One the one hand, the Boston Globe publishes this editorial tut-tutting those who printed cartoons depicting Mohammed.
Just as the demand from Muslim countries for European governments to punish papers that printed the cartoons shows a misunderstanding of free societies, publishing the cartoons reflects an obtuse refusal to accept the profound meaning for a billion Muslims of Islam’s prohibition against any pictorial representation of the prophet. Depicting Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb with a sputtering fuse is no less hurtful to most Muslims than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance. ...
And while I agree that lampooning a religion for the sake of shock value or sticking your finger in their eye is wrong, for its part the Globe is very selective about which religions should be safe from such treatment.
From 1999:
This week, US District Judge Nina Gershon sent New York’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani a message he should heed: Stop trampling on the Brooklyn Museum’s First Amendment rights.
Giuliani is furious about an exhibit, “Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection.” He called the art “sick,” withheld operating funds, and started eviction proceedings against the museum. One object of his anger is a painting of a black Virgin Mary spotted with elephant dung. The mayor said: “You don’t have a right to a government subsidy to desecrate someone else’s religion.”
Technorati Tags: art, cartoons, Catholic-bashing, Islam, media bias
