The Cartoon That Shook the World (and Sarawak Tribune)

SI-O v. think
keed (thai)

Sisuahlai's take on NST: Malaysian PM ticks off Sarawak Tribune

Serious Bloggers, like serious media people, have responsibilities. We publish materials to inform, to humour and sometimes, to sell an idea, service or products. We are not here to insult or to get a reaction. If we disagree on an issue, we discuss and explain our position.

Yes, there is a fine line between a satirical image and one that makes a mockery of others. This is when the publishers and editors have to apply their intelligence and common sense on deciding what constitutes a satire or an unnecessary mockery.

Peter Oborne of the London Evening Standard applied his common sense and came up with this...

I do not think that a great issue of free speech is at stake here. Even if I did, I would never want to defend the right to abuse a great religious leader.

Those who defend the right to publish the cartoon on the basis that we have free speech in modern Western societies are wrong. There are all kinds of things we cannot say, and for admirable reasons. We cannot insult minority groups. We cannot say slavery was right. We cannot say Holocaust was a good thing.

If you made those claims in certain parts of London, you could rely on a very violent response indeed, and very few observers would feel that was unreasonable. It seems natural for Muslims to ask that we do not insult the man they regard as exemplar of all human goodness, and quite right for us to agree.


These ill-advised publishers or editorial slips or whatever you call them are the true cartoons.

Sisuahlai cares.