Saturday, February 11, 2006
Freedom of Speech on this Blog
The cartoon controversy has spread so wide that yesterday as I turned on CBC to watch the Olympic opening ceremonies, I found the commentators talking about its effect on the Danish team.
I was sickened, though not surprised, to see Muslims burn Danish embassies in Lebanon and Syria. Harming foreign diplomats of a country can literally lead to war as was the case when Muslim ambassadors to the Roman empire were murdered leading to an all out battle (Battle of Muta'h).
Secondly, was there really a need to turn violent? Make no mistakes, the apologies of the Danish government and newspaper was due to the widespread economic boycott that had started rather than a response to the violent protests. The boycott was a very legitimate response from the Muslims because if the Danes can claim to a freedom of the press to incite hatred, Muslims had every right to a 'freedom of boycott.' But burning embassies was unacceptable and uncalled for.
Maybe the scholars of hadith missed the part where the Muslims of Mecca joined together to throw the garbage right back at the persons trying to harm the Prophet (peace be upon him). For those unfamiliar with the story, certain people in Mecca would throw garbage and harmful objects in the way of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and he would just remove them. One day he found no garbage in his path and enquired as to the reason why, only to discover that the person responsible had fallen ill. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) decided to pay a visit to enquire about his health. The man was so moved by this gesture that he converted to Islam.
This incident made me think about freedom of speech on my blog. Even though this is a personal blog, often I deal with sensitive political and religious issues but unlike other bloggers, I've decided to let others comment/criticize and that too while being anonymous. But obviously such previlige comes with certain restraints.
In over a 16 months of blogging, I have only deleted one comment but in hindsight, even that could have been avoided. So, let's try to be civilized and use the 'anonymous' previlige for meaningful dialogues. I probably won't censor anyone but any degrading remarks devoid of facts and based purely on emotion while ignoring all etiquettes of 'adab' only reflect the person's bias and how low he/she has sank in an effort to make their point.
I was sickened, though not surprised, to see Muslims burn Danish embassies in Lebanon and Syria. Harming foreign diplomats of a country can literally lead to war as was the case when Muslim ambassadors to the Roman empire were murdered leading to an all out battle (Battle of Muta'h).
Secondly, was there really a need to turn violent? Make no mistakes, the apologies of the Danish government and newspaper was due to the widespread economic boycott that had started rather than a response to the violent protests. The boycott was a very legitimate response from the Muslims because if the Danes can claim to a freedom of the press to incite hatred, Muslims had every right to a 'freedom of boycott.' But burning embassies was unacceptable and uncalled for.
Maybe the scholars of hadith missed the part where the Muslims of Mecca joined together to throw the garbage right back at the persons trying to harm the Prophet (peace be upon him). For those unfamiliar with the story, certain people in Mecca would throw garbage and harmful objects in the way of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and he would just remove them. One day he found no garbage in his path and enquired as to the reason why, only to discover that the person responsible had fallen ill. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) decided to pay a visit to enquire about his health. The man was so moved by this gesture that he converted to Islam.
This incident made me think about freedom of speech on my blog. Even though this is a personal blog, often I deal with sensitive political and religious issues but unlike other bloggers, I've decided to let others comment/criticize and that too while being anonymous. But obviously such previlige comes with certain restraints.
In over a 16 months of blogging, I have only deleted one comment but in hindsight, even that could have been avoided. So, let's try to be civilized and use the 'anonymous' previlige for meaningful dialogues. I probably won't censor anyone but any degrading remarks devoid of facts and based purely on emotion while ignoring all etiquettes of 'adab' only reflect the person's bias and how low he/she has sank in an effort to make their point.
Faraz Ahmed 4:07 p.m.
1 Comments:
I agree. Violence never achieved anything, Though it is very tempting to some.
We don't belief in our own power. By simply boycotting Denmark's been forced to change it's startegy in handling this affair.
We don't belief in our own power. By simply boycotting Denmark's been forced to change it's startegy in handling this affair.
