Professor?

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I was very disturbed to discover the following article:

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/02/danish-trojan-horse-law-and-muhammad.php

Especially worrying is the conclusion to the following statement:

In my view, this was a patent abuse of their discretion and a blatantly political decision. They ought to revisit it. The issue should be decided by a Danish court. Danish prosecutors certainly must know Denmark is becoming a hotbed of skinheadism and anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant violence. Do they want their newspapers to fan these flames? They should not wait until they have a situation like that in Rwanda before they act.

It seems to me that while professor Freamon has a point, in that the resent trouble regarding cartoons might indicate a need for a court decision, he is however way out of bounds when waving wild accusations at the state of Danish society. I challenge professor Freamon to produce the slightest amount of evidence to support his position! Denmark is being slandered on the grounds of complete ignorance and naivety – maybe even ill will – these days. As a proud Danish citizen I have just about had enough of uninformed and slandering opinions which have no merit in real life.

The fact is that Denmark is one of the countries in Europe with the least amount of racially motivated attacks. Our only crime seems to be that we maintain our democratic rights for free and open debate, which may sometimes be humiliating to the ones who lay claim to absolute truth – while they have no basis for any such thing! Anyone who praises metaphysical constructs and seek to induce them into the political sphere of an open society by definition forfeits any safety for that position and now leave themselves open to the dynamics of public discourse.

That criticism or indeed humiliating implications imposed on that position should be racially motivated and the result of ideological hatreds nurtured by opposing parties seems to be the consistent strategic view of religious and ethnic minorities which seek to impose their agenda onto society in an undemocratic and illegitimate fashion.

May I add that no religious or ethnic groups of any orientation subject to arbitrary definition by any institution or historical construct can lay claim to a monopoly of feelings – and likewise: cannot by any scientific or other reasonable measure be considered any more emotionally sensitive to criticism than other groups… Indeed I would like to challenge the very notion that a group of individuals can uphold a heterogenic emotional scale by which we can predict - or indeed establish the source of - their alleged hurt!

Satirical cartoons depicting Karl Marx would not be considered the incarnation of evil and a sign of persecution of Marxists! – Why then should religion have any claim to a contrary logic? Surrendering your individual identity to a group identity and thereby establishing a marker by which you may be labelled, is a wholly voluntary and individual choice, implicating that individual’s acceptance of an agenda constituted within a larger framework of individuals. To complain to the product of that choice can be likened to the folly of blaming hospital nursing staff for pain inflicted on you when you intentionally jump off a building.

That Muslims are prone to terror is a stereotype, which in many ways are self imposed, and let me contrary to professor Freamon substantiate my allegation:

Criticism of suicide bombers censored at the UN
Submitted by admin on 26 July, 2005 - 20:00. UN campaign UNCHR 2005 United Nations news
IHEU today attempted to call on the United Nations to condemn killing in the name of religion, but were prevented from doing so by the heavy-handed intervention of Islamic representatives. The IHEU call, at today's meeting of the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, follows moves by Islamic clerics to legitimise the current wave of terror attacks.
At this afternoon's meeting, IHEU representative David Littman attempted to deliver a prepared text in the joint names of three international NGOs: the Association for World Education, the Association of World Citizens, and IHEU, but was prevented from doing so by the intervention of Islamic members of the Sub-Commission. After repeated interruptions he was unable to complete his speech.
The Islamic members of the Sub-Commission objected to the speech as an attack on Islam. The text however is a report on recent critical comment on Islamist extremism by a number of notable Muslim writers and is a call to the UN Human Rights Commission by the NGOs "to condemn calls to kill, to terrorise or to use violence in the name of God or any religion".
The text referred to recent decisions by high-ranking Muslim clerics confirming that those who carry out suicide bombings cannot be treated as apostates and remain Muslims(1), a fatwa by a Saudi cleric that innocent Britons were a legitimate target for terrorist action(2), and remarks by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, dean of the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Qatar University who has visited Britain, that terror attacks are permissible.
Commenting on this censorship, Roy Brown, President of IHEU said:"This is part and parcel of the refusal by the Islamic representatives at the UN to condemn the suicide bombers, or to accept any criticism of those who kill innocent people in the name of God.

Some pious followers of Islam do indeed have an image problem, warranting the implications indicated by some of the cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. And these pious people seem to be making international decisions to this regard! - And where may I add is the popular Muslim outrage and protest to this monstrous abuse of religion – protest that would reflect at least the same level of indignation as completely harmless cartoons can raise?

For decades we have witnessed the persecution and murder of people who spoke out against the vile fundamental and literal interpretations of Islam as embodied in states such as Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Almost daily we witness horrible murders of innocent people in the name of Allah! Instead of a categorical and unquestioning reaction to such phenomena we witness the absurd whining over the idea, that these phenomena could reflect some fundamental flaw in the metaphysical construct of Islam.

Bearing these all to often overlooked, but none the less reasonable considerations to heart, I could from another perspective point out, that professor Freamon seems to practise the opposite of his preaching, whereby he steamrolls me and other Danes with his political and religious agenda: stereotyping an ethnic minority and associating it with Nazism and ethnic cleansing in an unsubstantiated and thus dishonourable way.

This is a widely employed tactic in this day and age, and it’s designed to arouse emotional baggage which mainly targets European self understanding and guild complexes. It is likewise designed to negate any European right to uphold values we find fundamental to our way of life! We’re in short attacked with our own moral constructs by people who do not themselves feel obligated to adhere to these constructs. More often than not we find ourselves forced to negate the very principles by which we maintain our civilisation in order to accommodate those who care nothing for them – or worse yet: by people like professor Freamon who confuse them for his own. Is that morality? – No! ... It is blatant hypocrisy!

Maybe you will be so kind and relay my observations to the professor himself…

Regards

Per