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Rage over cartoon goes beyond politics
"I would argue that the genesis of this whole controversy has a lot more to do with the position in which Muslims find themselves in Europe than with Islamic theology," Safi said. "Without being overly dramatic, I think that some of the same kinds of questions that Europeans asked about Jews a hundred years ago are now being asked of Muslims. Namely, can these people ever be proper citizens of Europe if their loyalties lie elsewhere? Which makes Muslims the perfect scapegoats."
To Westerners who wonder why Muslim sensitivities should trump their free speech traditions, Muslims respond with accusations of hypocrisy.
"I'm a very strong advocate of freedoms, but this is a deliberate provocation hiding behind the issue of free speech," said Muslim commentator Muq.tedar Khan, a political science professor at the University of Delaware.
Khan said he rejects the claims of editors of the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, which first published the cartoons last September, that they sought to test free speech, suggesting that the paper is allied with anti-immigration groups.
"The West likes to frame this as a free speech issue, but there are many categories of restricted speech: for instance, eight countries in Europe ban speech denying the Holocaust. You can call our prophet a terrorist, but you cannot question the Holocaust?"
Likewise, in this country, Khan said, hate speech directed at blacks, homosexuals and Jews is condemned, if not legally prohibited. "We will protect people on the basis of race on the basis of sexual preference. It's only with Muslims that it's no holds barred."
California Prisons on Alert After Weekend Violence
Lockdown at many L.A. county jails after race-related fighting
It is not very often if ever that you will see me posting about a movie romance (can't stand 'em) but for some reason this one caught my eye recently...
'New' an improved, unexpected take on interracial romance
Even the best romantic comedies have a well-deserved reputation for being the cinematic equivalent of Chinese food: enormously enjoyable at the time of consumption, but too quickly digested to provide any lasting sense of fulfillment.
Happily for those of us who enjoy the genre but wouldn't mind more substance on the empty-calorie march toward bliss, "Something New," the beguiling feature film debut from Sanaa Hamri, carries a little bit more weight than the average rom-com. More fiber, if you will. And with that, the gastrointestinal imagery is officially retired. For the rest of this review, anyway....
....Love (or magnetism, or lust) takes over, and soon Brian and Kenya are negotiating the rocky terrain of interracial dating. This is where the interesting stuff comes in. Told from the largely unfamiliar perspective of a privileged black enclave, "Something New" turns the "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" cliches on their heads. At a party held in Kenya's newly landscaped (oh, yes) back yard, Brian offers two (black) partygoers a drink. When he leaves to fill their order, they turn to one another and exclaim, clearly surprised, "That white guy was really nice!"...
..."Something New" is a light treatment that touches on some heavy topics (all of which are more strenuously considered in Oscar-nominated "Crash"): Can people of different races really ever understand each other? Do our similarities as humans outweigh our cultural differences? Is "color-blindness" actually a possibility? And if it is, does anyone really want to live that way? These are big questions, largely unanswerable. But the fact that any movie is actually asking them is almost pathetically gratifying.
