People who promote or support blasphemy laws are most definitely not engaging in mutual respect and full communication. Quite the opposite. They seek to control and hobble discourse by using their deliberate petulance as a tawdry rhetorical ploy. This is both a matter of mere convenience and a logical error (appeal to emotion).
No subject matter is ever advanced by bobbleheading and eternal recapitulation to stagnant ideas. Only critical inquiry advances a subject matter. An environment where critical inquiry is possible is necessary for advancing any subject matter - and that's why the islamic world contributes nothing to any subject matter, since Abū Ḥāmed Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī. All inquiry is stifled by petulant orthodoxy requirements. Most of the rest of humanity has learned the lesson. Islam refuses to learn anything, by doctrine. This (and nearly identical issues with chritianity, hinduism, and others) is why September 30th is now Blasphemy Day, celebrated by forward thinking, progressive, and free people - people who understand the difference between words and violence and the importance of free and open inquiry.
Respect applies to people, not to ideas (people and ideas are not equivalent), however much ideas may be cherished, Even then, respect must be earned - it is not some sort of entitlement. People who do not understand this are usually those incapable of distinguishing between words and violence (a criterion of civilization and living with other human beings).
And this is why Draw Muhammad Day exists. To try to teach people, through causing them to become desensitized, the difference between words (or images) and violence. If you are provoked to violence by a stick figure that is your failing, your reflexively violent tendency, your lack of understanding, your lack of civilization, your responsibility, not anyone else's.
This post also explains why I continue to oppose Atheism+.
No comments:
Post a Comment