Religious Intolerance
Religious intolerance in itself is not capable of being empathetic about another’s religion. To think that one’s religion is the so called “right” religion and that his or her god prevails over the others is just plain silly. In the case study of the burning of embassies in cartoon protest in Denmark, it shows Danish newspaper publishing cartoons portraying Prophet Mohammad as a terrorist. The response taken by Syrians resulted in the embassies being burnt and riots occurring. A Muslim protestor in London even held a placard, describing the western leaders and the then UN secretary general as terrorists.
This issue could have been avoided from my point of view but because actions were not taken to prevent what was just a mere complain to the Danish Prime Minister, to stop the printing of the cartoons, caused this ideology to be spread to other nations, similarly depicting Prophet Mohammad as a terrorist. The response from the Jyllands-Posten is that it is their right for freedom of speech to depict Prophet Mohammad in whichever manner they deem right.
Freedom of speech is the right of every living being who is born on this planet as it represents democracy and sets the line between what’s right and what’s wrong within each person. Bibles are just wordings written by human beings as well, stating down the beliefs of each religion, it does not mean that burning of a bible will make one’s god any less godly. It does of cause seem as a manner of being disrespectful to that specific religion, but who is to say that the one who commits the burning of a bible is in the wrong and the one who took action against those who burnt the bible is right? To harm others based on his or her doings is taking law in their own hands which defies the law in which we live in.
The reports from Jyllands-Posten could have been from a different religion, hence viewing the ideology of the Muslim gods as evil, resulting in the way they portrait Prophet Mohammad as terrorist. Adding on, due to the factual proof that generally, most terrorists are Islam, this has further casted a deeper impression that those who spread the words of Muslim god is a terrorist.
Let’s look at the next case study now, the bombing of church in Malaysia due to a court ruling which overturned a government ban on non-Muslim using the word “Allah” as a translation for “God”. Looking at this situation from the point of view of the court, generally, Allah itself is a word, which means god as well, hence it doesn’t seem to make sense if anyone is to “patent” this word to the Muslims. Adding on, if we were to do that, are we going to patent the word “God” to the Christians because they believe in Jesus who is supposedly the son of God in their bible? A word is a descriptive method to bring forward what you want