French leaders sound alarm over planned Mohammad cartoons

[JoeyT]

53. For the most part,

you're kind of arguing with a straw man. My posting history on the attitudes toward Muslims hasn't been critical. Mostly because it's hard to be critical when you're arguing with a bigot without letting the bigot assume you're on their side.

Now for the straw man I attacked up there. There are people on here who would ban criticism of religion in general. I'm fucked if I know how I got you were one of them, but there you go. So I apologize for that.

I do respect the legality of mocking religions, without respecting the mocking. All religions (Hell, all people.) would like to remain free of criticism, and they usually refuse to acknowledge the difference. According to some (SBCs, Bill Donohue, etc) simply not believing in their religion is the worst form of mockery. Mockery and criticism are completely interchangeable from a legal standpoint for that very reason. If we make it illegal to mock them, we make it illegal to criticize them. Take a look at how countries with blasphemy laws work for a more specific example of that. The guy that proved the weeping religious statue was just leaky pipes was criticizing rather than mocking, and yet he got arrested. Mockery is what they complain about, but criticism is what they actually go after when given freedom from mockery.

There's no lack of criticism for religion BECAUSE people defend criticizing and mocking religion whenever it comes up.