Extra, Extra

NYU faculty believes in free speech, but doesn't stand up for it. Hypocrites.

It's not that YOU can't draw pictures of Muhammed. It's MUSLIMS who can't draw pictures of Muhammed. Wow.

what a sad day when people stop valuing free speech because it offends some people. obviously it's in bad taste to show the cartoons, but no one should be prohibited from it officially...

IMO, NYU made the correct call. Freedom of Speech implies responsibility. Right or wrong, displaying those drawings would simply have incited people to protest at the least.

To me: What so amusing here is that many of the same people screaming "free speech", screams when the Virgin Mary is depicted with elephant dung, screams when a Crucifix is dipped in urine, screams when the American Flag is burned, etc.

Nuts.

Just to clarify SD, the people who screamed about Dung Madonna and Piss Christ are mostly angry that their tax dollars were used to fund the creation and exhibiiton of those artworks. That's not completely unreasonable.

This is different. I'd feel completely comfortable walking down the street with Piss Christ on a t-shirt (though I'd be a jerk looking for attention), however I'd be scared for my life to walk around with bomb-head Mohammed on my chest.

Our freedoms are being capitulated to a lawless mob. Nevermind that it's completely racist to just accept that "muslims can't control themselves and might kill you or burn your offices", there are now de-facto laws in place giving Islamic symbols special status.

The left is forfeiting any moral credibility here, I honestly can't believe that freedom of creative expression is now a conservative issue.

This is hardly a Right/Left issue.

SomeJoe, In all respect: to talk about a subject, is it usual to put posters up about that subject?

Extreme Examples:
If that was a forum about abuses at Abu Gharib, would posting uncensored posters of US Soldiers abusing prisoner be "Freedom of Speech" or inciting people?

What about the US soldier killing the wounded Prisoner in fromt of that Video Crew? Would putting that Video up publically be a good idea?

I really think those were Isolated instances but do you think displaying them in a public forum might incite violence against US troops?

IMO, displaying those cartoons is about getting attention/publicity, nothing more.

S.D.'s questions are good, but it just clarifies to me that it depends on the audience. These images are a form of visual communication/rhetoric, and thus their meaning & effect depends on who they are directed at.

The NYU forum is going to be attended, in part, by people who believe that the very creation and dissemination of those images somehow does violence to them. Indeed, it seems like the whole point of the forum would be to examine that question - it could be handled verbally without actually committing the act (which would seem to preclude discussion.)

Of course, I think it's an erroneous belief, but I can't see how you can pursuade anybody otherwise by whipping out the pictures. It's kind of like trying to pursuade somebody that subway masturbators are misunderstood by showing them your own Johnson and saying, "see? it's not so bad!"

I care what Muslims think, but a free society demands that they respect my thoughts as well. No religion can receive special treatment, especially not because it's adherents can't be trusted to refrain from violence.

This shouldn't be a left/right issue, but most of the defense of our freedoms has come from the right. From what I've seen, the left has either ignored the issue or written it off as "conservatives are islamophobic bigots, of course they want to show those." I wonder how many have even seen the images, almost none of my friends and coworkers had.

Even beyond that, how many people know that the riots started months after the cartoons were first published when Danish imams visited the Middle East with two bogus cartoons added to the original JP cartoons. I know I never saw that mentioned in the NYTimes.

I simply see no way to discuss this without showing the cartoons. Reponsible discussion and inquiry doesn't shy away from uncomfortable imagery. I've seen pretty much all of the Abu Ghraib photos. I've seen photos from Auschwitz. I've seen images of beheaded bodies. I watched my neighbors jump from the WTC.

Children are protected from uncomfortable images and difficult subjects. We all need to grow up.

I agree with SomeJoe. What's also being conveniently omitted from the equation are the very large number of Muslims who also support free speech and the right to allow the cartoons -- as reprehensible as they are -- to be shown. By stifling debate and discourse, and pandering to a radical fringe element, you're also doing a tremendous disservice to the majority of Muslims who cherish free speech. Should we say, "fuck THOSE Muslims, we don't care what THEY think"? Does it help the cause of any religion if we only give voice to the most ass-backwards fundamentalists? Or are we masking our own cowardice with the convenient scapegoat of "political correctness"?

I agree there's a way to approach showing the cartoons, and a way NOT to approach it. But it's funny how the same people who roll their eyes when Native Americans take offense at insulting sports logos or Black people take umbrage with movie stereotypes, suddenly become all "sensitive" when there's a potential for real violence.

There are at least ten prominent Muslim intellectuals whose lives are in immediate danger right now for daring to take issue with the fundamentalists. Let's not make a mockery of the very real risks they are taking.

Actually, one of the people listed for fatwah DID publish the images, bklynd. That's the whole point. And the irony is they didn't do it out of malice, they did it to provide CONTEXT for the entire debate. I think it's a little disingenuous and idiotic to hold a forum -- in an institution of (supposedly) higher learning and greater maturity, no less -- and essentially say, "this forum is to discuss how bad and dangerous these drawings are but we can't actually SHOW you how bad they are, you'll just have to take our word for it." (It actually sounds like the makings of a hilarious Monty Python skit, quite frankly.)
And no disrespect but I think it's a little naive to think "fundamentalist wackos" (of any religion) would feel comfortable in any situation that didn't meet their exacting and bizarre standards. That is, after all, why they're fundamentalist wackos. :)

Now that right there is a cop-out. By that reasoning, there's no reason to show anything "bad" on the nightly news or to publish photographs of any kind in the newspaper. Words should be sufficient to describe the abuses at Abu Grahib, the horrors of Auschwiz, lynchings in the South, etc, etc. Matter of fact, why don't we all walk around with blinders on and trust Big Brother to deliver an accurate account of what's going on around us, for our own safety? Because that's he direction we're headed, my friend. Censorship is censorship, whether it's orchestrated by this current Administration or opportunistic bullies of a different stripe.