Josh Marshall crystallizes what's been bothering me about the Danish Muhammed-cartoon controversy, and how so many American sites have disclaimers that they've chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam. "The price of blasphemy is death. And among many in the Muslim world it is not sufficient that those rules apply in their countries. They should apply everywhere." Bold-faced emphasis mine. I really resent the implication of any religious adherent telling me I need to act according to their beliefs, beliefs I obviously don't share. As Houston Bridges puts it, "Anything that wishes death to me for being who I am is my sworn enemy... They want us to show respect for their fucking retarded religion? Show some respect for mine. Mine says that I am a child of the living god with all the blessings entitled therefrom. One of the problems of organized religion is that the moment any particular group is dominant, they think they need to set the standards for the rest of us." That's pretty much it for me, mutual tolerance. Anyone who expects acceptance of their right to their own beliefs needs to demonstrate and practice acceptance of others'. The world has just become too small to survive any other way. [And a propos of nothing, it's starting to niggle at me that many bloggers have mistakenly referred to this as a Dutch controversy. No folks, we've already covered that one. Holland and Denmark are not the same country, as I hope Amsterdam-bound bloggers are aware.] Update: Here's a good background page on the Beeb's site, showing that this all didn't just come out of nowhere. Also worth perusing are the related articles linked to on the site's right-hand sidebar (under "Background and Analysis"). Meanwhile, the Bush administration once again doesn't get it. To paraphrase Robin, it's not the freedom of commerce for which the Muslim world hates us. It's the freedom of expression, the very freedom our government appears to be denouncing.
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