Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Col.Hornet on January 07, 2015, 09:34:47 am
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Violent content.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bc6_1420632668
R.I.P to all innocent victims and my condolence to all French people.
Why did it happened? I guess that it's a consequence of French military bombings on ISIS. Leaders of that rectal cancer of the world encouraged to perform attacks in the countries which armies are fighting against IS
Terrorist's choice wasn't a coincidence. Charlie Hebdo magazine created satirical pictures of the Muslim Prophet.
(http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/ll_a_s/2015/Jan/7/LiveLeak-dot-com-6b1_1420633958-1_1420633966.jpg?d5e8cc8eccfb6039332f41f6249e92b06c91b4db65f5e99818bdd5964b40ded50a65&ec_rate=230)
Attackers (sadly) managed to escape. :mad2:
Every time I hear about such tragedies I'm happy that don't live in a "multicultural country". At least we don't have problems with brainless "aloha snackbar" freaks. And I hope it will stay like this forever.
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My thoughts are with the French. :(
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was just coming here to post about this
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/07/us-france-shooting-idUSKBN0KG0Y120150107
**** those guys. keep talking.
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Every time I hear about such tragedies I'm happy that don't live in a "multicultural country". At least we don't have problems with brainless "aloha snackbar" freaks. And I hope it will stay like this forever
I fail to see how blanket disrespecting 1.6 billion people, an entire religion, and dozens of cultures helps in the slightest.
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**** these mother****ers. Someone wanna post the cartoon that pissed them off along with a translation?
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wow.. I have no words.. Just when I thought Islamic extremism couldnt get any worse after the performance in the last year.
Every time I hear about such tragedies I'm happy that don't live in a "multicultural country". At least we don't have problems with brainless "aloha snackbar" freaks. And I hope it will stay like this forever.
+1
There are like 60 muslims in my whole country. :D
Salman Rushdie's reaction: ‘I Stand With Charlie Hebdo, as We All Must’: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/01/07/salman-rushdie-i-stand-with-charlie-hebdo-as-we-all-must/
“Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.” –Salman Rushdie
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Every time I hear about such tragedies I'm happy that don't live in a "multicultural country". At least we don't have problems with brainless "aloha snackbar" freaks. And I hope it will stay like this forever
I fail to see how blanket disrespecting 1.6 billion people, an entire religion, and dozens of cultures helps in the slightest.
What, you're saying denying Muslim immigrants economic opportunities through racial and religious prejudice isn't going to solve the issue? You crazy
Honestly I doubt these guys are domestic French extremists. They look like professional killers ala Black September at Munich or Al Queda to me.
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Polls show that around half of muslims are extremists, hundreds of millions of them. Its gonna be less in a country like France, but still it is not true that only a tiny minority are extreme. So those who criticize multiculturalism certainly have a point. Because in this case, multiculturalism is not limited only to those harmless tasty kebabs. It is also about multiple viewpoints on such things like basic human rights. Which is a recipe for huge problems in a society.
http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/
(http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2010/12/2010-muslim-01-13.png)
I dont want this kind of multiculturalism anywhere near my country either.
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Ok, how many say in a poll actually say terrorism is ok? Now compare those numbers with the percentage of Americans who think drone strikes are ok.
Regardless, you know what won't make us safer? More discrimination! There's plenty of that against Muslims both in France and here. You know what won't teach Muslims angry at their marginalization liberal values? More discrimination!
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Every time I hear about such tragedies I'm happy that don't live in a "multicultural country". At least we don't have problems with brainless "aloha snackbar" freaks. And I hope it will stay like this forever
I fail to see how blanket disrespecting 1.6 billion people, an entire religion, and dozens of cultures helps in the slightest.
What, you're saying denying Muslim immigrants economic opportunities through racial and religious prejudice isn't going to solve the issue? You crazy
Honestly I doubt these guys are domestic French extremists. They look like professional killers ala Black September at Munich or Al Queda to me.
I was most definitely not expecting this unsympathetic stance by you, it surprised me. Last year I would be with you 100%, but I guess times change.
e:Me crazy, me incapable of read skills me stupid (btw I agree with you)
Nevertheless, I do think free speech is too important a thing to be sacrificed by a couple of ****ing assholes who suddenly instilled fear in every newspaper organization not only in France but in the wider world as well. Kudos to the Daily Beast who posted if not all their muslim covers, at least the most offensive ones right here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2011/11/02/charlie-hebdo-french-satire-magazine-s-shocking-covers-photos.html#78cc5a13-e7f3-4428-b0ff-a53e4d42d8f9
e: germany right now
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6w5HVEIgAA4R61.jpg)
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Every time I hear about such tragedies I'm happy that don't live in a "multicultural country". At least we don't have problems with brainless "aloha snackbar" freaks. And I hope it will stay like this forever
I fail to see how blanket disrespecting 1.6 billion people, an entire religion, and dozens of cultures helps in the slightest.
What, you're saying denying Muslim immigrants economic opportunities through racial and religious prejudice isn't going to solve the issue? You crazy
Honestly I doubt these guys are domestic French extremists. They look like professional killers ala Black September at Munich or Al Queda to me.
I was most definitely not expecting this unsympathetic stance by you, it surprised me. Last year I would be with you 100%, but I guess times change. Nevertheless, I do think free speech is too important a thing to be sacrificed by a couple of ****ing assholes who suddenly instilled fear in every newspaper organization not only in France but in the wider world as well. Kudos to the Daily Beast who posted if not all their muslim covers, at least the most offensive ones right here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2011/11/02/charlie-hebdo-french-satire-magazine-s-shocking-covers-photos.html#78cc5a13-e7f3-4428-b0ff-a53e4d42d8f9
Someone is looking for something that isn't there. I'd rather not let a few monsters convince us we should become monsters ourselves. I should not have to say this, and I'm not the one who decided to start attacking all Muslims.
