I wasn’t going to do a comic about the chaos Rasmus started in Sweden because I thought it would be too local but then foreign media started reporting on it. After being banned from Sweden he went though the trouble of getting a Swedish passport just so he could go there and spread his shit, it blew up and he got what he wanted.
I do not know this Paludan guy but I would indeed be glad that we burn any holy book of anybody who reacts violently against it until they are all in prison or stop doing it. Any book, of any religion. Same for drawing caricatures, burning flags, insulting a religion or ideology or anything else. Freedom of expression must be defended or it will be lost. Teach violent fanatics that the only way this will end is with them stop being violent or in prison. To be blasphemous, offensive, tasteless... is a holy, extremely important right . Read good old "On Liberty" of John Stuart Mill (1859).
A book burning is basically a declaration that you wish to eradicate someone or their culture, it's ok for a society to ban such things.
Edit:
I'm not suggesting that the riots are justified. Burning books is bad. Riots and destruction of property are worse, and I also believe that anyone that participated in the riots should be charged with a crime, and if both convicted and not a Swedish citizen, should not be allowed to remain. That the riots are worse does not suddenly make the book burnings a good thing.
It's also an overreaction to shoot someone playing loud music at 3 am, that doesn't mean making too much noise in the middle of the night should be acceptable.
There's a world of difference between burning a Quran and creating some cartoons. Drawing a bunch of cartoons is the equivalent of raising cattle for beef; it's just a part of life, and Hindus have no inherent right to tell someone in a different country to eat chicken instead. Burning a Quran is like buying a cow from India specifically to kill it in the town square in front of Hindus with no intention of even eating the meat. It's not as if Qurans are an environmentally friendly source of heat, it's just wanton cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
@CorruptUser In the past I would have agreed with you. Nowdays? In this radicalised (on both sides) world book burning might mean nothing more that you disagree with someone. See US, schools are banning books which tells about evolution and other schools baning books which go against evolution theory...
The schools that try to ban books on evolution end up getting sued into oblivion. No public school denies evolution. At the moment, there's a debate in Florida about the age at which a kid can learn about sexual/gender identity, which is a valid discussion, except the law is intentionally vague so it's pretty clear the result would be schools not being allowed to teach kids that gay people exist, yet the opposition is just making noise instead of suggesting a much more unambiguous set of rules that would address the ostensible issue while making it clear you could, indeed, "say gay".
@CorruptUser No, it is not. And even if it WHERE: erradicating cultures is not illegal nor inmoral if done without violence. Happens every day. But no, it is not, your intepretation is wrong and justifies no prohibition.
@CorruptUser And seriously, your observation does not stand the slightest analysis. Which culture do I want to erradicate if I burn "Mein Kampf"? The nazi culture? And it should be forbidden to want to erradicate nazism? Seriously? Please think twice before you write, sir. And have a nice day.
The fact that him burning a book (which is, as far as I'm concerned, free speech as long as you own the book) has sparked violent riots that were completely out of proportion means that HE HAD A POINT. He was trying to expose a problem in society, which is what he did, and instead of people recognizing that problem, they bought the media narrative and blamed him for it. You don't have to like his point, but you have to agree that he was right about it.
Maybe this comic should have been about how it can be that in a mostly atheistic society the inquisition is still alive and well, and how people find rioting and burning perfectly acceptable.
Absolutely no one is "find[ing] rioting and burning perfectly acceptable" of course.
But none of that would have happened if not one asshole wanted to get a lot of personal attention - which is all this is about.
Young men with criminal records don't like the police and will take any excuse to cause a riot - this piece of shit handed them one, just to make himself the center of a massive amount of media attention and win the admiration of the racists.
They don't care that the piece of shit they love now also like sexchatting online with kids - which he actually dosen't deny, but defends by claiming he's "liberal".
That's racists for you - nothing or more important then beeing as shitty as possible to non-whites.
Sure I can.
You just try announcing a rally to burn the Bible in the American south.
