There are three issues that need to be addressed when discussing this matter which is generally neglected
1. Christians criticizing Christianity is one thing, Christians criticizing, Jews, Muslims, Gypsies is another. Europe had learnt that with one of the hardest lessons of the history. 2. The representation code is differ rent in different religions and imposing the codes of Christian iconography over other cultures is a violence that is an extension of Orientalist motives. 3. Larger context. Denmark is one of members of the holly alliance that is currently invading Iraq. If this caricature had published somewhere else its effect would have been different. So, let's drop this freedom of speech pedantry and try to look closely what is really happening. Our concepts of discussion should be based on the examples of Nazi era caricatures that represents Jews, which also could be discussed under the terms of freedom of speech, but we don't do that. Because freedom in democratic countries is not the freedom of the powerful to oppress the weak. The meaning of democracy is to give the weak a voice and secure it in every condition. In Denmark the freedom of minority is being oppressed with this example. Ayhan Aytes # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
