exploring muslim identities in europe & north america

Danish artist Kurt Westergaard died at the age of 86 on 14 July 2021.  The  illustrator was the creator of one of the twelve drawings published by Denmark's  largest daily conservative newspaper   Jyllands-Posten  on  30 September 2005, in an article entitled  Muhammeds ansigt  (The face of Muhammad).  Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the daily had written about the project commissioned by him and which  Kurt Westergaard was part of : Modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where one must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is of minor importance in the present context. ... we are on ...

UMUT OZKIRIMLI  and  SPYROS A. SOFOS   Appeared in openDemocracy.com on 13 January 2015 Freedoms are not unlimited but who, when and how can we limit them? Two colleagues agree to disagree. Content warning: graphic and potentially offensive imagery, including torture. Umut – This time it was different. I could not put a finger on how I felt on the morning of January 7, as I was refreshing my Twitter feed every ten seconds, hypnotized by the cold-blooded execution of Ahmed Merabet at the scene of the massacre. I was horrified of course, and angry like everybody else, at the perpetrators, at the structural conditions that have produced them, at the way in which religion had become a cloak for what was essentially a politically motivated act of barbarism. But there was more to it. I was also numbed by disbelief, a profound sense of desperation, even defeatism. In a way, I felt like the Knight in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, seeking answers to existential questi...