Debate on BBC about Muhammad cartoon affair

VFR’s formerly leftist reader writes again from England:

Friends, assuming you have BroadBand, I urge you to google ‘bbc newsnight’ (do it as soon as possible as this programme is only up on the Net for 24 hours so it will be up no later than 10:30 British time or 5:30 Eastern time in the States) and click into the repeat of last night’s programme which features a debate about the Muhammed cartoon controversy(followed by a briefer segment on the Griffin anti-Islam free speech acquittal). On the programme was a black member of Hiz-B-Tahir the Fundamentalist Islamic group, a Fundamentalist Christian, a German Newspaper editor who has printed the cartoons (no British paper has as far as I know) and a wonderful free speech Muslim lady who did a great job of attacking the general Muslim argument. This issue is huge in Europe and here and has ironically dwarfed the Nick Griffin acquittal (which normally would have been the lead story of its kind). It may be the biggest Clash of Civilisations since the Rushdie affair. What an irony: in Muslim countries the anti-Jewish insults (not just anti-Israel) are far worse than anything that has been published here in Europe and Judaism and Christianity are constantly under attack. Ironic too is the fact that many Muslims emigrated to the West from their repressive Islamic regimes so they could have more free speech. Clearly they just don’t want to allow free speech here in the West. And it’s not just Fundamentalist Muslims. Like the Rushdie affair, it’s so called Moderate Muslims denouncing the cartoons and urging the banning of them. And like the Rushdie affair, the West is already too often groveling to Islamic pressure. Newspaper editors have already been sacked. When are we going to learn that the more we appease Muslims the more they demand from us. It is time we in the West finally stood up to the Islamic world but again I am less than hopeful, especially here in Britain (as I said not a single paper has dared to publish the cartoons here).

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 03, 2006 05:35 AM | Send