Kudos to TDB. Most euro news sites are blurring the images right now. They need to be shamed.
Here's an idea: bombard the whole country with anonymous cartoons satirizing each religion. Make Muslims laugh at the ones going after Catholics before they have to work themselves up over theirs. Flood them until they get used to it.
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Sorry Vega you were too fast in the reply, I misread you.
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Ok, how many say in a poll actually say terrorism is ok? Now compare those numbers with the percentage of Americans who think drone strikes are ok.
What about drone strikes? Drone strikes are OK. Drone strikes deliberately targeting civilians are not OK. Drone strikes killing civilians as a collateral damage may or may not be OK, depending on specifics. It is not a black and white question.
I doubt lots of muslims will explicitly admit to supporting terrorism, because its such a bad word. But ask them in a roundabout way, like "do you support death penalty or harsh punishments for insulting the prophet or blasphemy/apostasy against islam?", and lots of them will answer yes. Which is exactly what we have seen today.
Morals are relative and many in coddled developed world have forgotten how evil people, normal people, can be. After all, I dont think we were much better in middle ages and islam is stuck there for a large part to this day.
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There is a draw mohammed day, I wouldnt be surprised in this date (HLP birthday! lol) becomes something similar
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Paris right now
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6w73l5IcAER6Za.jpg:large)
There is a draw mohammed day, I wouldnt be surprised in this date (HLP birthday! lol) becomes something similar
The Charlie Ebdo Day.
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Rest in peace, and... Happy eternity.
While I'm not religious at all and only pure spirirual person. I'm living surrounded by catholic people. I'm neutral in case of beliefs at all but I still don't understand why only muslim fanatics are doing things like this. Catholic fanatics are pretty funny at all. They are people, who just shout loudly about Jesus Christ nad other catholic deities. Sometimes about Judgment Day, conversions, whatever. HoRnet, You know what I'm talking about :P. If there is any God... Well. God has no religion at all, as Gandhi said and I'm pretty sure it don't want anybody to kill other people.
I actually have nothing against muslims. Those who live in Poland are kind people, but we have a very few of them comparing to France, Germany where millions of them are living. Unfortunately the more normal muslims we accept here in Europe, the more fanatics will come afterwards and they will be indistinguishable from normal muslim people till they do something like this. The only way I see to prevent events like this is setting limits for imigrants.
We are living in the same planet and we are all humans. Different, but still humans. Unfortunately... Not everyone understand this.
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My condolences to the families of the victims
I do have to ask what's the point of this? What I think this will do is just piss off the general population, which doesn't bode well for the minority in the future. Although France has had districts in the cities where police and firemen refuse to go for some time, so I can't say this is unexpected.
Things seemed to be a bit different in Germany, though. I don't know what makes the difference between France and Germany here. Sweden also had some amount of trouble with muslims rioting a couple of months ago too.
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Things seemed to be a bit different in Germany, though. I don't know what makes the difference between France and Germany here. Sweden also had some amount of trouble with muslims rioting a couple of months ago too.
German muslims are mostly Turks, who are relatively less problematic. Maybe due to cultural proximity to Europe, secular influence of Ataturk or Turkey being a stable country compared to middle east, or something.
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Flood them until they get used to it.
You just described the idea behind Draw Mohamed Day. Which last time I checked we get a lot of grief from the administration here in this very forum over when anyone tries to participate.
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I fail to see how blanket disrespecting 1.6 billion people, an entire religion, and dozens of cultures helps in the slightest.
A culture that largely says that if you change your religion you should be killed is a culture I want very far away from me, and in fact one I would like to see end entirely. If you are not part of that culture, or you want to escape that culture (I am implying assimilation into another one here) even if you have a religion that goes by the same name as the one practiced compulsorily by the people in that culture, then I welcome you. But if you are going to be my neighbor and continue to hold on to ideas like "it's OK to murder your daughter because she talked to a boy" then we are going to have problems.
There does seem to be something about Islam. Not saying it's something that cannot be fixed and is something ingrained in every muslim, but why is it that we've had all of these middle class westerner kids flying over to Syria to murder kafirs? there is a problem here.
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I fail to see how blanket disrespecting 1.6 billion people, an entire religion, and dozens of cultures helps in the slightest.
A culture that largely says that if you change your religion you should be killed is a culture I want very far away from me, and in fact one I would like to see end entirely. If you are not part of that culture, or you want to escape that culture (I am implying assimilation into another one here) even if you have a religion that goes by the same name as the one practiced compulsorily by the people in that culture, then I welcome you. But if you are going to be my neighbor and continue to hold on to ideas like "it's OK to murder your daughter because she talked to a boy" then we are going to have problems.
There does seem to be something about Islam. Not saying it's something that cannot be fixed and is something ingrained in every muslim, but why is it that we've had all of these middle class westerner kids flying over to Syria to murder kafirs? there is a problem here.
You're not going to believe this, but all but an infinitesimal fraction of Muslims do not engage in killing people for religious reasons. They are people with normal lives and families and struggle with reconciling nasty parts of the Koran with their innate morality the same way Christians have to reconcile the Old Testament with reality, to the point that this really does not need to be said (and yet it seems it has to be everytime something like this happens). Some of them talk **** about people who are not Muslims, which you will of course NEVER EVER see in America's Christian community.
So, for the love of god, do not point your finger at "Muslims". To be that broad is to engage in outrageous slander. There are plenty of Jews who really are kniving and greedy! Who cares? Be very, very specific about who and what particular groups and philosophies you are talking about. Or I'm going to demand you apologize for Timothy McVeigh.
