia’s encroachment into the EU. At the same time, given the situation it was not the wisest decision for Vilks to engage in public speaking.
Unfortunately, if you allow these thugs to get in the way of free speech, you allow fundamentalist Islam to win. They don’t care how they look, they only care if they get to control the actions of others. By allowing them to control you, you basically hand them victory on a silver platter.
Thuggery can never be permitted to win over basic human rights, no matter the cost.
It is one thing that people are encouraged to charity because they believe their chances of eternity in Heaven are thus enhanced, and quite another when they believe the same enhancement comes of killing infidels.
Hé, hé, hé , no wonder!
The more you contradict religionists the dumber they get.
No one should make excuses for this sort of hysterical religious narcissism. Alas, through the concept of fitna, it is rather built into the basic framework of Islam.
The university has announced that it “probably” won’t invite Vilks back to speak.
>>The university has announced that it “probably” won’t invite Vilks back to speak.
Mission Accomplished
Islam and the people who follow it are incompatible with the West. Simple as that.
Mission accomplished indeed. And, on this side of the Atlantic, Aasif Mandvi, the Islamic correspondent for the Daily Show, has been instructed by his employers not to comment on “Muslim extremist threats” in the wake of the Times Square incident.
And someone tried to burn down Vilks’s house late Friday night, I suppose to reinforce the point.
When I said, “Mission Accomplished,” I had not realized that the conniption fit had caused the hosts to stop the show, “Due to security reasons.”
Mission accomplished, squared.
They’re on a roll.
Why couldn’t the non-Muslims have started chanting, “Free speech is a Swedish value!” over and over again with frantic intensity?
?
That would have been … interesting.
Probably they didn’t want a late-night visit from the arson squad.
Pingback: God Spelled Backwards Is Dog « Around The Sphere