Or try burning a Torah in one of the jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian territory.
Or burn whatever scripture is holy to Hindus in one of the areas of India that support Indian primeminister and Hindunationalist Narendra Modi.
and so on and so forth.
So he didn't try to expose a problem in society - that would have been the problem of religious fundamentalism.
What he did was try to piss of young muslim kids as much as possible, hoping they would react with violance.
While hiding himself behind police - that he then criticized for not controlling the violence HE encited.
He did this to promte the racist idea that muslims are somhow more prone to violance or religious intolerance then other religious communities - which is obviously not true, as I've just shown you.
So the comic aptly depicts him for what he is - a piece of shit.
@Tarrangar Yes. I totally would say the same thing. It is not acceptable to go around destroying property because someone is burning a book they own which you happen to like.
This is what I dislike about the west. Sure Arabs shouldn't riot. It's exactly what the dude wants. But the problem for me is. It shouldn't matter what religion they have, they should live free from discrimination of their religion and not have their religious scripturs burned. The serbs would also take offense of their orthodoks scriptures being burned, but none of us would burn their scriptures, we respect the orthodox religion. The orthodoks church in russia sees ukranians as evil that should be eradicated, but it doesn't mean that orthodox in greece, bulgaria, serbia, macedonia, romania, montenegro and others believe the same and I don't blame them for it.
@Nisse_Hult Not even most of the racists love him, I mean he didn't manage to get his party into Parliament, and the requirements for that isn't that high here in Denmark, the fact that he can't get any Parliament seats, show that he's basically the fringe of fringe, he has some following, but an overwhelming majority dislike him.
Chaos *he* started? Fuck that nonsense; if exercising your freedom of expression causes a group of people to destroy others' property and attack police officers then that is entirely the fault of that group. Any local Muslim could easily make the choice *not* to go out and cause destruction in response, and were I a gambling man I'd bet that most of them actually *did* make that choice. The *only* way to put the blame on Paludan is by assuming Muslims somehow lack free will and agency, which in addition to being just plain ridiculous is also Islamophobic as hell.
'@GuyIncognito' Do I have the right to burn crosses on the street facing a church? Probably. Am I complete piece of shit to do that? Definitely. If it starts a brawl in the parking lot am I being assaulted? Most likely. Did I still start it? Absolutely.
Nobody's claiming the rioters weren't criminals and they're presumably going to jail for it, dude's still a pot-stirring scumbag and he still started it.
@boring7 So song as it's not a cross belonging to someone else I'm all for it, and the person who started your hypothetical brawl is whoever first punched someone; y'know that illegal thing that you're not supposed to do that actually harms another person. Let me know if you do have any cross burnings planned, I'll see if can come; Qur'an burnings are nice and all but this mass migration nonsense seems to have given Christians the idea that *their* religion is somehow less bad.
Having seen the videos of the riots one thing stands out.
This isnt a muslim thing as much as it is young people in poor parts of the towns, often linked to gang crime that is spreading a bit of chaos.
Had this been muslims that were upset, we'd have seen people over 30, even older people out there. And muslim clerics would be speaking out angrily about it.
But that didn't happen.
'@Joggar' The Art of War was written thousands of years ago by one of the greatest military leaders in history. It is taught in military academies across the world. Everyone who downvoted? You are wrong, or liars.
I'm ethnically Jewish, Lithuanian primarily, though religiously it's... weird. But try to understand things from our perspective. Yes, it's a long piece, but, well, history is longer than most Americans realize.
We never really viewed ourselves as being native to the lands we lived, for about 3000 years much of our identity has been that we were, in fact, Resident Aliens; many people date the Diaspora (our word, incidentally) to around 2000 years ago, but the Babylonian Exile was much further back and there were scatterings of us even before then. In some cases, we even predate the "locals" in the lands we lived in. But as the Resident Alien, we were always the ones to be blamed for whatever the problem of the day was. Come Christianity and Islam, things got even weirder. We were both a Holy People to be protected, but the most vile of traitors for not granting those religions legitimacy through conversion. Martin Luther infamously believed (among other reasons) that Jews refusing to convert to Catholicism was proof the Church had failed in its duties, but became enraged when Jews refused to convert to his religion. And so we kept getting tossed from one country to the next. We are remembered for being merchants and skilled craftsmen, but only because everyone else DIED; you can take your education/training with you, but not, e.g. your farm or fishing boat.
