I am so sick and tired of the word "offended". I am so sick and tired of that word being used as an excuse to shut down arguments or dissention. To me, that is the biggest cop out. Its a soft core version of thought policing. The idea that you cannot express a difference in opinion because it might offend somebody is a dangerous proposition that these days only favours one party. The religious party. On the one hand they take it upon themselves to police the world and on the other hand they are so quick to scream offense if anything is said in contrary to their beliefs. It has almost become a wall from behind which they can chuck their intolerance at us.
The Globe and Mail recently posted an article online about a Danish cartoonist being interrogated by a "Human Rights Officer" for hurting the sentiments of a certain Islamic preacher.
"One of the complainants against me is someone I would describe as a radical Muslim imam, Syed Soharwardy. He grew up in the madrassas of Pakistan and he lectures on the Saudi circuit. He advocates sharia law for all countries, including Canada. His website is rife with Islamic supremacism — offensive to many Canadian Jews, gentiles, women and gays. But his sensitivities — his Saudi-Pakistani values — have been offended by me.
And so now the secular government of Alberta is enforcing his fatwa against the cartoons."
This is ridiculous! The world seriously needs to stop stroking their egos like this before we all get nuked or comverted or worse.
6 comments:
hmm...did you ever refrain from making comments because you were afraid it would offend me?
i can think of one time...
I think you might be generalizing a bit. I, for one, consider myself religious, but in no way do I abruptly cut a conversation short if something offends me.
However, in many instances, religious or not, if something has offended somebody, they're not just going to sit there and take it.
People like you chacha are the exception, not the rule. I was talking about world affairs in general though. If you follow the news every day, you will see some religious person being "offended" over something on a daily basis. Whats even worse is that most incidents are trivial, its when they take offense that these things turn into a media circus. Like the Danish cartoons. Nobody even reads the Jyllands-Posten outside of the Netherlands.... but the rioting in the streets and the madness that ensued actually caused more people to see this forbidden cartoon....and now it lives on the internet forever!
Besides, if you watch all the debates ive watched in the past year, you'll know exactly what im talking about.
Melinda, you arent religious either, so there's very little i could say on the matter that would offend you :P
there was a time you were religious (slightly?) and i refrained from saying something..
i'm kinda glad i'm not religious either.
when was that?
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