Salam-

Whether the cartoons were funny or not, offensive or not, is entirely irrelevant. If you want to live in a free society, you have to be prepared to be offended every now and then. I'm sure there will be posts following mine that I will find highly offensive. But I am not going to burn things or stomp on flags because of it, because it's not a condition of free speech that speech be inoffensive. There are no conditions on free speech. That's why it's 'free'.

And incidentally, I thought the one about the virgins was pretty funny.

I find religious texts that advocate discrimination against non-believers much, much more offensive in every possible way.

Religious fundamentalism in any form is dangerous. Whether it is Christian fundamentalists trying to impose their old testament views on society, or Islamic fundamentalists telling us what we can or can't laugh at.

Cartoonists have always pushed the limit of taste and propriety. Michael Leunig has recently got into hot water over his cartoon of a comatose Ariel Sharon ordering the destruction of Palestinians. That is their legitimate role.

The issue is not with the cartoon itself, but with the intolerance of the reader, whether that reader is Islamic, Christian or Jewish. And of course people now want to see the cartoons - as soon as you make a huge fuss about you give it publicity. That's why the best response to things you find offensive is usually not to draw attention to them.

Salam

I believe that the cartoon are sending a very relevant message to the Muslim community, and while the form of the message delivered by the cartoon is a bit rude, the message needs to be delivered non-the-less.

How can anyone believe that a religion, or a prophet speaking on behalf of God, wants people to use bomb to kill each other, or that suicide bombers, who are out to harm people, will be rewarded in the afterlife.

These believe are completely EVIL, and does not conform with any teaching in any religions of the world, and if a joke is what is needed to inform a muslim "holy" person, the evilness of their way, it is a very valid message.

Considering the manner in which certain Muslim media outlets use cartoons and articles which are blatantly anti-Semitic or blantantly anti-western, this strikes me as the pot calling the kettle black.

Having viewed the cartoons online (thanks Tim Blair), I consider them to be fairly ordinary (a Wilcox or a Moir cartoon is far superior) and only two over-stepping any mark. That said, I think it is time that Muslims were encouraged to leave behind their medieval mind-set. With the benefit of the Enlightenment which gave us such freedoms as free speech, the west has much to offer Muslims.

We should not have to apologise for Muslim over-sensitiveness. Freedom of expression was hard-won; it is a core belief of those of us in the west; Salam Zreika and her ilk had better get used to it.

I get sick of hearing immans and other Muslim leaders trying to distract their followers from their own failings by talking about the west as "decadent, a den of iniquity, the source of all evil, racist, imperialist and to be despised." <http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,398853,00.html>

When it was western culture which gave us Copernicus, Gallileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein and Freud, or Dante, Shakespeare, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Rembrandt, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Monet, Manet and Van Gogn, we should not have to apologise to a religion which gave us Bin Laden.

“I have no doubt that the editor who allowed these images to be published and other editors across Europe and New Zealand crossed a sensitive line of what we would call “freedom of the press”…..”

No, editors who sanctioned the cartoons have NOT crossed any line. While many people other than Muslims, including me, don’t see the point of these cartoons and don’t find them humorous at all, Salam still doesn’t get the principle of freedom of speech, which is so dear to the West. And, to liken freedom of speech and thought with “Hitler’s propaganda scheme” is dopey in the extreme. Mad Muslims committing arson and riots against freedom of speech is more in line with Hitler’s brown shirts.

Before Salam takes to advising the media to “ inform and advise society about the facts - not the fiction”, she might like to set an example and accept and advise the public of the facts about Muhammad – not the fiction which had been exposed by scholars, one of whom recently described the Prophet as worse than Osama Bin Laden in his personal life, and not at all the ‘forgiving’ and ‘merciful’ person Muslims believe him to have been.

And, again, Salam brings up the “sensitive issue of race” – entirely irrelevant in this context.

Salam is just another Lebanese Muslim who, in the past, has tried to make us believe that she feels Australian, who simply cannot wear any criticism of Islam and who simply cannot accept Australian/Western freedom of speech and thought.

As her fellow Muslim, Irfan Yusuf asked, hasn’t she anything better to do?