Take advantage of this essay contest sponsored by the Center for Inquiry and its Campaign for Free Expression:
Students enrolled in an accredited college or university are invited to submit an essay about “The Importance of Free Expression and Its Limits (If Any).” Each entry must address the question of what limits national governments or recognized international bodies, such as the United Nations, may justifiably place on free expression. First prize is $2,000 (USD).
- Download Free Expression Essay Contest Rules.
- Submit entries to essaycontest@centerforinquiry.net.
DEADLINE: Entries must be received by midnight, January 5, 2010.
Thanks for posting this!
An interesting article here:
http://firstthings.com/onthesquare/2009/11/muhammad-and-man-at-yale
on free speech and the “cartoon controversy”. Particularly provocative is this concluding claim:
”
What Westerners saw as simply derogatory, Muslims saw as defamation. Dr. Mark Durie discussed this in a talk at the Hudson Institute last month, arguing that Muslims’ objections to criticism of Islam and Muhammad are, at base, theological: Muhammad himself interpreted criticism and mockery of Islam as persecution of Muslims, and his life is the theological bedrock of Islam. There is no distinction for Muslims between criticism of Islam and criticism of the people who hold that faith. Such a position must necessarily conflict with the Western view that there cannot be, in the words of Salman Rushdie, “fences erected around ideas, philosophies, attitudes, or beliefs.”
”
If this is so, then must we conclude that Islam and the West cannot possibly come to terms with each other?