Also, a question for y'all - what do you think the culture of the Deep South would look like if it were a destitute war zone? Spoiler: every abortion clinic in sight would be bombed out of existence by now.
You wanna put some blame on religion, go ahead. But this Islamic Exceptionalism I'm hearing smacks of several other -isms.
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I do think deep south for all its faults is less crazy and conservative than muslims are.
The equivalent of muslims are those christian extremists in subsaharan Africa that sometimes burn witches and want death penalty for gays. But at least those stick to themselves and dont emigrate into Europe.
Also newsflash: religions differ in the proportion and danger of their extremists. And Islam is probably the worst currently. Is that "Islamic exceptionalism"? Maybe, doesnt make it any less true IMHO.
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I do think deep south for all its faults is less crazy and conservative than muslims are.
You do not understand what I just said. Why have they produced more crazy people? Because Islam is just that inheritly more violent? Or because, I don't know, maybe the Middle East IS POOR AS ****?
I don't need to engage in some pseudoscientific inquiry as to which teachings produce more violence (although I applaud the irony that actual scientists are now at the forefront of this pastime). I simply need to observe that religious extremism tends to get worse with increasing poverty, all other things being equal (such as the presence of scriptures with passages that extoll the virtue of violence for the faith), for reasons which I should not have to go into, look at just how poor the average Muslim in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan is, and grab my coat and go home, content with the fact that I understand this aspect of the world I live in damn well enough.
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Thing is, this isn't about Islam, that's just the boat it sailed in on. Truth is, Jihadists are no more serving the 'Will of God' than the Crusaders were, unless you consider God to be men who, whilst claiming a firm belief in some kind of paradise for a glorious death in battle, seem to be strangely in no rush to get there themselves.
This is about resources, power, education, money and the imbalance of them throughout the world, both perceived and actual, and about the fact it's just as easy to say 'A Superpower did it and ran away' as it is to say 'It's for the sake of National Security'.
Extremist Islam is to blame for Terrorism in the same way that flames are to blame for fire.
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I do agree that poverty is an important factor (not the only one tough).
But it is no excuse. There can be no excuse for religious extremism.
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I do agree that poverty is an important factor (not the only one tough).
But it is no excuse. There can be no excuse for religious extremism.
Yes! We should not be slandering Muslims who have been already slandered quite enough. We should be condemning those who by interpreting the Koran in the worst possible light are able to take advantage of their desperate countrymen to further their own power and have a good time hurting and intimidating others.
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Or because, I don't know, maybe the Middle East IS POOR AS ****?
why did a bunch of middle class kids from the US and the UK and IIRC France and a few other places in Europe go to fight for ISIS?
also, are you implying that the culture of the deep south of the US does NOT have some major problems that need addressing? because if you are not implying that then I don't know why you are using that as a counterexample to what I said.
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Or because, I don't know, maybe the Middle East IS POOR AS ****?
why did a bunch of middle class kids from the US and the UK and IIRC France and a few other places in Europe go to fight for ISIS?
How many of them felt welcome in their own society?
Remember the riots in France a few years back over the killing of a Muslim teenager by police? Much, much worse than the Michael Brown unrest?
BTW I would like to know just how large those numbers of middle class emigrants are.
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/iraq-war-on-terror/losing-iraq/why-are-so-many-westerners-joining-isis/
~2,500
can you think of any similar situations with different religions?
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I've been talking with old friends and collegues in France since noon ... This one struck deep...
Saldy, the dark days are those which will be coming next when the shock wears off and everyone either instrumentalizes the memory of the dead or falls to headless activism ...
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This just keeps getting worse. Because IS achieves victories, Islamic fanatics from all over the world flock to them, which strengthens them, letting them achieve more victories... That's a rather difficult situation to stop. I'm afraid this might have gone too far, they're essentially a separate country now. A country that keeps expanding. They have jet fighters, armor and a large enough military to count as more than a terrorist group. They might have already crossed a point when just killing them will be able to uproot them. Of course, you could just burn down/execute the whole state, but genocide is generally frowned upon these days (though given everything, I'd support such a thing, should it happen).
The scary thing about IS is that they actually seem to push towards establishing a functioning Caliphate, instead of just trying to terrorize everyone. They're calling for skilled technicians and doctors, meaning that they do have a plan to establish a functioning state. They are not a gathering of religion-crazed madmen, at least not anymore. If this continues, I'm afraid that we are going to have a large Arab state on our hands, united by a despotic, violent and highly anti-Western (but disturbingly stable, and likely very well armed) theocracy. The very existence of both Iraq and Syria might soon be threatened (or already is).
Islamic State needs to be destroyed. At this point, I'm personally willing to accept witch hunts, genocide, or even nuclear weapons. Something needs to be done, and we're running out of something that would help. They are targeting the entire non-Sunni world (yes, that means Shia and other Muslim denominations aren't safe, either) and every Sunni area that they don't control already. My only hope is that the next attack happens in Russia and kills someone important enough to piss off Putin and the Russian oligarchs. Indeed, I'd gladly see the entire IS relocated to Siberia and worked to death in Gulags. If anyone deserves this fate, it's them (and yes, forced prisoner labor is still a thing in Russia). Given how they run thing, they might be too smart for that, though...
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you might be overestimating their capabilities. and overreacting a little. though I certainly agree they need to be crushed, and I think they are. They seem to have stalled since shortly after we started bombing them. Nuclear genocide seems to be a bit unnecessary.
