Canadian Philosophy Professor Raises Tensions

[Elok]

Atheists are hung like field mice! Madalyn Murray O'Hare got what she deserved!

...what? I'm just starting a discussion of your religious beliefs.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Elok
Well, BlackCat, thanks to geniuses like this prof, some kind of major conflict is all but inevitable. My recommended course of action would be to behave like a sane and rational human being, stop riling up the mobs as a point of principle, and go for damage control. With luck, we could still convince at least some of the Muslim world to calm down.

Just out of curiosity - hasn't this problem been there all the time ? Isn't it just a coinsidence that a simple danish skirmish about publication of drawings of muhammed in a childbook explodes in this way ? If the fact that a writer had difficulties with finding cartonists that would put their names behind their drawings is enough to start WWIIII don't you think that we have a problem that should be dealt with ?

Y'see, up until this point, the "war on terror" has basically just been the US against some radicals, with the rest of Islam not bothering to stop said radicals because they think the US deserves what it gets. Now, however, we're doing a beautiful job of providing them with propaganda, which gets the common folk stirred up against us, as opposed to sullen and indifferent. Aside from wiping our butts with the Koran and sending it to them, I can't think of many ways to offend them more.

Some of the leaders of the Muslim world do appear to be trying--al-Sistani in Iraq, various clerics in Lebanon, and all the secular leaders with the brains to realize what a real all-out war would do to their countries. However, we're not giving them much to work with, and many of these leaders are standing on the edge of a knife here. If they appear to side with us too strongly, they'll be conceived of as our tools and buy themselves an insurrection, so all they can do is nervously appeal for mercy and peace in the name of Islam. One of the mobs has already attacked clerics that tried to stop them. This situation is not going to last long with AQ and other extremist firebrands on the one side and our Western clowns on the other.

And you, or we, can't win by force. If the whole Muslim world gets mad--everything from Morocco to Indonesia, over a billion people, plus extreme elements within our own countries--I don't think any degree of conventional warfare will settle them. Are you going to empty your countries to occupy theirs, or just nuke them? Or try to blast them back to the stone age with normal bombs and then wall off your borders?

These drawings has nothing to do with "war on terror". You probably get messed up because you think about the "mohammed with a bomb in the turban" pic, but that pic isn't important. The pic that really matters is that of a cartoonist that are looking scared over his shoulder while drawing a pic of muhammed. That is what the problem is - do we have the rigth to draw a pic of muhammed or don't we ?

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Elok
Atheists are hung like field mice! Madalyn Murray O'Hare got what she deserved!

...what? I'm just starting a discussion of your religious beliefs.

You have just given me an idea. Since I'm an atheist, then every sign of religion is an offense to me. Because of this I demand that any kind of religious places should be destroyed immediatedly.

That is my right because there are many of my kind on this planet and everybody has to do what I say because that is my belief.

[thesilentone]

Whether it's ok for a philosophy lecturer to incite or continue this kind of debate or not, that lecturer had no place in the debate, he really should have known better. Honestly, no matter what the issue is, someone kicking up a fuss and making an ass of themselves to try and make your beliefs look silly, never works! I personally believe things like this are much better left to sort themselves out. I'm an atheist, have been for as long as I can remember but my parents weren't religious either, so I've got it from them largely.

I don't make a big deal out of it, I believe in not causing conflict. At the end of the day, whether I want people to stop wasting their time on religion, me telling them it's all rediculous helps nothing, the only way they will change their beliefs is them changing their minds themselves. That's it, full stop, you can't tell a religious person to stop believing, they can only change their mind themselves. If I were that editor in denmark, having to choose whether to allow that cartoon in or not, I would've turned it down, there's too much anti muslim sh*t going on right now to start adding fuel to the fire. So why cause a scene?

[C0ckney]

ummm, because some thing are worth fighting for...

[Az]

C0ckney

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Asher

But that's not the point -- the point is you should know better than to stir sh*t without any benefit. This prof didn't encourage debate, he just pissed people off.

If he wanted to encourage debate, he could hold an open lecture/forum like the UofT and other universities have.

Professors routinely hang sheets with political statements on their doors. What he did is usual stuff. It's a damn COLLEGE for Christ's sake. If people can't do it there where can they? Chances are, if you can't tolerate a cartoon, you simply do not have the required critical thinking to study and live in a liberal democracy. Do I need to reming you that this story happened in Canada, where the context is not exactly the same as in Syria or Palestine?

This isn't about censoring him, it's using common sense to stop being offensive and still get a discussion out of it.

Given the reaction, it was a sensible thing to get the cartoons removed. Still, blaming him for hanging them in the first place is far-fetched.

In this sense, the professor was just plain offensive. He has a known opinion against religions, and he posted an offensive cartoon that has started riots and protests around the world on his door without any context.

Again, we're in Canada, and frankly I'm surprised this has stirred up so much ****. I would not have thought that we have such a vocal extremist Muslim community. Perhaps he didn't either?

That is not asking for intelligent discussion, it's trolling.

Oh, delicious irony

The people that don't understand the difference are, quite simply, naive.

That's silly of you. He could have held a symposium and projected the exact same stuff he put on his door to his audience. But somewhat it's more acceptable in a conference room than in your own office?

What this guy has demonstrated is that we are facing morons. Now if people are offended and violent in Palestine I can understand, as the political situation is radically different. But **** we're in ****ing Canada!

[Elok]

Go fight, then. C0ckney, BlackCat, Pekka and Az versus the Muslim World. You could sell tickets.

I doubt that the cartoonists would have been killed for depicting Muhammad in a decent way (say, as just a guy in a burnoose). That might have launched protests, but only a few faraway nuts would be screaming bloody murder over it. It's the mocking ones that depict him as a monster that started this ruckus. At least, it seems so to me.

