Thursday, June 3, 2010

Lars Vilks Attacked Again!

Lars Vilks the Swedish artist has been attacked again. This time two men, ages 19 and 21, attacked his home in Nyhamnslage in southern Sweden. He was not home at the time. They used two gasoline filled plastic bottles and tried to set fire to his home. His website has also been attacked. This followed the attact that I blogged about prior at Uppsala University, which has been on Youtube. If you remember Lars portrayed Muhammad as a satirical cartoon that was published in the regional daily Nerikes Allehanda. This was to illustrate the importance of freedom of expression. Al-Queda as offered $100,000 reward to the person who can murder Lars and a bonus of $50,000 for slitting his throat. An extra $50,000 for the death of the editor of the paper also. This is a very good example of intolerance of religion, and in this case Islam. I think it is also a good example of the immaturity of Islam, because it or some of its members, act like a spoiled child getting his or her feeling hurt. The result is the child wants to strike back at the person hurting the feeling by killing him, or at least bodily damaging the offender. This has been amply shown by Pakistan banning Facebook and YouTube for the drawing the prophet. It also vividly shows the clash of civilizations. In today's modern world with high speed Internet access someone somewhere is going to publish something someone finds offensive. Islam is going to have to grow up quickly. I fear the opposite will happen, more violence from the so called religion of peace and potentially real war. They do not understand that in a free society no one is immune from having their feeling hurt. In fact all such offensive material is protected, especially if it is offensive, because the opposite is oppression and dictatorship. This has been the recent history of the 20th century dictatorships. If you don't like it don't read it, turn it off, turn the channel or write a editorial, but you don't kill the author or imprison him or her. It is up to Islam what will happen. Don't expect the west or any other part of the world or population not to criticize or lampoon you or your prophet, because it will not happen. It only invites more. Christianity in contrast doesn't like criticism either, but at least the majority of Christians will not kill the offender, they may want to but don't. I think it is a sign of maturity. But again we are in danger because there is a segment of radicals who would like to. Think about it.
Peace Skeptical DoDo

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