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Jets? man are you serious? They only managed to capture some migs from Syrian Air Force (al Tabqa air base for example) while they were on the ground and the crews of air bases were retreating. They may have them but forget them to use it. Neither fly or maintain in operational status. Planes are far too complicated equipment to be used by these savages, even soviet ones. You need to know some physics, mechanics etc. As far as I remember Qua-ran doesn't say anything about maintaining jet fighters. BTW are you aware that every coalition pilot wouldn't miss an occasion to paint an aerial kill marking on his/her bird ;) Yes, IS has a lot of advanced weaponry, mainly thanks to US deliveries for FSA -.-, captured Abrams tanks stolen from the Iraqis (but it doesn't seem that they use them effectively due to the poor training). The worse are rifles and anti tank weapons (mainly US- made TOW launchers and Russian Konkurs and Kornets) And let's not forget some shoulder launched anti air rockets.
Yes, their forces are strong but they can be smashed like cockroaches as well.
But you are right in one thing. Their recent victories may encourage a lot brainwashed idiots to do such things as we have seen today in Paris.
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I hate to say it, but I think 'Radicalized' is the new 'Gangsta' in a lot of young middle-class Muslims eyes. For most of them it's harmless enough, they'll end up with a mortgage and kids and end their rebellious days the same as the rest of us, but you always get that one kid in each group who takes it too far and ends up either dead or in jail.
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You need to know some physics, mechanics etc.
Yes, you do, and they know that. Have you seen what they said lately? "We need technicians and doctors". I'm not going to bet my life on there not being a single fanatical pilot in the world. They can and eventually will get people capable of keeping advanced equipment they captured in order. That is the problem, especially in light of recent victories (which are bound to make at least some people think that siding with them is a good idea). It might be also that to young, religious people, even well-educated ones, what IS does really does have some kind of romantic, rebellious flair. They get a steady flow of recruits from places where people should really know better, and from places where technical education is easier to come by.
Sure, bombing has slowed them down, but it's not affecting them enough to stop them. It's a bit too imprecise to be really damaging. They are not savages anymore. Their leaders may be nuts, but way too many people joined them by now, some rather educated. The planes are old Soviet junk, but the very idea of Islamic State running some semblance of an air force is unsettling. Of course, they'd likely be quickly overwhelmed if they tried to use them against Coalition bombers, but these things have other uses as well. Besides, they're not really less advanced than what the rest of the region operates. The point is, IS is slowly advancing toward being able to call itself a fully functioning state. I don't think we can afford that.
you might be overestimating their capabilities. and overreacting a little. though I certainly agree they need to be crushed, and I think they are. They seem to have stalled since shortly after we started bombing them. Nuclear genocide seems to be a bit unnecessary.
Well, it might not be beyond the point when other options are not viable, but it will soon be, if things keep going like they are. Islamic State is evolving into actual state with a large, organized army and an actual logistical and technical base. They're no longer a bunch of bearded savages hiding around caves. Their recruitment strategy is well thought out, and their military will soon be able to match other forces in the region. I'm not afraid of them conquering the world or anything, but I do think that they're in a state where another 9/11 happening is a realistic concern. The benefits of a large-scale extermination campaign (whether by WMDs or other means) might soon outweigh the costs.
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jesus christ dragon isis aren't the ****ing borg
you've literally suggested genocide as a means of containing them, i mean what the **** even for you that's disgusting
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The course of action you are proposing would have unforeseen consequences.
and...
If we wiped out 1.6 billion people (not trying to mischaracterize you but this really sounds like what you are saying, please correct me if I am misguided here) even if you count "we" as the 2.5 billion who (generously) could be called western civilization, and we wiped out 1.6 billion people, and lets be REALLY ****ing generous and say half of them wanted to kill us and also were going to try, so we are killing 800 million innocent people, directly, and probably at least about that many of our own people and nutral 3rd parties due to the effects of fallout. when they lacked the capabilities to end us, and were not in the process of actively attacking us. and we end their line, we wipe them out. doesn't that kinda make us the badies?
can we at least wait until they are kinda close to being able to kill us before resorting to full on genocide?
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I'm not religious but every once in a while the universe conspires to make me believe in Karma
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30721021
Dragon. I think it's time we drew the line on your decision to always get up on your soapbox and preach your world view at every opportunity. Your comments on ISIS have typically been divorced from reality but this is getting stupid. Calls for genocide in response to a terrorist attack are going way too far and will stop now. In fact they will definitely stop because you're not posting on Gen Discuss for a week.
Similarly, the next person to make a bigoted comment about Muslims is also getting time off.
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First and last warning to everyone: any suggestions of blatant racism and/or genocide are completely unacceptable and will be dealt with harshly. End of story.
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I fail to see how blanket disrespecting 1.6 billion people, an entire religion, and dozens of cultures helps in the slightest.
A culture that largely says that if you change your religion you should be killed is a culture I want very far away from me, and in fact one I would like to see end entirely. If you are not part of that culture, or you want to escape that culture (I am implying assimilation into another one here) even if you have a religion that goes by the same name as the one practiced compulsorily by the people in that culture, then I welcome you. But if you are going to be my neighbor and continue to hold on to ideas like "it's OK to murder your daughter because she talked to a boy" then we are going to have problems.
Did you notice that you had to switch to using the word culture rather than continuing to use religion?
That alone should have showed you that you're making a huge mistake blaming Islam for this.
can you think of any similar situations with different religions?
I'd say that the Christian Survivialist movement is very similar actually. A lot of them are eagerly waiting for the moment society falls so that they can start shooting people. I think the main difference between the two is nothing to do with religion but the fact that survivalists don't believe the moment for violence has come yet. If the Canadian border was like Northern Iraq, they'd be driving up there, guns in hand, right now.
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y'all realize Dragon is now just going to go to /pol/ to get further radicalized, right? now he doesn't have to defend his beliefs against challenge.
was honestly hoping I could convince him he was full of ****.
but whatevs...
Did you notice that you had to switch to using the word culture rather than continuing to use religion?
That alone should have showed you that you're making a huge mistake blaming Islam for this.
