Last week the French Council of Muslim Faith announced they planned on suing French newspapers which published the now infamous cartoons of Mohammed. The group didn’t announce under what grounds the lawsuit would carry however. Today the Italian Union of Islamic Communities (UCOII) has announced they plan on suing Italian newspapers which carried at least one cartoon. The grounds for this suit appears to be that people were offended. How that translates into a lawsuit is beyond me because I do not know Italian law.

Italian Muslims though have already set a precedent in bringing cases for similar accusations. Italian author Oriana Fallaci was sued after writing a book critical of Islam. For the Americans reading this post, it seems quite odd this type of suit would not get thrown out before appearing for trial. That hasn’t happened in Italy.

Despite the UCOII recommendation to Italian mosques to sue Italian newspapers, the UCOII said it would “promote initiatives to honour the Prophet.”

“Our priority is to obtain the right reaction to what happened so that it will not damage our community and relations with the rest of the European and Italian societies whose most high-ranking state officials have expressed their solidarity to Muslims,” said UCOII in a statement drafted after an assembly called on Sunday by the organisation to discuss the crisis.

“The assembly has unanimously rejected the idea of organising or encouraging demonstrations,” said the group.

I fully agree with this type of response, but the juxtaposition of the UCOII to encourage a promotion of Mohammed versus telling Italian mosques to sue on the grounds of offense is wrong in my opinion. If we as a society were to rid ourselves of everything offensive, there would be no society left.

In Belgium Muslims are seeking to change the laws of the land to include a blasphemy law. This law would likely make it illegal to defame any religion, which begs the question of how one defines religion. You could clearly make the case Atheism is a religion as is Democracy and Secularism. In my view this law, if approved, would seriously curtail the right of a democratic society to debate issues. It is that right that allows Democracy to flourish and still be a government run by the people.

Nonetheless, at least the Belgium Muslims aren’t burning McDonald’s and KFC restaurants like what is happening in Pakistan. It should be noted that radical Islamic groups within Pakistan led the protests against the CIA bombing in Damadola, and it would hardly be unlikely they are doing the same in these torchings.