The repeated calls for an unreserved apology for publishing ‘offensive’ and ‘insulting’ caricatures of Mohammad reminds me of the apologies that should be made to me and many like me.
I’d like the offended Islamists – from the Islamic Republic of Iran to Islamic Jihad to the Saudi government… – to apologise; not for their backward and medieval superstitions and religious mumbo jumbo but for their imposition of these beliefs in the form of states, Islamic laws and the political Islamic movement. If any of them want to apologise for the mass murder of countless human beings in Iran and the Middle East, and more recently in Europe, for veiling and sexual apartheid, for stoning, amputations, decapitations, Islamic terrorism and for the recent brutal attack on Tehran bus workers and so on and so forth, just email me direct.
On a more serious note, though, of course no apology is due them.
As if.
If the Jyllands-Posten has naively apologised it is only because the Islamists demands are always followed with bomb scares and death threats – even after the apology has been made!
Jyllands-Posten should know better. Poking fun at or criticising beliefs and religions are not only permissible but a necessity given the havoc religion is wreaking today.
In defence of free speech, secularism, and 21 century values, I too am reprinting the caricatures here in line with the daily France-Soir which carried the headline “Yes, We Have the Right to Caricature God”…
I urge everyone to do the same.