I was quite surprised and pleased to see a French newspaper take on the "Arab street" by adding to the Mohammed cartoon furor, printing the original Danish cartoons and adding some of its own. (Read Story Here.) However, it seems that all courage must be punished in France, and today, the little editor that could got the sack. (Read Story Here.) The editor's courage is all the more remarkable because the paper's owner is Egyptian. Of course, he may have simply failed to check first who owned his company...
This whole row does bring to mind the beauty of my religion, particularly the words of Christ, "All manners of blasphemy shall be forgiven men." And mere forgiveness aside, it is nice to note that He qualifies the proscription on graven images by noting that they are banned insofar as one bows down and worships them. (For example, Moses made the bronze serpent, a picture of the coming Christ, and that was fine, but when people started worshiping it of itself, it had to be destroyed.) The Christian God is comfortable enough with His deityhood that He doesn't have his followers brandish guns when someone, for purely communicative purposes, makes a representation of Him or one of His mouthpieces.
1 comment:
I've been struck by the same thing.... although it's interesting that although Christians usually don't brandish weapons and issue death threats, they also get all mad and start boycotting when they feel that unbelievers are blaspheming (cf. Book of Daniel, The Last Temptation of Christ, an upcoming episode of Will and Grace featuring Britney Spears as a Christian talk show host...).
On a side note, I found the cartoon depicting the Prophet shouting to a bunch of suicide bombers, "Stop! Stop! We've run out of virgins!" to be quite amusing in an ironic sort of way.
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