How is it far from my examples? Please explain.
It is easy to say that when you are not the one being offended. I am not offended by drawings of Muhammad but I realize that others are.
Let's call morbidly obese people "fat fucks" to their face. Is that better? I fail to see how social norms do not suppress certain language from being used. Surely you would agree that insulting a fat person so much that it would be to the detriment to their mental health. Pushing people who already feel social stigma of being Muslim surely do not need people to further push them from the edge with hateful and insulting comments, comments that are cheered on by ignorant gun toting people.
They have no good reason to purposefully offend. My freedom of speech is no more or no less from their actions. Do you honestly feel more free to use your freedom of speech from their actions? I don't.
Let me try this yet again, for the
fourth time: I'm not defending what they're doing nor am I in favor of it. I'm explaining their reasons and motivations. There's a big difference between explaining why someone does something and condoning or agreeing with what they do.
As for the difference between your examples and what the Muhammad art contest promoters are doing, your examples were mostly of insults and attacks on groups or individuals - the mentally challenged, physically disabled, overweight, cancer sufferers, Yorkies, and etc. - who are innocent of any wrongdoing against you or anyone else. Harassing, insulting, or trying to humiliate such people is without any reasonable motivation and would constitute simply being a giant horse's ass for no discernible reason.
While I think the art contest promoters and attendees are also being giant horse's asses and doing something stupid, they do have an understandable motivation: anger towards a group (or at least a representative of that group) that has killed thousands of their fellow citizens (9/11), murdered innocents simply because they belonged to a different religion, beheaded or burned to death people from other cultures or religions simply because they are from those other groups, willfully destroyed cultural icons, openly cheered the deaths of anyone from outside their religion, shown zero tolerance for other religions, teach their children to become suicide bombers, treat their women like sub-human chattel, openly call for the destruction of all Jews, and then claim to be cultured and the religion of peace.
Are all Muslims that way? Of course not, but those are the ones making the headlines, cheering in the streets when those things happen, going on TV to rant about wiping Israel or the Great Satan off the planet, or supporting those actions, and there aren't nearly enough of the others standing up to condemn those things. Is the mosque they're protesting guilty of any of those things? Probably not, but they represent Islam and the art contest promoters and attendees view them as representative of their religion and its violent members. There's genuine anger and disgust towards Islam by a lot of people around the world, and for good reason, though it's certainly not fair to paint all Muslims with the same broad brush. I agree that they shouldn't insult the people of this mosque, disparage what's sacred to them, act like jackasses, or try to incite violence, but the anger and animosity and desire to lash out at them is very understandable.
