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03:43 (17 hours ago)
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Dear Mark,
I read your Obama was right piece.
One of the disappointing things to me about the cartoons fiasco and the deaths in Paris was that the only people I heard speaking against the cartoons that triggered the violence were Muslims.
I think one has to balance freedom of speech with civility. An aspect of civility is respecting people’s cultural sensitivities. Respect and honour are very important values in our part of the world. And sketching cartoons of Muhammad would be considered by the Muslims as a gross violation of their principles and an affront to their religion.
To ignore cultural sensitivities of a people is a kind of cultural imperialism. The very people who speak against prejudice are sometimes insulting in the way they express their “freedom.”
We dare not condone those terrible acts of terrorism. But there are many Muslims who despise terrorism who nevertheless are dismayed by the kind of cartoon that people have sketched of their Prophet Muhammad. I wish there were some non-Muslim leaders who voiced those sentiments.
Blessings,
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19:28 (1 hour ago)
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On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 4:13 PM, Ajith Fernando <ajithyfc1@gmail.com> wrote:
To ignore cultural sensitivities of a people is a kind of cultural imperialism.
I like this a lot. The next time we have this sort of incident (and unfortunately, I think we will again), you may want to quickly write something up for us along this line.