[Dr Strangelove]

Well he did start a medeival world war that raged on for decades, eventually resulting in his heirs reigning over an empire spanning from the Atlantic Ocean to the Aral Sea. If you think about it he ranks up there with Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Would it be wrong to depict all men who have carved out such large empires by violent means as monsters?

[Elok]

I haven't read much on Muhammad, but what I have read indicates he was a relatively civilized sort. Under his rule and that of the Caliphs, the ME was a great deal like Saudi Arabia today in terms of human rights. That sounds bad until you consider that all the other major powers around at the time were barely above North Korea or Myanmar.

At the very least, he was a decidedly clever and resourceful guy. Disgusting as it is to think of a man marrying a nine-year-old, all of his marriages except the first were arranged for the sake of political allegiances with the brides' families, so they couldn't attack him without starting a blood feud with their own family. Thoughtful, skilled in politics--not exactly comparable to the raving loonies in AQ.

[Whaleboy]

Asher, you haven't addressed my initial point which was that responsibility where ethics is concerned is only relevant to people who are in a real-life ethical situation. A university, a school, an internet forum even; all are safe-havens where a person can open their mind to possibilities and ideas that simply cannot be expressed in daily life.

For example, I might make a statement in support of the cartoonists... I might make it a perfectly intellectual argument, perfectly reasonable, but I would not expect to be persecuted for it in a university. If I did so outside a Mosque, then the next thing you'd hear from me would be an obituary!

In a place which is truly academic, logic and reason rules over fervour, dogma and hysteria. If someone were to disagree with my actions, they would discuss it and present a counter argument.

I would say that the professor was doing his job, and that if it caused offence, it is the problem of those that are offended, as they are the people that are interpreting it. It was their choice to read his door, it was their choice to believe as they believe.

What he did was out of line, if he wanted to discuss it he should've waited until tempers were not flaring.

Why?

To make things nice? When tempers are flared and people are busy burning embassies, what better time is there to be discussing these issues?

The fact that I'm sitting here typing this, and you're sitting there reading it, is evidence in itself that this professor was doing an exemplary job, and I think he should be commended for it.

The majority of your anti-philosophy arguments are ill-thought out trolls with no structure or premise, with the exception of the appeal to common sense which was itself first espoused by Montaigne; a philosopher .

[Patroklos]

Why do people complain about all the controversial things that academics say when the main point of universities is to give people a place to think about and say radical things?

Here we have found the root of the problem, unfortunetly this is what people think Universities are for.

[Elok]

Oh, balls. We've been Punk'd.

http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/jyllands-posten_cartoons/

Er, look at the crude "cartoons" at the bottom, the fake ones created by rabblerousers. They were spread around, along with the original twelve, by clerics looking for trouble. I don't see how they could have believed them real, but I can sort of understand how they would get POed if they did. When I thought the knife-psycho and the bomb-head were the worst of them, I was surprised by their vehemence, but I chalked it up to the extreme tension plus the power of mobs to goad themselves into a fury over nothing. The originals were merely tasteless (I'd heard there were fakes, but I figured the bomb-head was one of them). Now, however...

The prophet as a pig-man and a demonic pederast, plus a picture of a prostrating Muslim getting mounted by a dog. If black people in the US thought you had published a cartoon of pickaninny caricature humping a watermelon or something, they might riot too. Why the HELL did none of the news services mention those?

Anybody know how much success we've had in convincing them that those three are forgeries made to manipulate them? I sincerely hope we've tried. I can only guess how effective that tactic would be. They have a huge emotional investment in hating us already, plus the "real" cartoons predispose them to distrust whatever we claim.

The whole thing is brilliant propaganda, and it depends on the genuine twelve just as much as the phony three. If they had used just fakes, the story would have been quickly debunked before it escalated too far. As it is, they've got us all afluster over "freedom of speech" for the cartoons they don't really mind as much. But we'd still sound pretty lame arguing, "no, we only published the somewhat insulting ones, not the real filth." Not especially mollifying in any language. We can argue that the Imams who made the phonies were using them like pawns, try and direct the rage that way, but...well, I don't know enough about the culture to guess. The media aren't too sympathetic to us.

[C0ckney]

Originally posted by Elok
Go fight, then. C0ckney, BlackCat, Pekka and Az versus the Muslim World. You could sell tickets.

I doubt that the cartoonists would have been killed for depicting Muhammad in a decent way (say, as just a guy in a burnoose). That might have launched protests, but only a few faraway nuts would be screaming bloody murder over it. It's the mocking ones that depict him as a monster that started this ruckus. At least, it seems so to me.

i'm surprised you can hold anything with that limp wrist of yours

the people who burn embassies, threaten to kill and otherwise use violence, over a few cartoons are NUTS, why should we pander to them.

a lot of 'moderate' muslims may have a problem with the cartoons, but you know what, tough. i see things i dislike every single day, but that's living in a western society for you. if people don't like these cartoons, they write a letter to the editor, or their MP, they can protest peacefully if they feel that strongly about it, heck they can whine about it on internet if they really must. none of this though changes the fact that the newspapers in europe were well within their rights to publish these cartoons in the first place.

[Whaleboy]

C0ckney

I agree. As someone from a Jewish background, I don't go burning flags in the street about the decades of crap the Arabs have published about my people. The cartoons were not, imho, published with malicious intent; and like I've said in another thread, analysing religion is what we do in the West with our free intellects. Muslims should be grateful that they're being treated as we treat all religions.

Brits will note the new Kleenex adverts, with the Buddhist sneezing into a tissue that "kills 99% of bacteria".