Tolerance is not a moral requirement but a social contract.
By social contract I mean it’s an agreement that I will tolerate you as long as you tolerate me.
Islamic groups literally want some sections of western society dead (queer community etc) and other sections subjugated (women). They violate the contract and we shouldn’t be accepting of that.
tldr: We shouldn’t pander to people who think a book burning means someone should die.
Not all Muslims are like that though. Most are very level headed and tolerant of others and their religions too. If all Muslims were how you described, with how many there are in the world there would be literal chaos every day.
Sure, but I have received a few messages from Muslims–and only Muslims–threatening to overtake Western civilization so that I’ll be put in my place. I don’t know of any other group that does that.
Right, but you didn’t receive an email from every Muslim in the entire world. And I could think of a few Christian nutjobs that go crazy, like how a lot are against gay people and send them to camps to stop them from being gay.
My overall point doesn’t require that every single Muslim do that. If a small fraction of them are making these threats, it hints at an underlying belief system and related attitudes of an agenda against the West.
Completely agree. I’ve lived in Malaysia and they’re pretty chilled there. Some places though Islam gets pretty full on. Check out Islamabad or Tehran sometime - yikes. Nothing like seeing a march of people chanting, ‘Death to the west!’ and flaying themselves bloody while doing it to realise Islam ramps up.
Protesting against those who impede on your right to self-determination and your right to trade freely with the rest of the world is completely understandable. Especially when the entity enforcing the sanctions and making threatening statements conversely makes so much noise about “liberal” values - the right to free trade, democracy etc.
Geeze yeah the Iranians I saw certainly weren’t protesting. They just wanted war and blood. It’s hard to explain the real face of Islam unless you see it first hand - check it out sometime!
It’s spooky to see how Islam changes Iranians - they’re usually the kindest, most open minded and welcoming people. The Islamists though…wow
The west is the party that wants war and blood. The Iranians just want to defend themselves. Your hypocrisy is through the roof.
You look at Palestine and then say “oh those Hamas guys, they just hate the west for no reason aside from Islam. It has nothing to do with them being oppressed.”
Level headed people shouldn’t be out of their mind because some nutjob burns a book. Pretty sure people who are like you write aren’t keen on getting blasphemy laws back.
You described the fanatical extremists that are not the majority of that religion. I also don’t know what you’re trying to get at with that last part. I just think people are too quick to lump everyone in one bag that doesn’t fully represent them just because it does for a few of them.
There are absolute heinous people who could be demographically similar to me as well I imagine, I don’t want to be lumped in with them. Just like how a lot of Muslims around the world will think that too.
Banning the burning or “desecration” of a specific genre of books because it rallies the feelings of highly religious people is pandering to the views of the religious extremists. That is my point.
People who are level headed about their religion won’t demand that a state forbids to burn a book. And they won’t get worked up by it to the point they think this is something that should be handled on a state level.
I have more of an issue that the people burning are doing it themselves to try and incite something. I couldn’t care less to be honest that it’s about religious stuff or of a specific religion. It goes both ways, just don’t be pricks towards other people and none of that eye for an eye shit either.
Doesn’t really matter what the motivation is. Burning a book does not justify violence in response. You can have pure wonderful motivations or fuck awful ones neither would change what was done.
Say you have a bunch of Nazi grizzly bears living outside and around your village.
They don’t do fuck all to the people of your village. In fact, some are actually coming through the village sometimes, but they don’t hurt anyone. They’re just Nazi fucks. But they enjoy your village and they sometimes fertilize your parks.
Then someone says, these fucking grizzly bears are Nazis, goddammit, imma burn piles of “Mein Kampf” as a protest!
So they do, and all the grizzly bears get provoked, enter the village, and start attacking all the people.
Now, there’s a whole bunch of people on both sides of this theoretical situation who will say this is black and white and in their favor – how dare they burn our holy book! How dare they say we can’t burn whatever we like in our own village!
But it’s not black and white. It’s gray af. It’s freaking #777.
If you don’t provoke them, there’s no problem in the village. Sometimes it’s enough knowing you have the right to do something, and too much to actually do it, because actually doing it creates a whole fucking heap of problems to your fellow villager, whereas not doing it would spare them these problems.
With great power comes great responsibility. Same thing with great freedoms. We have a bunch of freedoms. Let’s not be stupid with them, lest they be taken away.
Eh, I get what they are trying to go for, but this kind of appeasement won’t fix a group that doesn’t believe in the democracy they live in. What, will they also ban drawing Mohammed since it also upsets muslims and thus incites violence?
Good. The burning were done specifically to incite hatred and create social turmoil, for the explicit purpose of turning Muslims and non Muslims against each other. Much like free speech does not cover threat or calls to violence, stopping these burnings stops these bad actors while leaving your right to free /speech/ unaffected, so if you want to criticise islam and Muslims, you can still say whatever you want about them, so any claims about free speech are kinda moot.
