Voice had this to say:
"Only few ppl in NST and uninformed sympathisers are not [in agreement that the cartoons are offensive]. My personal friend quite senior in NST tells me it was wrong and most of his colleague do not share the boss's position. After friday's demo, I sat with NST reporters under a shade, they do not agree with the boss also."
via Answering Hansac and Voice.
The following is my answer:
Voice: Debating with you is tiresome because you've chosen to ignore so many of my core arguments, and haven't provided sufficient defense to my attacks on yours.
1. You claim to be in the "majority of a Muslim consensus" -- i challenged the sampling of your so-called "consensus". Speaking to friends and family and "reporters under the tree" does not form an adequate consensus; if more NGOs supported the outrage why didn't they all lodge police reports? (perhaps its because doing so would defeat the purpose of all their effort so far i.e. more press freedom). If you want to use that as an argument to prove your case, then i can easily claim the exact same thing: all my friends and family and people under that tree outside my house agree with me; but i won't use such arguments because i know their value is nil.
Please note that we are talking about the issue of the NST, and not the cartoon printed in Denmark. On that particular cartoon, i've already said that i disagree with what was published, but i am not willing to condemn their act of publishing.
Why won't i condemn them for publishing?
That brings me to the point i made that no one (including you and Hansac) have discussed at all:
2. If we were to condemn them for publishing those cartoons, then we are hypocrites. Muslims all over the world, even learned ones, frequently condemn others, their religion and their way of life -- they shout it from the tops of mosques, they publish it in newspapers (open the Harakah someday and you'll see many examples of such cases), they spread lies and disinformation via spam emails and SMS (e.g. McDonald's is haram), etc, etc, etc. The list is very, very long. I have no problems with Muslims saying these things either: we all have a right to our opinion -- if there are some amongst us who believe that the Jews should be eradicated from the earth by any means possible, well, you believe what you believe, i don't have to agree with you, and i won't force you to agree with me.
Why do we hold ourselves to a different standard and expect the West and non-Muslims to adhere to another?
Just because we're Muslims and they're not?
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