salman rushdie, the satanic verses and his knighthood
Absolutely .. and just like with friendly neighbours, writing a book which is bound to be VERY offensive to the other "crosses the line" of what should be done. Giving an honour to the person who wrote the book condones and magnifies the insult considerably to cover the whole nation.nekokate wrote:What it boils down to is the simple need to find a balance between respecting each other's beliefs and tolerating each other's right to air those beliefs.
I feel like saying "NOT IN MY NAME" .. and that is the problem with the honour to Rushdie. It tarnishes the whole nation in the eyes of a HUGE number of people.
Last edited by Mandy on Fri Jun 22, 2007 6:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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GingerTruck
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knighthoods what a load of crap why dont they wake up and live in the real worldBut a book like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is the kind of thing that moves us forward when it enters the public consciousness. People can't ban logic and progress just because it will offend someone. People don't have the right not to be offended. I'm offended by things all the time. I'd moan about them but I've never said they should be banned.Mandy wrote:Absolutely .. and just like with friendly neighbours, writing a book which is bound to be VERY offensive to the other "crosses the line" of what should be done.
I'm with Boris Johnson on Rushdie. I disgree with his knighthood on literary grounds. If he had wrote books worthy of a knighthood, then it would be ridiculous to deny him one because fanatics didn't agree.
That depends how one defines offence. If you look back through history a lot of things were considered offensive that no longer are. Why did Oscar Wilde spend time in jail? Because he committed the offensive, morally repugnant sin of homosexuality?faceless wrote:that doesn't give you the right to offend others, does it?Popinjay wrote:I'm offended by things all the time.
People have every right to be offended by whatever they like. What they don't have is the right to demand someone's death because of it. Or, for that matter, the smothering of their literature no matter how crap and boring it is (I'm talking to you, Rushdie!)
Saying that people who have a religion need straight-jackets is an insult. There's no arguing that point.
Of course, with atheism being a religion by definition, in that it is a set of beliefs that you live your life by - and because it is becoming more and more organised (without a hint of irony) it makes me wonder if the Southpark plot about an Atheist War could actually become a possibility!
You don't need a religion to understand that you shouldn't insult other people in a broad sweeping generalisation. That's just common sense.
Of course, with atheism being a religion by definition, in that it is a set of beliefs that you live your life by - and because it is becoming more and more organised (without a hint of irony) it makes me wonder if the Southpark plot about an Atheist War could actually become a possibility!
You don't need a religion to understand that you shouldn't insult other people in a broad sweeping generalisation. That's just common sense.
If people want to promote crap, then I am fine with that. But the government, knowing the book was likely to be contentious and damaging to national interests, should have publicly disassociated themselves from it, and even critized it along the lines of : yes we have freedom of speech, but this book is insulting to Muslims and shouldn't have been published [i.e. whilst not stopping it, they didn't have to effectively endorse it]luke wrote:mandy, do you think the book should never have been allowed to have released?
As a government, I would have asked Rushdie to directly pay for any extra protection he is given.
yeah i agree with thatMandy wrote:If people want to promote crap, then I am fine with that. But the government, knowing the book was likely to be contentious and damaging to national interests, should have publicly disassociated themselves from it, and even critized it along the lines of : yes we have freedom of speech, but this book is insulting to Muslims and shouldn't have been published [i.e. whilst not stopping it, they didn't have to effectively endorse it]
As a government, I would have asked Rushdie to directly pay for any extra protection he is given.
That doesn't, no. But freedom of expression does, within certain boundries.faceless wrote:that doesn't give you the right to offend others, does it?Popinjay wrote:I'm offended by things all the time.
That's not what I said. What I actually said was that people have been put in straight jackets for believing less outlandish things. There's a big difference there. There's no arguing that point either.faceless wrote:Saying that people who have a religion need straight-jackets is an insult. There's no arguing that point.
It's not a religion. Religion is theism, atheism is a lack of theism. If a religion was "a set of beliefs that you live your life by" then everything is a religion. Philosophy would be a religion. Instead of going off on a semantic tangent and getting wrapped up in word games, how about for this debate we classify religion as belief in a diety?faceless wrote:Of course, with atheism being a religion by definition, in that it is a set of beliefs that you live your life by
It's also common sense to know that if we're to progress as a species, theories need to be challenged. Sometimes that will offend religious people, but that's a small price to pay. Religion is ridiculous. If people grew up in a secular environment then learned about religion in their late teens or early twenties, nobody would believe it. The problem is that it's hammered into people when they're young alongside their education.faceless wrote:You don't need a religion to understand that you shouldn't insult other people in a broad sweeping generalisation. That's just common sense.
Last edited by popinjay on Fri Jun 22, 2007 11:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.