Skipping a lot of events, we come to the French Revolution and later Napoleon. The promises of the French Republic were a France where all citizens were, in fact, French. For once, we were to be equal citizens. This... didn't work out as expected. Again, skipping over a lot of history, we come to the Dreyfus Affair. After Bismarck utterly humiliated France, it was a Jewish war hero who was to blame for France's loss. It didn't matter that there was no real evidence, a large chunk of the public simply could never accept the idea of Jews being fellow Frenchmen. Combined with the Russian oppression of their Jewish populations (i.e., my family), a lot of Jews ended up looking to one country that was rivaling both France and Russia; Germany.
You can open a history textbook to read more on how THAT ended, but I'll focus on the relevant point; it did not matter how loyal we were or that we had fought in WWI in slightly higher percentages relative to the general population, Xenophobia is NOT a precision instrument. Hatred of one group almost universally leads to hatred of other groups, and whatever grievances Germany had with France, Britain, Poland or Russia only fed into more hatred of Jews. And Roma/"Gypsies" too, which is another sad story.
Ashamed of what they had done, Western Europe wanted to prevent the wrongs of the past from repeating, and one of the results was the creation of the Multiculturalism we see today. France, Germany and Britain invited in millions of Muslim immigrants who would never have been allowed to join European societies pre-WWII. I am doing a disservice if I don't mention that one of the original intentions of Multiculturalism actually was exploitation; the immigrants would work for low wages, then return home to be replaced with a new set of immigrants. As it turns out, many of those immigrants preferred to stay and formed communities in Europe, but those communities are not exactly pro-Jewish, for a number of reasons I'm glossing over lest this thread become yet another flame-war. Regardless, this leaves us again in yet another strange situation. The more grievances that natives have with the Muslim immigrants, regardless of their legitimacy, the more hatred the locals will have against Jews (and Roma, if we're being honest). The more grievances Muslims have against the locals, again, regardless of their legitimacy, Xenophobia and Hate are not precision tools, and you won't find too many anti-Western Muslims who are pro-Jewish. So I see a very dangerous future for my people in Europe, because if tensions continue to boil over, for us it won't matter too much which side "wins".
I am a firm believer in freedom of religion and everyone should be able to practice their religion in peace. At the same time reacting violently over an asshole who burned your religious book is not the way to go. counter-protest but keep protests peaceful do not fall for the trap of the hateful trolls who want to make you and your religion look "uncivilized and violent" prove them wrong
edit: when I made this I was not aware of this #9872501 I tried to make my message vague by not bringing up any certain religion though my original statement and belief still stand even if not 100% about the conflict that Paludan caused
'@AmericanButterfly' What if it's a religion that would sacrifice modern americans to their gods, and then eat one of their arms in a ceremonial meal? Like the aztecs used to do?
@Joggar seriously are we doing this? As long as the religion does not break other known laws human scarface is against the law and people don't use their religion to physically harm others.
I am not a religious person at all but I believe in freedom of religion and letting people practice their faith in peace. if they don't use their faith to justify harming others.