Yes, I was quite aware of what I was writing. The culture is dominated by the religion, that is the culture. Culture and religion are often very tightly intertwined. did you also notice the line about 'religion which has the same name' part? I am quite aware that not all muslims are murderers thank you.
I'd say that the Christian Survivialist movement is very similar actually. A lot of them are eagerly waiting for the moment society falls so that they can start shooting people. I think the main difference between the two is nothing to do with religion but the fact that survivalists don't believe the moment for violence has come yet. If the Canadian border was like Northern Iraq, they'd be driving up there, guns in hand, right now.
I am not convinced of this comparason or your understanding of that particular brand of nuttery. The survivalists think that civilization will fall and there will be anarchy and that they need all those artillery rounds to fight off the roving bands of road pirates. They think that they will have to rebuild civilization after it falls, not that they need to bring the current civilization down so that they can install their own. It's not an ongoing campaign of any sort of real action, it's mostly collecting ridiculous amounts of survival gear, food, weapons, and building fallout shelters. honestly not seeing the connection with a bunch of people who are going to a foreign land and subjugating it's people (is this a fair description of ISIS?). survivalists seem to me to be mainly a defensive mindset with no real goals of conquest. (correct me if I'm wrong)
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anyway, howbout we get less meta and more on topic
Paris* right now:
(http://i.imgur.com/UsBtpAN.jpg)
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Where's the giant caricature?
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Paris right now
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6w73l5IcAER6Za.jpg:large)
(not Paris, since the building in the background is the Opera House of Rennes)
So sad. I have no words for what I feel right now.
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(*Paris according to reddit)
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Yes, I was quite aware of what I was writing. The culture is dominated by the religion, that is the culture. Culture and religion are often very tightly intertwined. did you also notice the line about 'religion which has the same name' part? I am quite aware that not all muslims are murderers thank you.
But here's the problem, when you blame the religion, you blame it everywhere, not just in the places where it dominates the culture. In places where it does dominate the culture, it's the culture that is to blame, not the religion. So why not simply cut to the chase and put the blame where it actually belongs?
I am not convinced of this comparason or your understanding of that particular brand of nuttery. The survivalists think that civilization will fall and there will be anarchy and that they need all those artillery rounds to fight off the roving bands of road pirates. They think that they will have to rebuild civilization after it falls, not that they need to bring the current civilization down so that they can install their own. It's not an ongoing campaign of any sort of real action, it's mostly collecting ridiculous amounts of survival gear, food, weapons, and building fallout shelters. honestly not seeing the connection with a bunch of people who are going to a foreign land and subjugating it's people (is this a fair description of ISIS?). survivalists seem to me to be mainly a defensive mindset with no real goals of conquest. (correct me if I'm wrong)
I'm not going to say they are the same thing. But you claimed there was something special about Islam making middle-class people go off and act like nutcases. I pointed out that the same thing occurs in Christianity, it's just channelled in a different direction for now.
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Well, historically, much of Sunni Islam (and by some extension, Shia) has had a love-hate relationship with Iconoclastic principals.
In Islamic artwork, Sunni threads never draw images of the Prophet, out of both religious law and long tie to their calligraphy of the Arabic language. Though, I will add to some irony, Iranian artists produced a lot of work that actually featured drawn portraits of Muhammad in his journey to Mecca and expulsion.
Though to critique Dragon, the only way to effectively fight ISIS is to both stabilize and secure the borders of Syria and Iraq. However, the regional instability only highlights the major problems afflicting Syria and Iraq, and the politics? Hahahahaha. Politics in the Middle East is madness. However, if US ground forces were to encounter ISIS in a conventional war? We'd brutally crush them like we did the Iraqi Republican Guard in both Gulf Wars.
Guerilla war and insurgency? That's a bit different. And America recently got done fighting a guerilla war in Iraq during our unneeded stay. I don't think our public (and to extent, political machinery) is ready to fight another overseas excursion.
As for the actions of these young men? You can only blame the religion thus far: the rest has to fall on personal or group influence. In some twisted ways, the attack is in a similar vein to anti-abortion campaigners blowing up clinics or murdering abortion doctors.
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I'm not going to say they are the same thing. But you claimed there was something special about Islam making middle-class people go off and act like nutcases. I pointed out that the same thing occurs in Christianity, it's just channelled in a different direction for now.
Middle class extremists appear in a flash and disappear just as quickly (the Weathermen are the perfect western example). Religion or no religion, barring a military occupation, you're just not going to find enough people to make a terrorist organization unless there is such terrible poverty that a lot of them feel like they have nothing to lose.
I'd also like to amend my earlier statement. You don't need to have a scripture with violent passages like the Old Testament or the Koran to plant the seed for religious violence. I know Sam Harris did try to claim that a Buddhist or a Jain wouldn't be prone to the same risk of falling into violence as a Muslim. That is bull**** - a large fraction of the Mongols who massacred the entire population of Baghdad in 1258 were devout Buddhists. The samurai of the Warring States Period were almost entirely Buddhist in religion. Murderers can take literally anything and twist it to suit their needs.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30721021
Should be noted, as the IS army are moving on and leaving smaller occupying forces in Syria, at appears those occupying forces are being 'vanished' by the locals.
Thing is, people from Asia are no more fond of having religion dictated to them down the point of the gun than people from anywhere else.
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But here's the problem, when you blame the religion, you blame it everywhere, not just in the places where it dominates the culture.
