Ihsan

"freedom" of expression

Aljazeera interviewed Aziz Duwaik, professor of urban planning at the Najah University of Nablus. Duwaik won a parliamentary seat in the recent Palestinian legislative elections.

His Change and Reform (Hamas) list won all nine contested seats in the southern West Bank town of Hebron at the district level, defeating the dominant Fatah party.

Duwaik, understands the situation a lot more clearly than many (not all) of the secularists (and some Muslims) who insist on making this a "freedom of speech" issue, and consider religious sentiments to be primitive or something of the sort.

Duwaik: These cartoons are a reflection of rampant Islamophobia in Europe, which is very similar and nearly as virulent as the anti-Semitism that existed in Europe, especially in Germany, prior to World War II. This anti-Semitism eventually led to the Holocaust and the deaths of millions of human beings.

You see, when you send out thousands of hate messages against a certain ethnic or religious community every day, you make people hate these people, and when mass hatred reaches a certain point, nobody would object to the physical extermination of the hated community when it happens.

Do you fear a Holocaust against Muslims similar to what happened to the Jews?

Why not? The Holocaust was committed by human beings, not by citizens of another planet, and Germany, where Nazism thrived, was probably the most culturally advanced European country in the 1930s and 1940s.

But Europe is now democratic, unlike Nazi Germany?

Yes, but who told you those democracies don't commit genocide? America is a democracy, but we saw recently how this democracy invaded and destroyed two small and weak countries based on lies, while most Americans were duped into believing that Bush was doing the right thing.


Click here to read entire interview

posted by redwood at 2/07/2006 09:17:00 AM