The "crime" of blasphemy is carried to extremes in Moslem countries. There is no justification for the excesses that Moslems go to, in seeking to penalize people sometimes for trivial infractions of speech codes, sometimes simply for stating an honest opinion. Even in cases where there is serious insult to Islam, the penalties may be out of all proportion to anything remotely like justice. This should be understood. . However, Constitutionally protected freedom of speech was not intended in the original years of the US Constitution to protect egregious insults to faith, smears of religion, or other such transgressions. The Constitution allowed for , and there were in fact in many states, blasphemy laws. . The question is not about a revival of such laws. No-one wants that. But if Islam is one extreme, condemnations and penalties galore, the United States is at the other : No penalties, no condemnations, and, in fact, no comment. Say what you want, no matter how insulting to faith or to believers, that's OK, and if you want to defame and misrepresent entire religions, that is also OK. . I don't know about others but, for one, I can no longer watch some TV shows that I once enjoyed, because the weight of accumulated defamations of religion finally added up so much that I could not take it any more. So much for Family Guy, and I'm on the verge with Law and Order and L & O special victims, and totally quit the 3rd version of the show several years ago. Treatment of faith issues in such programs are almost invariably ill-informed, petty, demeaning ( except for Islam for which all words are kind words ), and even "Good Religions" that Hollywood usually likes sometimes get smeared, like Buddhism, when the subject comes up. As for Christians and Jews, well, why speak of such backward knaves and fools ? This is the general attitude. . Isn't there something that can be done ? The market certainly isn't taking care of the problem. What are our best options ? . . Billy ===================================== Turkey fines Simpsons for blasphemy (Reuters, December 4, 2012) Turkey's broadcasting regulator is fining a television channel for insulting religious values after it aired an episode of The Simpsons which shows God taking orders from the devil. Radio and television watchdog RTUK said it was fining private broadcaster CNBC-e 52,951 lira (NZ$36,130) over the episode of the hit US animated TV series, whose scenes include the devil asking God to make him a coffee. "The board has decided to fine the channel over these matters," an RTUK spokeswoman said but declined further comment, saying full details would probably be announced next week. CNBC-e said it would comment once the fine was officially announced. Turkey is a secular republic but most of its 75 million people are Muslim. Religious conservatives and secular opponents vie for public influence and critics of the government say it is trying to impose Islamic values by stealth. Elected a decade ago with the strongest majority seen in years, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party have overseen a period of unprecedented prosperity in Turkey. But concerns are growing about authoritarianism. Erdogan last week tore into a chart-topping soap opera about the Ottoman Empire's longest-reigning Sultan and the broadcasting regulator has warned the show's makers about insulting a historical figure. The Simpsons first aired in 1989 and is the longest-running US sitcom. It is broadcast in more than 100 countries and CNBC-e has been airing it in Turkey for almost a decade. "I wonder what the script writers will do when they hear that the jokes on their show are taken seriously and trigger fines in a country called Turkey," wrote Mehmet Yilmaz, a columnist for the Hurriyet newspaper. "Maybe they will add an almond-moustached RTUK expert to the series," he said, evoking a popular Turkish stereotype of a pious government supporter.
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