Reflections, Reflections

Last week I ended up having an exchange about the Islamic cartoon controversy at Ace's. I usually don't even read the posts, much less comment on Ace's blog regarding such issues, because I don't find Ace or his readers in the least enlightened regarding all the various topics involved in the controversy. As it happened there was a post that I ended up reading and commenting on, but many of the participants had nothing to say except extremely ignorant and stereotypical rants, so it didn't go very far. And afterwards, they continued posting a series of posts repeating the same rants ad nauseum, a lot of cognitively-selected nonsense in the form of vitriol.

update Feb 8 2006

An article that also explains what the ACE crowd is in denial about.

Actually today the media seemed to swing in full gear to educate people regarding what the controversy is all about. Another good example of such an article is here:

While all of this is taking place in Europe and the Middle East, major publications in the United States have announced decisions not to publish the cartoons out of "respect for the Islam faith," while three or four others have published the drawings.

It is not at all unusual to decide not to publish an item that might be offensive to a religion. We can be loyal to our own faith while being tolerant of another, and such decisions take place here at The Times on a regular basis.

We say that their burning, destroying and killing is wrong. They say that the publication of a Muhammad's image is wrong.

This brings up another important question: How is this international controversy spreading democracy and freedom? So far, it has only strengthened the ideas of Muslim extremists.

In the same article, the author wrote, "The biggest question is: Where will it end?"

I have also asked myself, what was the real objective with this insult/provocation veiled as freedom of speech?

It made me think about how agitators and provocateurs are very dangerous people, because they don't have any regard for the destruction of innocent human lives. Their objective is to stir up violence and get people killed. And that is immoral.