No that is what you (I presume) do when you blame a religion and you are assuming that I think the same way you do, or you have come up with this model of how my mind works without any internal reference. You should not do that, or at the least you should not assume you must be right about your assumptions. When someone says something there is a possibility that they mean something differently than what you think, that you have misinterpreted them. You should not insist that they think what you think they said, but try to understand what they actually think and then criticize that or their communication of their thoughts, but before you get to that point you have to not insist that you know their thoughts better than they do. In this particular case I, personally, make a very significant distinction between an ideology and the people who follow it. I can attribute things to the people and the ideology independently, that is how my model of things works. If you don't deal with that then we are talking past each other.
In places where it does dominate the culture, it's the culture that is to blame, not the religion. So why not simply cut to the chase and put the blame where it actually belongs?
Perhaps when I say religion I mean something different than what you think.
Religions are living things (figuratively speaking) that are more than their texts and separate from the cultures that they interact with, they have communities that transcend cultures. Religions have attributes that lead to their ability to influence the people who follow them to certain states. Just because you have the cancer gene doesn't mean you are going to get cancer, it just means you have a higher chance of it. Just because you belong to a religion doesn't mean you are going to be just like every other member of that religion. But if you belong to a religion that says that blood transfusions are a sin, you have a much higher chance of refusing (or having refused for you by someone else) a blood transfusion when it is the only thing that will save your life. It doesn't mean you definitely will, but it raises the chances of it (significantly). If this religion (and I'm totally not talking about Jahova's Witnesses here) is found in disparate parts of the world that have little involved with each other culturally (say due to missionaries) then this attribute of the religion it's self will be affecting people, It really wouldn't be accurate to say it was the result of the cultures, would it?
The part where I completely lose you:
In the case of Islam the religion as it exists today, it seems to prescribe a number of things that I believe have contributed to increasing hostility, insularity, hypersensitivity, exceptionalism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism among the people who follow it (reread my last paragraph) and the cultures it dominates. Mohamed was a political leader, he wrote up governmental documents, this is considered part of the religion, when governmental documents written by the infallible founder are part of a religion it is very hard for communities following that religion to not seek a unification of political and religious powers, and for those powers to of course be dictated by their religion. This also makes it very difficult to separate Islam the religion, from Islam the political movement, because in a very significant way they are one in the same. To this day Islamic nations often derive legitimacy by claiming some sort of succession from Mohamed, this is literally what a caliphate is, the title Emir is connected to this as well. Islam dictates in minute detail how you are to live, Islam is the cause for the expression "wrong side of the bed", it tells you in extreme detail the god defined perfect way to wipe your ass. It is totalitarian, EVERYTHING in your life is supposed to be about Islam according to Islam, every bat of your eye, every breath is suppose to be according to the will of Allah. This also leads in to the authoritarian aspects, Mohamed is defined as the perfect man, by definition nothing he did can be wrong, The Koran is the perfect book, if the Koran says something that is contradicted by reality, reality is wrong. In order to worship god properly you must be in the correct sort of community, guess what type of community. Combine all of this with numerous calls for egregiously inhumane consequences tor things I consider basic human rights and you have what I feel is a very bad combination for a social/cultural force strongly influencing a very large portion of the population.
No one particular trait is really that unique. Christianity has all of this too, and it is having similarly bad effects in some parts of the world but the christian community has made changes to it's self that it by and large no longer interprets things so literally in most cases. As a result the Christian religion changed into a form that was far less bloodthursty, corrupt, despotic, and autocratic. Islam has had forms in the past that were very enlightened, it can have that again, I would like to see it have that again, there are muslims following a form like that right now and are working towards fixing their religion (though they certainly would not phrase it that way) and could be thought of as being on "our" side (whatever the **** that means, people who would like Islam to not have it's problems anymore?). I hope Islam will have that golden age again, but to me it does not look like much progress is being made and I don't think lieing to ourselves about that is going to help. (for anyone thinking "being biggoted about them isn't going to help either" please don't, the fact I just predicted your thoughts shows you are more reacting to my tone and language than thinking about what I am saying). I am not part of the ummah so I cannot (and arguably should not) do much to change it, all I can really do is observe it and try to position myself and my community, and my country, and my metaculture/civilisation/whatever in the best position to deal with what I observe from it and try to make sure we don't **** ourselves up internally in the process.
I'm not going to say they are the same thing. But you claimed there was something special about Islam making middle-class people go off and act like nutcases. I pointed out that the same thing occurs in Christianity, it's just channelled in a different direction for now.
oh, that's not what I meant, I was more referring to the conquest and subjugation. Islam is totally unremarkable in it's ability to make people of all social strata act insane. It is specifically the "direction" I was referring to. I cannot think of anything happening that has convinced thousands of people to quit their jobs and try to set up a new country in the middle of a bunch of currently existing countries and rule it by the will of god.
...I suppose Israel might count? though that was more than half a century ago.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sxwzg7Y-Bs
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No that is what you (I presume) do when you blame a religion and you are assuming that I think the same way you do, or you have come up with this model of how my mind works without any internal reference.
No, I am saying that what you have written is most likely going to be interpreted to that meaning. If you want to be clear about your meaning, write clearly about your meaning as you did in this last post.
I hope Islam will have that golden age again, but to me it does not look like much progress is being made and I don't think lieing to ourselves about that is going to help. (for anyone thinking "being biggoted about them isn't going to help either" please don't, the fact I just predicted your thoughts shows you are more reacting to my tone and language than thinking about what I am saying). I am not part of the ummah so I cannot (and arguably should not) do much to change it, all I can really do is observe it and try to position myself and my community, and my country, and my metaculture/civilisation/whatever in the best position to deal with what I observe from it and try to make sure we don't **** ourselves up internally in the process.
That's a great argument. Can't you see how calling on people to draw Muhammed would actually alienate those people who are trying to modernise Islam by turning it once again into a West vs East issue where the West can obviously be proved to hate Islam and all the people trying to modernise the religion are obviously puppets of the West?