Over on YouTube, thunderfoot did a fun thought experiment. He filled a hard disk full of copies of the Quran and then proceeded to zero over all of them. Is destroying thousands of digital copies of the Quran equivalent to burning them?
Quite frankly it should be illegal to burn holy books/flags/effigies/etc.
What is possibly gained by symbolically lighting someone’s holy book on fire? Is religion regressive? Absolutely. But all you’re doing is creating righteous indignation in the group you disagree with, making them out to be the sympathetic party, and it kind of makes you look like a culture warrior tool to do the burning.
You can’t still say “fuck Islam” “Muhammed was a pedophile” etc anything you like about Islam, so their free speech is fine. It’s only Americans that have this fetishised notion of free speech that becomes “I can do whatever I want without consequence”
Religion is dog shit and no one should have to treat it with kid gloves. Bad job Denmark, no appeasement for shamans who want to pull us back into the dark ages.
Good. There’s no good reason to burn books. Free speech doesn’t require absolutism, it requires that we are capable of expressing our ideas. Yelling the N word doesn’t express an idea, it’s just offense. Ditto book burning. People who are absolutists are pretty much always being assholes.
Different issue. I’m not debating categories of speech. I’m saying that speech that expresses no ideas but that is significantly hateful to a group of people shouldn’t be protected. There are trade offs here: offensive speech that expresses political ideas (beyond “we hate you”) is worthwhile and should be balanced against offense it may cause. I know this isn’t a nice simple black and white answer but I think the real world isn’t nice a simple. There are shades of grey. Other countries might weigh the tradeoffs differently and that’s fine. Doesn’t make this decision wrong, just that the tradeoffs are weighed differently to your intuitions
Blasphemy the Holy Ghost then deny the existence of Allah and prove it please. As an atheist you should have zero problems committing the unforgivable sins of the Abrahamic faiths.
Everyone check out the totally real not fake atheist here!
I knew it btw, I knew that anyone advocating cowardly appeasement would have to be afraid of a skydaddy and was so lacking in courage they would even lie.about their beliefs. When the going gets slightly tough we know who hides. Maybe pray harder next time and the zombie-jew will save you ;)
I don’t disagree but I feel like they should just ban publicly burning books for reasons other than waste disposal. I think it’s weird to make an exception for one particular religious book
Book burnings are bad when they are used to prevent the free sharing of information or ideas. It is a form of censorship. Burning the Quran is not censorship, because this is not an attempt to ban the Quran or prevent anyone from reading it. Its an entirely symbolic gesture. Its comparable to burning the American flag, which I’m guessing you’re not so against.
This feels weird to me. Book bans I’m wholly against. But also throwing people in jail for burning paper seems strange as well. Like, I’m queer as hell and used to be religious. But if you want to wrap a Bible in a rainbow flag and burn it, then whatever. Waste of resources. But throwing people in prison over something some fraction of any population believes in (without violence, racism or hatespeech) seems excessive and favors religion.
Violence, hatespeech, racism, banning books, obviously all bets are off. I just wish everyone could dial back everything about 10 notches.
According to the law, you can’t wrap a Bible in a rainbow flag and burn it either. ‘The law criminalizes the “inappropriate treatment of writings with significant importance for a recognized religious community.”’
I don’t understand the replies here - this bill was drafted in response to multiple events where ethno-nationalists burned the Qur’an in front of audiences with the implicit intent to incite violence against Denmark’s Muslim minority population. If you read the article, the bill bans the only the public burning of any religious book, not just the Qur’an. This bill would not “limit freedom of speech,” it would limit a form of hate speech and arguably stochastic terrorism being employed by the far right in Denmark. I do not see a problem with this bill.
I agree. It’s for the security of their democracy. Funny thing a Muslim was allowed to burn a Torah and a Holy Bible and those same people were upset. Tit for tat, now it’s against the law.
Hate speech is a form of speech. It is a vile form but it is a form. Ideas that are noble and gentle don’t need to be protected, ideas that are offensive do.
As distasteful as it is, this falls squarely within the paradox of tolerance. There is no reason to burn the quran other than to stick it to “those” people. It’s trolling, it’s intolerant, it does not promote social peace, it does not even promote any kind of dialogue on religious bigotry, it’s just an act of hatred, a fuck you. And the sovereign Danish parliament decided that in their country, the value of this particular fuck you is not worth the disturbance to the peace. They have decided to not tolerate this particular kind of intolerance. Disagree with them all you like, but I see a rationale and it’s far from pointless. “Free speech absolutism” might be an American foundational value but that simply is not the case in the rest of the world. And a democracy, like Denmark, may legitimately decide to resolve the paradox in this way at this point in their history, and they are perfectly free to reverse this down the line. They chose to limit one freedom, that frankly is mostly used in a petulant, childish and intolerant way, in the interest of peace. Good on them.
