Sympathy

"Principles are one thing, sympathies another. In principle I support the right of any newspaper to print cartoons of Mohammed and the right of anyone else to reproduce them. As far as sympathies go, can I just say that if you side with a group of effete right wing pseudo intellectuals in making sport of a decent, inoffensive and hardworking group of people like my Muslim neighbours, then you ought to be fucking well ashamed of yourself. Repeat this statement on your own website. Refusal to do so is equivalent to self-censorship."

Having sympathy for an individual is one thing, but to self censor for sake of not offending an entire peoples? I don't buy it.

Sure, we could not print the image with the accompanying words, but the offense would still be the same. But maybe blowing people up is reason to not print them. Being made to be afraid because someone will riot, is that our cause not to pause?

The guy working at the restaurant isn't the guy the illustrationis drawn for, and would probably not incite him to burn down buildings. Maybe he'd spit in someones food, but I doubt it. Just like anything inflamitory, it's going to affect those who want to be incited by it.

So what. It offends me to think that people will burn a building for an illustration. I say publish it in the New York Times. Why does a religion think they have control over what other countries or religions say about it? Is it insensitive, sure, but so are a lot more things to belly ache about.