Why are you advocating we go out of our way to do something which will obviously make things worse?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30721021
Should be noted, as the IS army are moving on and leaving smaller occupying forces in Syria, at appears those occupying forces are being 'vanished' by the locals.
Thing is, people from Asia are no more fond of having religion dictated to them down the point of the gun than people from anywhere else.
I actually posted that earlier but it went unremarked. Funny thing is I'm not certain whether the issue is people having religion dictated to them or a bunch of people with guns and nicotine withdrawal. :D
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Why are you advocating we go out of our way to do something which will obviously make things worse?
Because we have our own insecurities.
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Can't you see how calling on people to draw Muhammed would actually alienate those people who are trying to modernise Islam
no, I cannot, because those people are almost by definition the people who would react to such things with a loud echoing "meh"
so now you are discussing the best way to manipulate the muslim world into our own image? I'm more interested on the effect it will have directly in my world, there isn't much point in trying to export liberal values that you hide at the first inconvenience.
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also< one down two to go:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-paris-shooting.html
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no, I cannot, because those people are almost by definition the people who would react to such things with a loud echoing "meh"
You really think that a Draw Muhammed day wouldn't make the life of those people trying to modernise Islam harder?
so now you are discussing the best way to manipulate the muslim world into our own image? I'm more interested on the effect it will have directly in my world, there isn't much point in trying to export liberal values that you hide at the first inconvenience.
Not at all. The West has been making the mistake of trying to make the Middle East like itself since the Crusades. I'd suggest that the best thing to do with the Middle East is to leave it the **** alone and quit meddling since that's what caused the ****ing problem in the first place. Do you actually know why it is that the West has become a target for Islamic Fundamentalists? If you haven't watched "The Power of Nightmares" go do it now.
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Can't you see how calling on people to draw Muhammed would actually alienate those people who are trying to modernise Islam
no, I cannot, because those people are almost by definition the people who would react to such things with a loud echoing "meh"
Except not really, because while the people trying to modernize islam may see caricatures like those as no big deal personally, they also have to deal with people who quite definitely do not agree on that issue.
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We have people that say some of the stupidest, most assinine, hateful, vile, problematic, ignorant, blasphomous, dangerous things imaginable. The westboro babtists, the klan, the neo nazis, they are all an embaresment, but they are also something to be proud of. Because it means we let people express themselves, and we allow the ideas to be floated, especally the bad ones, so that they can be properly shot down or ignored. It means we respect the basic human right of freedom of speech. if you are a person who holds to liberal values you will react to someone saying something hateful to you by letting them, and then maybe telling them what you think, if you feel it's worthy of a responce.
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The thing is, a Muslim should not have to react with "meh" in order to be considered 'moderate', that's not the way it works.
A Muslim should be allowed to get as angry as they like about it, but it's not ok to go round taking out that anger on other people, that's sort of the whole point of Freedom of Speech, there's a big difference between Modernization and Westernization.
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Bob, you realise that the people who are saying hateful, vile, ignorant things are wankers though, right? We shouldn't be proud of them for saying it. Proud of ourselves for allowing them, but not proud of them.
Remember that you could make an argument that Westbro baptist are defending their freedom of speech to say bad things about gay people. Reflect on what that means for someone who wants to troll an entire religion because of what some people do in the name of it.
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I do agree that poverty is an important factor (not the only one tough).
But it is no excuse. There can be no excuse for religious extremism.
Yes! We should not be slandering Muslims who have been already slandered quite enough. We should be condemning those who by interpreting the Koran in the worst possible light are able to take advantage of their desperate countrymen to further their own power and have a good time hurting and intimidating others.
We should be slandering every muslim that has extremist tendencies, which as I said is around half of them. No matter what the reasons behind the extremism are. This is not a problem than will go away by pretending it does not exist or appeasement. Nor will it be solved by concentrating only on actual terrorists and ignoring the enablers. Terrorists are only the very tip of the iceberg, it is the mycelium that enables them to grow that needs to be addressed.
In fact, this is not a problem that can be solved at all. Such a clash of great but incompatible cultures needs only time (centuries maybe), and then hoping for the best. These attacks will go on, get used to it. In fact, I expect them to get even worse. Especially in countries with significant and growing muslim minorities.
What we can do is try to minimize the threat by containing the problem mostly in middle east and not exporting it all over the world. Rethinking our immigration policies. Also trying to stabilize the situation over there, not creating conflicts unless it is absolutely necessary. Rethinking our foreign policies. ISIS still needs to be destroyed though.
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The problem is thinking there is some kind of way of telling the difference between 'extremist' Muslims and those who are exercising Freedom of Speech, because it depends greatly on what the listener wants to hear.
For example, calling on Iraqi citizens to rise up and overthrow Saddam was a tactic that was actually used during the Iraq war, so if that is the case, is it not equally Free Speech to call on any other group to rise up and throw off any other leader?
I'm going to start using a new phrase, 'Decadence of Speech', where the concept of being able to speak your own mind has become so commonplace that those common boundaries of respect and good manners breaks down, in some ways it is the equal and opposite of Fundamentalism.
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We should be slandering every muslim that has extremist tendencies, which as I said is around half of them.
Yes, you said that. And you cited a study about muslims living in muslim states and muslim cultures. Not even all of the islamic countries, but a very strange subset of them, which doesn't even include Saudi-Arabia, Iran, or the various asian countries. By that metric, you could survey some of the US bible belt (taking care to only interview those who self-identify as christian) and then proclaim all of the US to be fundamentalist christian; I hope you can see how idiotically flawed that argument is.
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We should be slandering every muslim that has extremist tendencies, which as I said is around half of them.
