By Staff Editorial
By Staff Editorial
The cries of angry people burst into the air like daggers piercing the flesh.
Shifting eyes watch those who were its victim.
It all started when a Danish newspaper decided to print caricatures of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and the problems spread when European newspapers decided to reprint the pictures in their papers, causing disturbances within the Islamic culture.
One of the caricatures depicts the prophet’s turban shaped like a bomb and another depicts the leader stopping the suicide bombers by saying that he has run out of virgins.
“The cartoon makes a statement about what most people are mostly thinking, that the religion itself represents violence,” said Riverside City College student Aaron Marseilles.
The American public has believed that most Muslims were terrorists.
This sort of thinking shows that the U.S. nation is really not the land of religious and ethical freedom.
“To know people consider me a terrorist it’s sad,” Seema Saiyed said. “People just consider all Muslims are terrorists.”
The past actions of terrorists within the Islamic culture has stained American peoples views about other nations.
“The cartoon illustrates people know everything but they don’t,” Marseilles said.
The cartoons show peoples intolerance for things they don’t understand or things that are exploited by the media.
Many papers have printed the cartoons out of freedom of speech and press. This, however, is no reason to cause racial discrimination.
“It’s not about freedom of speech, it’s about respect,” Safiah Oneill said. “You wouldn’t find people making fun of Jews about the holocaust.”
So why is it that people are so easily able to make fun of the Muslim culture?
It’s still a culture that has a respected religion and culture. Just like Christianity or Catholicism about which you won’t really find cartoonists disrespecting its God. The newspapers aren’t respecting the Islamic culture.
Freedom of speech is perfectly fine but there is a line between free speech and trying to start racial conflicts.
“I think they did it on purpose, so the paper would get more attention for publicity, trying to do something that hasn’t been done,” Saiyed said.
Religious injustice is always on the verge of happening when people do not understand the various cultures that thrive within the cultures around. Now the Islamic religion is being targeted and condemned as the religion of terrorists because of the media.
The media have the ability to create waves in the pond of society. With these cartoons they are abusing their power to help and inform and instead they are causing rifts in the balance.
Just because you have the power to publish the cartoons and be protected by the First Amendment does not mean that you should.
These people have sadly lost their way.
