Blashphemy Day!

Today is International Blashphemy Day. It's not official, but hopefully it will be eventually. September 30th was chosen because it is the anniversary of the publishing of the Danish cartoon depictions of Muhammed that caused such a stir. I'd never seen the cartoons until today.

I know that Islam has rules about depicting the human form, though I can't remember what they are (it's been a long time since my junior year of high school when I took a class in which we learned about Islam, and we never went into depth about that particular rule). I got the link to the cartoons from someone else's blog. He seems to post a lot about the cartoons, and in honor of blashphemy day, I'm going to quote him.

"Late December I got curious about all the hubbub about these cartons. Everybody talked about them, but nobody had seen them, so I wanted to see them for myself in order to form my own opinion - and let me tell you: They were hard to find! I searched for days, and being stubborn and technically minded I did at last succeed in finding them. But the point is: If you wanted to become offended back in December 2005, you had to work hard for it!

Having found the cartoons I then decided to post them in Danish to show my fellow Danes how harmless and bland these cartoons were - half of the so'called Mohammed cartoons don't even show Mohammed. I actually believed, that displaying them would defuse the anger. Yup, naïve."

You can find more of his blog here.

I do not have much else to say, other than we need to stop appeasement of religions who get offended by blasphemy. I can say whatever I want about your religion, and I shouldn't have to worry about my safety. Personally, there are lines I won't cross and things I won't say, but just because something offends someone doesn't mean it should be illegal. When you start to limit what we can say about things, you give those things more power, potentially power to cut off free thought and inovation of ideas. I think Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, tribal religions and any other religion that follows any amount of "higher powers" or gods are bad for people's minds. I especially hate it when one of those religions somehow convinces the rest of the world that saying that the religion is false should not be allowed. I'm sorry my thoughts may seem a bit unorganized on this. It's hard to think about this issue without getting angry. I guess I'll try to sum up what I think: just because something I say offends you, doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to say it.

Happy Blashpheming!