No British papers have reprinted the Mohammed cartoons, but British jihad group Al Ghurabaa has issued a call to kill everyone who insults Mohammed. (Hat tip: Judith Apter Klinghoffer.)
Scott Burgess has the honor roll of European papers that have reacted to the intimidation by publishing the cartoons: The Daily Ablution: An Awakening Europe Reacts - Spineless UK Press Doesn’t.
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Free speach is under very serious attack, even more than by the various competing leftists and rightists in the US who demand boycotts, appologies, and firings. We must oppose these tryants, the PC leftists (who got Dr. Laura fired from her TV show because she says that homosexuality is unnatural), the christian kooks (who got that TV show cancelled recently), and these violent muslim protectors of the faith. They are all reprehensible, and they all desearve to be openly defied. In fact, the advancement of free speach requires it.
Let me ask you this: Shouldn't free speech also be the right to not say something when you feel others around you are acting unwisely? Britain has suffered a recent terrorist attack, and that nation has taken a much more cautious approach with the Muslim community since then.
They have chosen to avoid offending their Muslim citizens in an effort to ease tensions. I believe freedom of speech allows them to make that decision. Doesn't it?
Nadir: I agree that free speach includes the freedom of people to appease opponents of free speach by choosing to zip their own lips. Plenty of American slaves, and their free supporters (black and white) kept their traps shut around southern white racists, and kept their copies of abolishionist literature well-hidden. But these acts of silence did not contribute to advancing towards abolition and free speach. Instead it was *ONLY* the slaves and freemen who took bold and courageous action against the slave tyrants. Indeed, each of these actions -- running away, rebellions -- made the situation worse for the mass of southerners who were slaves or who were freemen supporting abolition and freedom.
This of course was also the case in the post-reconstruction south (1880 - 1970), where most blacks and anti-segregationists kept their feelings quite, but the courageous few who "caused trouble" advanced the cause only by "offending" and "antagonizing" the tyrants, with each such act "making things worse."
The achievement and maintainance of free speach absolutely requires that a courageous minority blatantly confront and offend those who would ban free speach. This why I am so happy the see public expression of ideas that even I oppose. Such actions cause reactions, and those reactions serve as absolute barometers of exactly how much free exists in our country. These actions also enure and wear down the "offended" people, so that eventually they become increasingly less outraged.
I cannot imagine any free speach advocate suggesting that we appease religious zeolots, whether they be christians who boycott networks who show misbehaving clergy, or (even worse) muslims who want to kill and destroy in response to images that they oppose. As with any war, the many will benefit from the courageous work of the few. And those few, I believe, desearve our heartiest appreciation. (By the way, I consider myself to belong to that few. "Your mom is a whore" is more than just slogan; it's an alternative lifestyle choice.)
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