Since most of you don’t subscribe to the Taipei Times you probably didn’t see the editorial On liberty, hate and conscience in today’s paper.
“[W]henever people demand the silencing of others, it is a form of tyranny. And when a person calls for violence against another because of something they have said, ultimately it is an expression of fear, exposing facile beliefs and a deficiency of reason.”
I don’t believe in censorship, but I also believe that the gift of free speech should be handled wisely.
In this case, utter sacrilege was committed. True the extremists showed a complete lack of conisderation for ‘religious respect’ when they defaced Buddhists effigies despite massive worldwide protest, but one action doesn’t justify the other.
In this case, dissent doesn’t justify their violence either. Unfortunately, it’s onlythe most extreme examples of protest that are being highlighted by the media, eh? In a way, I wonder if this was engineered to give many of the extremists (anti or pro–) leverage to move the middle ground out of the playing field.
(http://livejournal.com/users/paulownia)
No doubt that there’s plenty of blame to go around. The papers were insensitive to portray Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. But no, that does not justify the magnitude of the protests. It seems like in the middle east that there always has to be a much more severe reply to any insult or injury. Instead of eye for an eye, it’s kill your whole family and spit on their graves for an eye. That can only lead one way…
(http://livejournal.com/users/jlick)
And I agree with you there. I don’t think the response is justified, but rather is being fanned by other issues — including general frustration with the west, and other problems that are more local.
(http://livejournal.com/users/paulownia)