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Re: Offensive Muhammad pictures
Reviews

From: blp
Category: Life
Date: 03 February 2006

Review

In fact, it makes me wonder what's really going on here. At worst, all this free speech, secular-state rhetoric could be a convenient smokescreen for racists. What point was the Danish newspaper trying to make? The reaction was utterly predictable and, with the commissioning of so many cartoons for one edition of the paper, was obviously provoked deliberately. Private Eye could have run the 'running out of virgins' one - the only one that even qualifies as humour - without anyone from the angry jihadist brigade noticing. They've done similar in the past. We all know that uneducated religious fanatics will start rattling sabres when they feel they've been insulted, but what good does it do to keep proving the point? At least when Rushdie did it he did it unintentionally with a book he believed in.

I'm not saying I suddenly think these cartoons should be banned, just that the newspaper editors who ran them may have been acting like jerks.

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