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Muslim sheds light on Danish cartoons
Rivkela Brodsky
Issue date: 3/31/06 Section: News
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Daily Lobo
Faisal Nabulsi said mocking the prophet Mohammed is mocking more than a religion - it's making light of a way of life.
Nabulsi, president of the Islamic Center of New Mexico, spoke Thursday in the SUB to about 20 people about the Danish cartoons that depicted the prophet Mohammed, which caused riots among Muslims.
"Islam is a very important system," he said. "It's not a religion. It's a system by which we live and die by."
He said prophets have an important status in the religion because they are messengers of God. He said the Quran is the source of God, but prophets and messengers bring God's word to Muslims, which is why they believe in prophets.
"Believing in messengers is very basic concept in Islam," he said.
He said Muslims also recognize Jesus Christ and Moses as prophets and messengers.
"These people are not ordinary people like us," he said. "They are human like us, but they are not ordinary people."
He said the Danish cartoonist's defense was that he mocked everyone, including Jesus, Mohammed and government dignitaries.
"To him it's OK to mock," Nabulsi said. "It's not OK to mock Jesus Christ to Muslims."
He said freedom of speech is not a free landscape, meaning people cannot say whatever they want.
"The fact that you have freedom of speech, that means you're confined to rules and regulations," he said. "That's what freedom of speech means. When you have freedom of speech in the sense that you can say anything you want, that's not freedom of speech. That's chaos. Freedom of speech means you are responsible for what you say and you can't violate the rights of people."
As an example, Nabulsi said it is not appropriate to call African-Americans the n-word.
"I do not have the moral or legal right to do that," he said.
He said the same principle applies to the mocking of prophet Mohammed.
"No one has the right to mock prophets and messengers if mocking the prophets and messengers violates the right and privacy of people who hold these people at a higher rank," he said.
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