Free Speech and "those cartoons"

(first posted early 2006)

1.
The refusal of the Danish PM Anders Fogh
Rasmussen to publicly distance Denmark from
those dreadful drawings of Muhammad (pbuh)
published last September by the biggest daily
newspaper JyllandsPosten is intriguing:
Just imagine if those drawings had ridiculed the
Jews in general, made fun of the Nazi death
camps or exposed Israel's continued illegal and
barbaric occupation of Palestine - then the PM,
prodded by Jewish organisations everywhere,
would have wasted no time in denouncing those
drawings, the artist and the paper which
published them.
But it was only Muhammad (pbuh) and Islam,
so who cares?

Well, there are about 1.4 billion Muslims
worldwide which means that about 1 in
every 5 of us humans is a Muslim.
If democracy matters, which we are told it
does, and if democracy has anything to do with
numbers, which surely must be the case,
then the Jews have an influence in grotesque
disproportion to their tiny numbers: as far as I
can find out, approx 14 million worldwide,
which means that the Jews currently represent
a shrinking 0,22% of a total world population
of 6.4 billion.
For comparison, there are approx 1.6 billion
Christians of all denominations so, overall,
there are just over 100 Christians and almost
100 Muslims for every Jew in this world.
Just thought that might interest you.

2.
The Danish PM kept repeating like a parrot
that in Denmark we have freedom of speech
and a free press and there was nothing he or
the government could do in the matter.

That is not true:
Yes, we do have freedom of speech and that
is very nice to have. It is also a luxury which
we should neither take for granted nor use
frivolously as clearly was the case here.
But even in liberal permissive little Denmark
there are still blasphemy laws which, like all
other laws, should either be enforced or
scrapped.
And, stating the obvious but frequently ignored,
freedom without responsibility leads to anarchy.

He could also, and now probably wishes he had,
have used his own personal freedom of speech
to publicly distance himself from the sad affair.