[BRIEF NOTE] And the cartoons?

[rfmcdpei]

I've a rough draft in the workers, expect it tomorrow. For the time being, let me just say that I don't think that they work because they just aren't good satire at all, and that it's for this reason I find the fuss kicked up about them ridiculous. They're stupid, and they're pointless, and it's a bloody tragedy that they've become a central

Comments

[ex_kharin447]

I'm not sure I follow the analysis you point to - it bemoans the constriction of freedoms on the one hand while suggesting it may be necessary on the other. Too much of the rhetoric I have heard in the last few weeks begins with an abstract defence of freedom of speech prior to suggesting ways in which such freedoms need not be applied in this case.

I think the cartoons are at best mediocre, at worst racist. The problem as I see it is that we would the same calls for suppression if they happened to be eminently more respectable but still blasphemous - as was the case with The Satanic Verses or the aborted attempt to stage Voltaire's play about Mohammed in Switzerland. Equally, I'm not sure that the issue if specific to Islam. I can certainly think of similar examples in the Uk involving Sikhism and Evangelical Christianity.

[ex_kharin447]

Actually, a more pertinent and recent example would be Michel Houellebecq - his work is certainly openly hostile to Islam and was accordingly subject to a court case. He also happens to be one of Europe's most talented novelists...