Protesters angered by the planned burning of a copy of the Quran stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad early Thursday, breaking into the compound and lighting a small fire.
Protesters angered by the planned burning of a copy of the Quran stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad early Thursday, breaking into the compound and lighting a small fire.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest that you personally are religious or that you are advocating for people storming the embassy by taking your position. I shouldn’t have used “your” in my hypothetical.
I personally do not believe there should be laws specifically against “offending” someone, and I don’t think not having that law makes a country uncivilized. I absolutely believe there should be harsher punishments for actual crimes motivated by prejudices, but what qualifies as “offensive” is incredibly subjective and open to exploitation. If a Nazi found Mein Kampf to be genuinely just as sacred to them as a religious text, would you agree that burning it should be illegal as to not offend them?
National socialism is objectively evil and is also not a religion so the example seems pretty far fetched to me. I could not care less about the feelings of nazis but Mein Kampf is important historical source material so it should definitely not be burned but instead preserved. I also think the impact of that book is generally overstated. Germans who voted for Hitler back then did not do so because of Mein Kampf but for several reasons including they felt the treaty of Versailles was unfair, that the new democratic system had failed them and because of the global economic crisis/inflation.
A civilized society does not necessarily require laws against offense in my opinion. Laws against incitement on the other hand are generally needed to keep things peaceful in most societies if you ask me.
I mean it’s 2023 and the internet exists, there’s no history lost by burning a single copy of Mein Kampf. So religion is just where you draw the line?
Some people have just as much fervor for nationalism as religion, is it incitement to burn a US flag in the US? What about burning another country’s flag?
If the Quran or the US flag gets burned to incite hate and violence makes no difference to me, both is the same kind of wrong. I simply don´t think that intentional incitement, especially of groups that are particularly easy to enrage is aiding humanity or is in general a good idea. There is so much violence in the world already, why do you think there should be a right to pour gas into the fire?