Mo' Muhammad Mo' Problems

I am set to appear on the podcast of the Humansit News Network soon for a roundtable discussion about the controversy. I'll keep you posted.

The Seattle Stranger, one of the handful of U.S. papers that decided to let their readers see the comics, has a good editorial about it.

Meanwhile protests are still raging:

The Palestinian group Hamas has joined calls for calm amid international furore sparked by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, as a Taliban commander in Afghanistan said 100 suicide bombers had volunteered.

Hamas "is prepared to play a role in calming the situation between the Islamic world and Western countries on condition that these countries commit themselves to putting an end to attacks against the feelings of Muslims," the organisation's leader Khaled Meshaal told a news conference Thursday.

Global War On Feelings? The Humanist News Network sums it up good:

It may seem like a paradoxical statement, but in a civilized society you do not have a right against being offended.

Or the right to respond with violence if you don't like what someone says. In a humanist world there would be no such thing as blasphemy. But I would be willing to settle for a secular world where people have the right to blaspheme and no harm would come to them.