by Rivkela Brodsky
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."
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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.
Many Westerners thought the reaction of Muslims to the cartoons was uncalled for, he said.
"You have to understand the emotion," he said.
He said those emotions are caused by differences in communication and a lack of understanding between different cultures.
"The East and the West, they're different cultures; different religions, and people say, 'Why do the Muslim people hate us? Why do people in the Middle East hate the Americans?'" he said. "You know a lot of people in the Middle East do the same thing."
Randa Elbih, a coordinator of the event, said as a Muslim, she has been questioned as to why Muslims were offended by the cartoons. One of the purposes of the event was explain why Muslims reacted the way they did.
Student Jack Shaw said the talk was "spot-on."
"I'm Muslim, and I do feel the East has been hugely misrepresented," he said.
Suzanne Midani said she liked Nabulsi's point of the West and the East taking steps toward better communication.
Midani, a member of the Muslim Student Association, said she wished more people would have attended the event.
For Shireen Jasser, also a member of the Muslim Student Association, the purpose of the lecture was to have an open dialogue on the topic.
She said Muslims in America are often stereotyped.
"I want to be set apart from those stereotypes," she said.
The lecture was sponsored by the Muslim Student Association as part of Islam Awareness Week at UNM.
