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The nominee list for this year’s Oscars is out. Paradise Now is nominated for Best Foreign Film and Brokeback Mountain got the most nominations with 8 tips, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Writing, Best Lead Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best
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How to determine what’s slowing down your web site and what you can do to get over it and make your site faster.
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A list of sites that provide free stock photos and graphics, some of which allow commercial use.
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A new service where you can create and share tagged lists of resources that users can vote on for popularity, bringing forward the new concept of listonomy.
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The purpose of this site is to recapture, explore and celebrate the Art of Computer Programming. By so doing they hope to help the reader become a better programmer, understand less experienced programmers, or communicate more effectively with programmers
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9 articles or ideas that your must read if you’re thinking of launching your own web startup.
Month: February 2006
Fact International: A New Paper on Islam
A new weekly newspaper has been launched in Jordan to campaign against “blatant distortions” of Islam by portraying a moderate image of the religion.
Fact International is being published by a media and research institute based in Amman with articles in both Arabic and English, according to chairman Zakaria al-Sheikh.
“Fact International
Tunisian Blogger Needed for World Cup Blog
The WorldCupBlog is looking for a Tunisian blogger to join their team and blog about Tunisia’s World Cup football team.
Of course, it has to be someone who loves soccer and the national team and who would be able to write well in English.
The aim of WorldCupBlog is to be the place to come for insight, news and opinions about all 32 teams in the World Cup.
If you’re interested, you can either leave a comment here or send an email to bob [at] worldcupblog.com and tell him why you would like to be involved.
More Papers Publish The Offending Cartoons
Both a French and a German newspaper have reprinted the series of 12 Danish newspaper cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad PBUH, that have sparked huge protests in the Muslim world.
The France Soir daily said it had published the cartoons in the name of freedom of expression and to fight religious intolerance.
Under a headline “Yes, we have the right to caricature God”, the paper ran a front page cartoon with Buddha, the Christian and Jewish Gods and Prophet Muhammad sitting on a cloud above Earth, with the Christian God saying: “Don’t complain Muhammad, we’ve all been caricatured here.”
The German Welt daily put one of the drawings on its front page on Wednesday, saying the picture was “harmless” and regretting that the Danish Jyllands-Posten daily had apologised for causing offense.
“There is no right to protection from satire in the West; there is a right to blasphemy”, says Serge Faubert, France Soir editor.
Well it seems everyone is jumping on this bandwagon, and then saying that they did it in the name of “Freedom of Expression”!!
In fact this French daily says it’s also doing it to fight religious intolerance. So, just to get this straight, they’re fighting religious intolerance by attacking another religion and its prophet!
What kind of tolerance is that?!
And do they think that publishing the caricatures with others of God and Christian and Jewish figures makes it better?
Of course it doesn’t. In Islam we believe in God and all his prophets, and we find it unacceptable to portray any of them in such tasteless manners.
And as for Buddha, it’s unacceptable too because we should respect our brother buddhist’s religion as well.
Anyway, I’ll go on with their claims, and I’ll try to convince myself that it’s all in the name of “Freedom of Expression”, although I personally believe that any person’s freedom ends where the next person’s freedom begins, but let’s try to get over that.
But, based on that, aren’t we also entitled to this same freedom of expression?
Isn’t it normal for us too to express ourselves and say that we’re unhappy about these cartoons and act upon it in peaceful ways like demonstration or boycott?
Or is this so-called freedom available to some and not to others?!!
Why are there always double standards when it comes to dealing with Arabs and Muslims?!!
Related Links:
– The Black Iris
– Al Jazeera
– BBC News
The Danish Cartoons
I briefly wrote about the Danish and Norwegian papers that featured Prophet Mohamed PBUH caricatures in my post Freedom of Racism. But ever since that, there has been an explosion of reactions in the Muslim world, both online and offline. The blogosphere has witnessed a huge number of blogs about this topic, people all over the Muslim world are boycotting Danish and Norwegian products, some countries have pulled their ambassadors, …etc.
Over this time I’ve mainly been watching from the sidelines, wanting to write more about it, but just not finding the time to.
Most opinions I’ve read in the blogosphere are totally against what happened, yet some people think it’s not normal and very backward to react this strongly to these caricatures, and that we should just let it go.
I personally strongly disagree with these people. We’ve let go of a lot of things, we’ve tolerated a lot of disrespect and racism over the years, but when it gets to our Prophet and touches our religion, there is no way we can just let go! It is totally unacceptable!!
I’m against any violent reactions or death threats, but I’m totally for peaceful protest and political or economic boycott if necessary.
If the same paper published some caricatures that touched a Jewish figure, the whole world would have stood against it and pointed the anti-semitic finger at them, and ripped them apart.
But the caricatures being about the prophet of Islam, no one cares, and the angry and offended muslims are made out to be backward thinking and untolerant.
Well yeah, we don’t tolerate anyone attacking our Prophet or religion, and you can call it whatever you want!
A bit earlier, I read that the Danish newspaper that published the cartoons has apologized for offending Muslims around the world, not for publishing the cartoons, but for offending Muslims.
“We apologize for the fact that the cartoons undeniably have offended many Muslims,”‘ Carsten Juste, editor-in-chief of Jyllands-Posten, wrote late yesterday in a letter on the paper’s Web site. He said Jyllands-Posten wasn’t sorry for running the cartoons though.
As for Vebjoern Selbekk, the editor of Norwegian Magazinet, the paper that republished the caricatures, he too said that he “regrets if the drawings were offensive to Muslims.”
Those sound like half ass apologies to me. It’s like someone raping someone and then saying: “I’m not sorry for raping you, but I’m sorry it hurt!”
It’s more of an insult than an apology!
I think they should be able to do a lot better than that!
Related Links:
– The Danish Cartoonist
– Le Boycott : Arme de Destruction Massive (FR)