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Comment by berntb | Hacker News Reader

>>The only thing they need to do is uphold our social contracts, none of which require them to be OK with people intentionally offending their religion.

The social contracts are codified in our laws. And the laws says that blasphemy is legal.

The other, Christian, side of the Swedish krona: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_%28exhibition%29

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> The social contracts are codified in our laws. And the laws says that blasphemy is legal.

And those laws, equally, don't say that it is illegal to be offended by blasphemy.

As much as I would fight for the right of people to draw Mohammed I would fight for an individual Muslims right to feel offended by that drawing.

Nobody protests against the right of individual muslims to feel offended. People protest against the tendency for (some) muslims to try to impose their religious rules on nonbelievers by actual violence and the threat of violence. In the wider perspective this is a protest against the tendency to silence criticism of religions (or anything else) by using violence against the critics.

Agreed. That was not the specific point under discussion right here though of you read back a few posts :-)

Nice straw man. It's also legal for the KKK to march on Skokie. And, hey: they were crusading for free speech too!

Nobody's talking about legality.

It is not a straw man, laws need to be considered just, as far as possible.

Blasphemy used to be illegal all over the Western world, but isn't anymore. Death sentence were metered out in e.g. mid 19th century Sweden -- for much less than Ecce Homo (see previous comment) and Piss Christ.

It is important to lampoon and jeer at ideologies/religions, especially those that insist they have the ultimate Truth and are above criticism.

(Racism/slavery went the other way; it used to be accepted -- but like intolerance to blasphemy, it was put behind us, at least in the West.)

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