Saturday, March 28, 2009

Do The Math

"The U.N.'s top human-rights body approved a proposal by Muslims nations Thursday urging passage of laws around the world to protect religion from criticism."

Here's there argument, as declared by Pakistan's ambassador: "Defamation of religions is the cause that leads to incitement to hatred, discrimination and violence toward their followers. It is important to deal with the cause, rather than with the effects alone."

I understand people don't enjoy being criticized. But why stop at religion? Defaming anything that anyone cares about can lead to trouble. Why not just ban it all?

3 Comments:

Anonymous Lawrence King said...

This is even more puzzling because virtually all ideologies and religions and philosophies contain implicit -- and often explicit -- criticisms of other ideologies and religions.

Of course, this can run the gamut from "everyone in that group is stupid and evil" to "the people in that group are almost all wonderful and intelligent and moral, and some of their tenets are true, but other tenets held by them are false." But every point on that spectrum can be seen as "criticism", right?

1:36 PM, March 28, 2009  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is all purely political. They may even consciously believe what they're saying, but in reality what's going on is they, like just about every other group, want a special exemption from criticism. It's the same motive behind speech codes on campuses. The people with the real power get their power from claiming to be oppressed, thus "special" laws can be passed treating them separately from everyone else, making them such special "victims" that you can't even criticize them.

1:49 PM, March 28, 2009  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

let's ban talking, no make that all forms of communication.

7:05 PM, March 28, 2009  

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