Bigotry -- Not Free Speech

Temperatures Rise Over Cartoons Mocking Muhammad
By CRAIG S. SMITH and IAN FISHER
Meanwhile, the furor continued to spread in Europe, as the
French-Egyptian owner of a French newspaper apologized to
Muslims.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/international/europe/03cartoons.html?th&emc=th

..................

Were one to publish a cartoon version of:

* the 14-year-old African American boy portrayed in a widely distributed post card republished in Langston Hughes' History of the NAACP -- about to be fried well done in an American electric chair -- with cartoonist exaggerated lips and other caricatured features?

* an ugly hook-nosed cartoon caricature of an Auschwitz Jew about to be gassed?

* a cartoon version of a Catholic priest raping a small child?

One would have 'harmed' no one -- only 'offended' a good portion of the human race.

Anyone who has studied art history and come to appreciate the extraordinary beauty of Muslim abstract art -- which does NOT engage in "graven images" -- must cringe at the obscene insult to all Muslims perpetrated in the name of free speech?

One wonders how such idiots -- here, there, and elsewhere -- can be so stupid as to have so offended 1.2 billion Muslims. Such offensive behavior is manifestly culturally arrogant and bigoted.

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