Conflicting values

I hadn’t planned on putting my oar in on the brouhaha about the cartoons offensive to some Muslims that were run in a Danish paper (and since have been run in other European newspapers as a show of, I guess, defiance). But John Burgess of Crossroads Arabia has an excellent post on the subject and an extremely interesting discussion going on in the comments section of the post. If you’re not up to speed on the story, read John’s post.

The issue has been framed as a conflict of values: the value of free speech versus the value of piety (or respect as one of John’s commenters characterized it). I think there are other values at stake here as well. For example, the Danes have a responsibility as good hosts for accommodating the sensibilities of Muslims from other lands who are guests in their country. These guests also have a responsibility that is older than Islam: Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; Si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi. (St. Ambrose’s advice to Augustine and the source of the adage “When in Rome do as the Romans do”.)

I guess the point I’m making is that this story is a little more complex than “Danes good; Muslims bad” as some would have it. There are many solutions. For example, I think that if Muslims feel that they aren’t welcome in Denmark, they should certainly be free to leave. Similarly, if Danes don’t want people from other countries with dramatically different values living in their midst, they should ask their guests to leave. But if people with both points of view plan on staying put, they need to come to some accommodation and that will mean both sides giving a little.

UPDATE: I see that several U. S. newspapers including the New York Sun and the Los Angeles Times have either run the cartoons in question or plan to. I hope that poking a stick in their eye doesn’t replace more thoughtful approaches to considering the issue but no doubt it will.

ANOTHER: The incitement is going both ways: The Counterterrorism Blog reports a story of a Danish imam touring the Middle East with a booklet containing the cartoons in question and other significantly more inflammatory cartoons which The Counterterrorism Blog characterizes as “completely fabricated by the delegation and inserted in the booklet”

In any case, the action was a deliberate malicious and irresponsible deed carried out by a notorious Islamist who in another situation had said that “mockery against Mohamed deserves death penalty.” And in a quintessential exercise in taqiya, Abu Laban has praised the boycott of Danish goods on al Jazeera, while condemning it on Danish TV.

Not exactly the road to mutual understanding and tolerance.

4 comments… add one
  • More cartoons available at this Danish blog site:

    http://retecool.com/comments.php?id=13539_0_1_0_C

    Here’s another American website making complete fun of Christians:

    http://www.landoverbaptist.org/

    (Notice, no one is threatening hostage taking over this one.)

  • More cartoons available at this Danish blog site:

    http://retecool.com/comments.php?id=13539_0_1_0_C

    Here’s another American website making complete fun of Christians:

    http://www.landoverbaptist.org/

    (Notice, no one is threatening hostage taking over this one.)

    Here’s a couple bits of writing from our American founding fathers two hundred years ago- they had more sense:

    “Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.” – Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason, 1794-1795.)

    And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

    -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

    I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of… Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”- Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason, 1794-1795.)

    Benjamin Franklin

    “Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.”–Benjamin Franklin, _Poor_Richard_, 1758

    “The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”–Benjamin Franklin, _Poor_Richard_, 1758

    “I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it.” — Benjamin Franklin, _Articles_Of_Belief_and_Acts_of_Religion_, Nov.20, 1728

  • Marie Vernot Link

    It seems to me that the Muslim people are living up to their portrayal of an ignorant violent people. Have I not seen dozens of cartoons depicting the Christian and Jewish religions in their publications? Yet they take a harmless cartoon that was meant tongue in cheek and not offensive, and go and destroy their own cities in the blessed name of Allah?
    Allah has been depicted thorugh the ages in different carvings, paintings, etc..just look atthe US Supreme Court!
    Yet,they choose now to show their ignorance. May Allah deal harshly with them and all their offspring! Tolerance for their ignorance is a thing of the past for many now.

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