They Really Don’t Get It
Lars Vilks has received the dubious honour of being caricatured by an Egyptian artist (hat tip to Allotetraploid). He has, as was to be expected, responded by praising the drawings and asking for more. The artist in question, one Ashraf Hamdi, seems to get increasingly frustrated with Vilks’ refusal to act insulted. In a response to a comment, Hamdi says:
just wanna Mr. lars to know that we have cartoonist able to draw too using the same terms. wanna him to feel HIS TERMS about FREEDOM of EXPRESSION .
Umm… ok? Vilks, like the rest of us up here in this godforsaken country, has grown up with freedom of expression. He knows what it means. It’s not going to offend him.
If you think there are things in this world that absolutely may not be insulted in any way, you’re not going to last long in the modern world. That’s the whole problem with many people’s religious views: They assume some things are holy, and they expect the rest of the world to care. Which obviously isn’t going to happen.
What’s worse, there appears to be a fair number of secularists who actually think we should entertain these ideas and refrain from wounding people’s feelings. Instead we should strike up a dialogue, show respect and tolerance. Sure, those are (arguably) nice sentiments. The problem is that the kind of people who honestly think that drawing caricatures (or indeed any pictures) of Mohammed should be forbidden won’t ever listen to your carefully phrased, non-offensive dialogue. They have made up their minds about what’s holy.
The people who are open to dialogue are not the ones who protest against blasphemy.
lars vilks, mohammad caricature, islam, freedom of expression, freedom of speech