Clash of civs, Pt.1: Denmark vs Islam

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by germanos
(Denmark IS still a secular state, isn't it?)

Still? You make it sound like it started out as one.

Today, its status is debatable; formally, there's a separation of church and state, but den danske folkekirke ("the Danish people's church") is for all practical purposes a state church.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by germanos


Actually, it's about Muslims feeling Denmark is against them. I don't see why you need to drag the rest of the world into it.

Another goody is that apparently these protestsers now represent the whole Muslim world, while previously you got all worked up that the Danish Imams didn't represent the whole Muslim community in Denmark.
You can't have it both ways.

winston did not say THE muslims feel. OTOH he also did not say SOME Muslims feel. In English, when you omit an article for a plural noun, you leave it ambiguous whether you are indicating ALL of that noun, or SOME of that noun. An ambiguity that is sometimes used deliberately, and is sometimes misintrepretated.

Are any other languages like this?

[Last Conformist]

FWIW, there's no obvious way to translate it into Swedish and maintain the ambiguity.

[germanos]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


winston did not say THE muslims feel. OTOH he also did not say SOME Muslims feel. In English, when you omit an article for a plural noun, you leave it ambiguous whether you are indicating ALL of that noun, or SOME of that noun. An ambiguity that is sometimes used deliberately, and is sometimes misintrepretated.

Are any other languages like this?

In Dutch it would be as you describe for English.

I'm a bit thrown off by the use of a capital M in muslims. Perhaps Danes use Capitalisation like the Germans do with Nouns? Personally I'm inclined to use a capital when refering to all muslims, I don't know why. I'm pretty sure it's not correct in Dutch nor English.

[germanos]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Still? You make it sound like it started out as one.

Today, its status is debatable; formally, there's a separation of church and state, but den danske folkekirke ("the Danish people's church") is for all practical purposes a state church.

I know little of Danish history, I must admit

To what extend would the 'practical purposes' stand in the way of the seperation of Church and State?
(perhaps the question should be in the thread about that, but I can't be arsed to go there)
Is it merely the fact that the King is crowned in said church (like it is in Holland)?

[Pekka]

I'm glad we aren't officially scandinavian, but I'm afraid they don't know it!

Bastard Danes.. getting us in trouble again.. Anyway, for Denmark. It's another thing to make stupid jokes (and those aren't even THAT bad IMO), and another thing to start this kind of actin against a country, no wait, a bunch of countries because private magazine expressed their freedom of press? No ****ing way! It comes to a point where you can say, well, they were insensitive. Enough is enough, they could just take it down (the cartoons, not the magazine).

But if you have folks going on 'let's **** Denmark over' tour, hey, don't come back here! I hope the won't let anyone of those return here for extremism or something. National security, very valid card here.

Yeah it's that sensitive versus 'shut down a private magazine or we'll get you'. Forget that, that's far worse. You can shut down your own freedoms but when folks try to extend their arms where they don't belong? Forget about it. Challenging peaceful nations? How stupid can you really be!

But they get what's coming, the ones who have these demands, no one is stepping down, and we have bigger weapons.

That's the bottom line.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by VetLegion


You don't piss off a majority of people if you can help it. OK, so religions aren't really all that important in the west, you can mock them now and then. One of the last things that is almost universally accepted in the west is the notion that paedophilia is bad, very bad. Yet, I've never seen society's stance on that mocked. Not just cartooned, but mocked so that the sting is against the commonly held belief.

Imagine a cartoon with a guy saying "Paedophiliacs are evil" and the guy being depicted as a crazy fascist or something. Imagine a magazine running a series ridiculing the hatred of paedophilia.

It would be in bad taste. It wouldn't be funny. You wouldn't laugh, at best you'd be "WTF?". And how many cartoonists would respond to the call to submit such work, I wonder. 12 of 45? Fewer, I think

The cartoons may have offended muslims in their religious feelings, but in the end I also would put freedom of the press higher than those feelings. For muslims is IIRC any depiction of the prophet a problem. But why should this be a rule for a nation which is largely non-muslim like Denmark? And from my atheist POV it's even more strange.

I think in the end the last comments by the newspaper were wise, in a certain situation it would be stupid to fuel the anger even more. But generally I think it should be clear to muslims or muslim nations that the rules of their religion are theirs, but not ours, and that we have no obligation to follow them.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by germanos


I know little of Danish history, I must admit

To what extend would the 'practical purposes' stand in the way of the seperation of Church and State?
(perhaps the question should be in the thread about that, but I can't be arsed to go there)
Is it merely the fact that the King is crowned in said church (like it is in Holland)?

Church affairs are regulated by the parliament, and priests and bishops are formally appointed by the crown. The church is state-funded.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by germanos


In Dutch it would be as you describe for English.

I'm a bit thrown off by the use of a capital M in muslims. Perhaps Danes use Capitalisation like the Germans do with Nouns? Personally I'm inclined to use a capital when refering to all muslims, I don't know why. I'm pretty sure it's not correct in Dutch nor English.

My understanding is that members of any religion are always capitalized - IE Christians, Muslims, Jews, Lutherans, Hindus etc. Regardless of whether all or some are meant. OTOH atheist, monotheist, etc are not. Dont go by my usage here, im terribly sloppy about caps on internet forums.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


My understanding is that members of any religion are always capitalized - IE Christians, Muslims, Jews, Lutherans, Hindus etc. Regardless of whether all or some are meant. OTOH atheist, monotheist, etc are not.

Discrimination!

[Winston]

Some points for germanos,

It says in our constitution that the Evangelical-Lutheran church is the Danish State Church. I'm not sure why this is important in the context.

Danes don't capitalize nouns. But I, like other English speakers, will capitalize the words in English that need to be capitalized. Like Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Dutch, English, Danish and so on. Again, I'm not sure why we even need to debate such a point in view of the larger issue before us.

[Last Conformist]

Tangentially, the Danes did capitalize nouns up to WWII. They changed it to be less like Germans.

[germanos]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Church affairs are regulated by the parliament, and priests and bishops are formally appointed by the crown. The church is state-funded.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by BeBro


Discrimination!

of course not, good sir. The generic is not capped, and the specific is.

A Christian, Jew or Muslim, but a monotheist.

A Hindu or Shintoist, but a polytheist or pagan.

A Nietschean, Marxist, or Hegelian, but an atheist.

[Winston]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
Tangentially, the Danes did capitalize nouns up to WWII. They changed it to be less like Germans.

It was changed in 1948. Not in order to be "less like the Germans", but because it had lost it's practical usefulness.

For the last time, why are we debating this? Because germanos can't wrap his mind around which words are capitalized in standard English and which are not?