Personal

According to Reuter’s “Oddly Enough” Iranians have renamed Danish Pastries when sold locally. They will now be called Roses of the Prophet Mohammad.

Can anyone say freedom fries?

Apparently Iran is holding a competition to find the “best” cartoon depiction of the holocaust as a test of Western principles and ideas of freedom of speech.

Firstly I’ll make my stance on freedom of speech clear. With rights comes responsibility. Although I think that people should be allowed freedom of expression and that people should be allowed to draw cartoons of what they like, that doesn’t mean that I think it’s necessarily a good idea to. A lot of unpleasant situations in the past have arose because of freedom of speech ideals.

On the other hand killing people for saying something you don’t like could rarely, if ever, be justified.

If Iran (or whatever newspaper or person came up with the idea) goes through with their plan, the outcome will be fairly obvious. There will be condemnation of the cartoon(s), people will say it’s an insult to the millions that died as well as those who lived through it. Despite all that I’m fairly sure you won’t see Iranian embassies burnt down nor death threats against the cartoonist or publisher.

Whatever argument there might have been that the cartoons were wrong has been completely overshadowed and rendered insignificant compared to the response. As I was told when I was at school: “If you have to shout, you’ve probably already lost the argument.”

This will be a somewhat controversial post.

The violent reaction to the cartoons depicting Mohamed continues to escalate. The form and severity of this reaction is wrong for several reasons.

Firstly, Islam forbids the persecution of non-believers. That is people who just disagree with the teachings of Islam should not be punished or treated any less than a Muslim. Unlike the invasion of Iraq for instance, nobody (Muslim or otherwise) was actually hurt by the cartoons. They simply didn’t believe that drawing them was wrong. This represents a difference in beliefs and the cartoonists should not be punished (according to Islamic beliefs).

Secondly, Islam strongly upholds the sanctity of life. Killing an innocent person is said to be like killing the entire human race. The argument here is who is considered innocent? Well it isn’t really relevent since killing someone could only be condoned if that individual disregards others’ right to life. Essentially only murderers may be executed. Calls for the death of the cartoonists are fundamentally non-Islamic.

The Great Me is 22 :D

Er, that’s about it really…

Apparently I’m 37% nerd. Probably about right. :) Thanks to Rylon for the link.

Just to let people know, the ending to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Quintessential Phase is actually pretty good. The ending is far more “together” than the end of the fifth book, Mostly Harmless since it includes both Zaphod Beeblebrox and Fenchurch. Any fans who haven’t heard it yet, should go out and buy it.

I had a frozen pizza today, Goodfellas Delicia. And much to my surprise their slogan is the same as the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).

In an interesting twist, Saddam Hussein is trying to sue George Bush and Tony Blair for a range of offences related to the invasion of Iraq.

Some of the points seem valid, some are rather silly. To read more detail, check out the Washington Post.

Ooooh. We’ve just set up an ad-hoc wireless network and are now sharing a 56k dial-up connection between three computers… Clever but not that useful.

Just thought I’d randomly point out that it’s my birthday soon :) Birthday