@Joggar we are not talking about dead religions we are talking about relgions still practiced by millions of people part of "freedom of religion" is not forcing it upon others. If people just let others be to practice their religion (that doesn't have human scarface or cannibalism) or be an atheists that be great
@Joggar everyone cares about their own life, the point is in history people have been killed for worshiping the way they do, heck thousands of immigrants came to the US because it had freedom of religion as its federal law, it's in the US constitution, I know that only counts for my country (the US constitution I know other countries have freedom of religion too) but I believe it should be a universal right around the world. and before you twist this around for me using the US constitution as a reference to why I believe in freedom of religion, it's not about my country or any country it's about basic human dignity sadly even though "Freedom of Religion" is literally the first thing in the Bill of Rights there are still those who want America to be a "Christian Nation" and think anyone who is not "Christian" should leave this country or worse not be alive anymore, yeah Christianity is the highest religion in the US but that doesn't make it the only regions, but then they use the other part of the First Amendment "freedom of speech" to justify their hatefulness towards others who don't follow their religion which against freedom of religion. those are just extreme cases and those aren't the majority
the First Amendment is basically just 6 rights in 'one'
Protects freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to petition the government
which is kind of hilarious in hindsight
I watched a video about German Pows during WW2 that was sent to the US during WWII, and they tried to secretly denazify them (it had to be the secret cause of the geneva convention) and teach them about democracy anyway the german pows were practicing "voting" if they should have a Catholic or luthern sermons, well there was more Lutherans than Catholics, so the German pows thought they will have Lutheran sermons but the guard told them that was unfair to the catholic pows and they split sermons for Lutherans to be in the morning and Catholics to be in the afternoon, (or was it the other way around) the guy telling the story said they had "much to learn"
@Joggar Freedom of religion implies the right to believe in any deity, or no deity, to voice your beliefs, and to practice your religion within the limits of generally permissible action. It does not imply a right to carry out antisocial religious rituals.
@Joggar No. There is a difference. The Satatism argument is the same: "they're worshipping, aren't they? That makes them religious, right?"
No. Satanism is antireligion. It is a purely reactionary movement of confused and supremely unhappy people. That is not covered under, say, the US Constitution's First Amendment. The amendment states that individuals and groups are free to be religious in the public square: wearing emblems of their faith, preaching or demonstrating peacefully in public places, and proselytizing in proper ways all without interference from the government or any government entities, including police - because the state does not have the power to dictate _how_ people are allowed to follow God. (Of course, people seem to forget all about those protections when a Christian gets within 500 feet of an abortion mill, but that's a different conversation.)
Antireligion violates the spirit of the law, which is meant to protect the right of religious people to follow God in whatever way they find to be correct. Antireligion is a corrupt obfuscation of religion, and obviously should be treated as such.
@Joggar
1) Those actual religions don't exist any more, at least not in any number. Even if they did, religious freedom does not extend to breaking other laws, laws can be altered if voted upon but no state would agree to allow one religion the right to murder others.
2) You seem to imply this is the case with Islam. That's not true for the most part. The Salafis and especially Qutbis are indeed a problem, but people burning Korans and attacking everyday Muslims is HOW you end up with more Qutbis.
Qutbis will. Most Muslims aren't Qutbis. Blaming all Muslims because of the actions of a few fringe groups that others often view as heretical is like blaming all Christians because of something the Mormons did.
'@CorruptUser' Never heard about them. Can you tell the difference between protestants and catholics and mormons? I can't. Most people (who are not one of those people) can't. Same thing with muslims. There is one group as far as most non-muslims are concerned.
@Joggar The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only Christian denomination besides Catholicism that makes claim to the title of the one and only true church - that is, the restoration of Christ's original church and authority to the earth. Many people with some historical knowledge (about a 6th grade education, I'd say) know full well the number and variety of Christian splinters, sects, subgroups and denominations. The history of Islam is less well-known in the Western world because it is less foundational to the society we live in.
I don't think I've ever heard of Fundies murdering Gay people. Conversion therapy, i.e., isolating and torturing them, sometimes even sexually abusing them, that's something they do. Murder, not so much.
@AmericanButterfly They(the Muslims) weren't reacting violent, the Police are pretty sure it's organized crime syndicates that took the opportunity to attack the Police.
@GlassesGuy Sounds like Sweden should start changing some laws if organised crime is beating the police. If the politicians don't react now, they will be the next target for the gangsters. After that, Sweden, as we know it, would be history.
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