Four years ago Muslims around the world were protesting against a dozen picture of the Prophet Muhammad that was published by the Danish Newspaper. The incident seems to confirm Samuel Huntingdon’s thesis of The Clash of Civilizations that “great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural” (Huntington 1993:22). He views this mix conflict as a norm by asserting that nation-state’s are new phenomena in a world dominated for most of its history by conflicts between civilizations, however researcher Jytte Kalausen says it’s much more complicated than that, in The Cartoons that shook the World.
According to Jytte Kalausen, “Denmark, like many other European countries, has been really concerned and very upset about the differences between the religious Muslims and the sort of normal lifestyle issues that Danes like to embrace”. For a period of time there had been reports in Denmark that Danish artist had become concerned about really just going about their business insulting religion like they used to because they were afraid of what Muslims would do.
The editors of the newspaper then decided to do an experiment to find out if illustrators for newspapers, the cartoonist, really afraid. So they wrote to all members of the association of the Danish newspaper illustration association and asked them to simply draw the Prophet Muhammad and out of the 44 members, only 12 responded.
However this led to protest across the Muslim world some resorted to violence with instances of police firing on crowds of protestors. This goes for the creators of “South Park” who also published it on their series. The creators of “South Park” could face retribution for depicting Muhammad (Miller, J.R, 2010).
Source: RevolutionMuslim.com posted a warning following the 200th episode of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "South Park," which included a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad disguised in a bear suit.
Free speech has become a platitude. Like human rights and democracy, we’re all in favor of it, but would rather not address the tough calls where core values collide. However, it’s those tough cases, like media competition regulation, the Mohammad cartoons, which define free speech (Cohn, W.A, 2009).
Despite having the freedom of speech to do what they like, whether it’s ethical or not, The Danish cartoonist should be able to be respect the Muslims. It’s things like this that create disunity among the people of the world and to large extend, wars.
Reference:
Miller, J.R. 2010, ‘South Park’ Creators Could Face Retribution For Depicting Muhammad, Website Warns’ Foxnews.com
Castina. 2010, “South Park” Prophet Mohammed Episode “Censored” After Threats From Radical Muslim Group. PopCrucnch.com
http://www.popcrunch.com/south-park-muslim-threats/
Marisol. 2010, ‘Jihad Watch’
Ateist. 2009, ‘Danish Mohammed Cartoons’. Blog
Cohn, W.A. 2009, ‘New Presence: The Prague Journal of Central European Affairs’, Vol.12 Issue 3, pg23-27, 5p
Huntingon, S.P. 1993, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/48950/samuel-p-huntington/the-clash-of-civilizations
Gregory, S.J. 2010, ‘Transition To Free Speech: A Case Study On Legal Transfers In Jordanian Jurisprudence’. Vol. 31 Issue 6, p2521-2554, 34p
Lungren, D.E. 2010, ‘Congressional Digest’.Vol. 89 Issue 7, p215-219, 3p.
AtheistMediaBlog. 2010, ‘Death Threat For South Park Creators Over Muhammad Satire’. YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVs73i0E1vw&feature=related
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