Burning, tearing, or defiling religious texts in public could land people with a fine or up to two years behind bars. Destroying a holy text on video and disseminating the footage online could also put offenders in jail.
I am very sorry that the leaders of Denmark are willing to give up their right of freedom of speech of their population for so little. I wonder what rights they will give up next as part of their appeasement.
Would you also consider chants such as “death to all Jews/gays/black people” or actions such as burning trans flag as freedom of speech and do you believe it should be tolerated?
Don’t see where I said otherwise. You have an opinion that I have no right to insult skydaddy and I have an opinion that both of us do. One of us has an opinion that freedom to speak your views is important and the other one does not.
I mean if you read my comments you would no I still support your right to insult “skydaddy” you’ve taken the fact I disagree with you and extrapolated that mean I think the complete opposite of you on anything.
Imo, burning books is not “speech” so there is no loss of freedom of speech here. Much like how banning people from burning crosses outside black people’s houses or doing the nazi salute to Jewish people is not violating free speech.
Not a no. You can’t keep track of who you are appeasing and blaming me. Moved the goalposts and I am sorry you can’t see that. Try a yougov survey maybe it will help you find it, that and your courage.
I do I’m just waiting for you to show me where the inconsistencies in my argument are… but since their aren’t any I think I’ll be waiting for a long time.
So I’m just going end this here and move on with my life, before you break down crying or something. Peace out lil neckbeard. ✌️
I personally believe that no discrimination against people based on religion, race, color of skin is appropriate. So I believe that any islamophobic symbol is incorrect.
However, same rule applies to the other side. No islamic minorities should show symbols which could be disrespectful towards different people.
I don’t see how someone burning a copy of a book that they paid for themselves is discrimination. It is criticism and protest, but not discriminatory. It isn’t denying anyone else’s access to the words in the book. It’s just making a political statement.
Ideas should always be allowed to be criticized. Inanimate objects shouldn’t be given human rights.
I would not necessarily say it’s because people don’t understand Muslims. I myself have nothing in common with Muslims, as well.
More likely the case is that there are 2 approaches to free speech. First one advocates for absolute free speech whilst the second is more aligned with “my liberty ends where yours begins” phrase.
I agree with you that we can contrast absolute free speech with a view that considers the effects we have on others. I’m all for the latter approach while I find the former infantile. I do still believe that not being islamic is an issue here. I don’t tell Christians how to feel about their faith because I am not one. I expect others to extend the same consideration to Muslims.
So the general issue why burning such a copy should be considered incorrect is the fact that Quran, apart from being just another book, is a symbol of Islamic religion. Hence why it appears offensive to Muslims. Same logic applies to other symbols. Do you think it’s absolutely okay to come to a square and burn LGBTI or BLM flags. If you were a gay and saw someone else burning a rainbow flag, would you feel safe at such place?
I will always support someone’s right to burn an inanimate object that they own themselves. I would think that person is an asshole, but would not feel threatened by it in anyway. I am what those BLM flag burners would consider a POC.
The only “religion” I’m part of is the Satanic Temple. But yeah keep saying I’m a theist and hopefully you’ll convince yourself it’s true and you can add another tally to your “Internet arguments won” board and your mom will bring you extra tendies tonight.
I personally believe that no discrimination against people based on religion, race, color of skin is appropriate
One of these things is not like the other ones. People choose their religion, or at very least the indoctrinated choose to stay in it. People don't choose their race or color.
It is absolutely legitimate to discriminate against people because of absurd ideas they hold. If an adult told me they literally believed in Santa Claus, or that the skull God needs skulls for the skull throne, I might think less of them.
Oh yeah totally. If we can’t burn religious text for the express purpose of passing people off, then the whole society is doomed snd were one slippery slope away from all the nordjnc countries having sharia law. I doubt the country will survive until Christmas honestly.
Its almost as bad as Germany banning nazi salutes.
Yep, a direct survey, so it’s first hand data and therefore quite valuable. But I knew you would have this exact reaction literally no matter what source I provided, because you guys are far far far too predictable.
Oh damn all the greatest hits are here. Skydaddy, coward and the survey thing. Is there a string in your back that makes you say one of these 3 things every time you pull it? 🤣
Western nations give into terrorist demands going back to the French revolution. Some of those demands were for the freedom of speech that is being trampled on here or other rights and protections we hold dear. For recent examples look at the troubles or even that guy who shot shinzo abe and got the moonies out of Japan.
The focus shouldn’t just be on the means for political change, though the means can be criticized, but the political change itself. Banning book burnings in this case is an afront to free speech and should not be implemented.
That is like arguing you can’t fight gun violence if there are no guns. The goal is not to have the problem the goal is not to have to fight the problem.
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