Hands off my Wikipedia!!

Now Wikipedia is being pushed to censor their entry concerning the Danish Prophet Muhammad cartoons. Wikipedia is perhaps my favorite website, and I'll be damned if its going to start getting censored by people who take life way too seriously. This will be a two part piece; I want to briefly support Muslims first, and the West second.

1) Where the Muslims went right:

It is already considered bad to depict the Prophet visually; to draw a cartoon that is making a mockery of him would be a slap in the face. In this sense, I understand the anger of Muslims worldwide who are infuriated that their Prophet is being slandered. Certainly, this isn't something that they are used to seeing. I would expect more consideration and tact from the Danes.

Parts of the Muslim response are acceptable to me. If the offense is so great, then the leaders of Muslim countries can recall their ambassadors from Denmark until the Danes stop insulting the Prophet. This of course has already happened with Lybia, Pakistan, and a couple others. It is certainly a reasonable option, although I personally think its a bit much.

In my opinion, organizing a boycott (started in Saudi Arabia) was a great idea and I encourage that sort of behavior. The language of the West is economics. If you don't like what someone says or does, you hit them where it hurts - the wallet. I've read that the boycott has been extremely effective. If it was to continue, domestic economic pressure might force the newspaper to apologize and refrain from insulting the Prophet in the future.

2) Where the Muslims went really really wrong:

My first big problem with part of the Muslim response is that they are demanding hate-speech legislation that would prevent such action in the future. Let me say that again. The Muslims in the Middle East want hate speech to be outlawed. Does this strike anyone else as extremely hypocritical? Where is the outrage when a Muslim leader calls for the eradication of Israel? Or is that not hate speech? What about when Jews are referred to as pigs, and Americans are referred to as dogs? It amazes me that they would presume to tell us who we can and cannot insult, when they certainly don't pull any punches regarding a group they dislike.

My second problem with the Muslim response is the most important. I take issue very much with the threats of violence that have been issued towards those that have insulted Islam. Some of these threats have been followed up by actual violence. I don't care what the cartoon depicted, you absolutely do not threaten people, not in the West, for having an opinion. You can threaten us because we support Israel, or because we install corrupt dictators to further our interests. Threaten us because we invaded Iraq, or bombed civilians in Pakistan. But do not threaten us for having an opinion. Attacking our (alleged) imperialist tendencies is one thing, but directly attacking our freedom of speech is quite something else.

The Europeans agree with me. Newspapers all around Europe are re-printing the cartoons out of spite, to prove that they will not be intimidated.

My conclusions? Had those in the Middle East pursued a purely diplomatic and/or economic route, I would completely side with them and also call for the Danes to be more considerate. Unfortunately, I cannot take that position. I will not take that position, because I don't want those few Muslims who have threatened or perpetuated violence to think their methods at all worked. I want the message to those in the world who would act in violence to be clear - we will not be intimidated into silence, not now, not ever.