Yes, you said that. And you cited a study about muslims living in muslim states and muslim cultures. Not even all of the islamic countries, but a very strange subset of them, which doesn't even include Saudi-Arabia, Iran, or the various asian countries. By that metric, you could survey some of the US bible belt (taking care to only interview those who self-identify as christian) and then proclaim all of the US to be fundamentalist christian; I hope you can see how idiotically flawed that argument is.
Those countries are where the majority of muslims are so they are pretty representative of global islam. Just sum up their populations, it is a very big number. It does have an asian country, Indonesia. Half of Indonesians are extremists. Wasnt so long ago when they had a law on the books to stone adulterers. There is no reason to believe muslims in those majority muslim countries not included in the survey are much better. There is reason to believe that muslims living in the west are better, indeed there is a survey of british muslims where only less than third are extremists (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jan/29/thinktanks.religion). Still, it is not going to move the global average much, and it is still too high a number. And this is not the only survey to show similar results, there are several more and nothing to the contrary.
Bible belt is not where majority of Christians live and come from. If it was, then yes such survey would be pretty representative. And I doubt you would get such numbers even in bible belt. Maybe in subsaharan Africa.
EDIT: added source for Kara
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indeed there is a survey of british muslims where only less than third are extremists.
That's bull****, and you're taking a week off too.
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indeed there is a survey of british muslims where only less than third are extremists.
That's bull****, and you're taking a week off too.
Since that seems like a plausible enough result, I tried to find the survey he was likely referring to, which I believe is explained here (http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/dec/22/1). If acceptance of "killing in the name of religion (if that religion is under attack)" counts as extremism, then that's indeed a third (of students).
Vaguely similar'ish numbers cited in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_attitudes_towards_terrorism#Polls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_attitudes_towards_terrorism#Polls)
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I have little time to dig in and perhaps get me banned as well (Kidding! I promise!), but I would hope that people could take a moment to reflect that criticizing ideas, whichever they are, are not tantamount to criticize peoples.
And that is which was under attack yesterday. And for that reason alone, we must, we must show the entire world that this strategy of silencing others through fear is absolutely counter-productive. I'm not even arguing that it is absolutely disgusting and immoral, because clearly these people are just waaaay out there in crazylalalaland to even acknowledge this, but if they see an end result wherein a hundred thousand cartoons are created and shared through the entire world because you went on and tried to silence one satirical newspaper through murder, then perhaps that can stop you on your tracks.
If people start criticizing the cartoons instead, just like they did with the danish cartoons, just like they did with Salman Rushdie, etc., etc., then our civilization has lost to the terrorists.
Yes, the cartoons were probably very offensive.
Yes, they must be absolutely free to draw and publish them.
Freedom to draw and publish them includes the freedom to do so without the fear of being massacred on the spot.
Freedom of Speech means NOTHING if you are only allowed to express things that do not offend anyone.
This is not only an islamist problem. Bill Donohue chimed in saying that the muslims were right to be angry, the problem were the cartoons. This attitude must stop. It must end here. We must defend our civilzation from the barbarians, wherever they are, whichever flag they carry, whatever ideology or religion they espouse. We must defend our civilization, its liberties, its dignity. It's our stand. It might be offensive, it might be despicable, it might be an "inhuman" lack of empathy, but it is OUR RIGHT to be blasphemous, and it is one of our most PRECIOUS right.
A right that half of the world doesn't have the privilege of having, a right that we should defend to the end. Lose it and you have lost the beachhead to the extremists, to the totalitarians, to those who want to define what we are or are not allowed to say, not on some private forum here and there, but EVERYWHERE.
And let's drop all the "racist" or "islamophobic" commentary. There are hundreds of millions of muslims right now watching this unfold and who are rooting for the winning of the freedom of speech, the two worst things that could happen would be for the terrorists to start winning this war on free speech or to instill hatred on our hearts against all of the muslims. Both will inevitably happen, but it's on everyone of us to fight this war on both those two fronts.
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indeed there is a survey of british muslims where only less than third are extremists.
That's bull****, and you're taking a week off too.
I don't think that was unreasonable enough for a summary ban when he did actually link to an article (from the Grauniad too, not some tabloid rag) backing up his statement. Sure, it's bull****, but that's the fault of "Stephen Bates and agencies" for misrepresenting the study.
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Since that seems like a plausible enough result, I tried to find the survey he was likely referring to, which I believe is explained here (http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/dec/22/1). If acceptance of "killing in the name of religion (if that religion is under attack)" counts as extremism, then that's indeed a third (of students).
Vaguely similar'ish numbers cited in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_attitudes_towards_terrorism#Polls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_attitudes_towards_terrorism#Polls)
I've had to explore surveys and the conducting/presenting of them a lot (Psychology, Critical Media Studies, etc; don't mean that in a big-headed way just mean as in serious study of them) and trust me, surveys should never be trusted; give a thousand people the same statistics and they'll interpret them in a thousand different ways (check out any time a statistic is mentioned in political news and watch both sides use it; it's scary if morbidly interesting). We also need to consider why the survey was done; did they have an objective? Did anyone ask for the survey? Did they cherry-pick whom they asked? If it was online can we trust every click made? No doubt the survey has some information, but I'd vote pinch of salt (especially if it was just some British students, thought I read a 1000 at one point? I would argue that isn't really statistically relevant if we're thinking about global religious feeling).
It's a truly horrible situation and I do feel it right we not give in to people who would attack us like this, but I'd beg people not to let their anger turn them against other people just because they happen to be the same religion or race or the like (something I fear happens a lot nowadays); arguably to do so would truly make us no better than those we're fighting (if we were to hate a muslim for being muslim, how are we any different to an extremist hating us for not being?).
More importantly perhaps, doesn't almost all of these terrorist attacks we see nowadays breach the laws of Islam anyway? It saddens me that they seem to make so many people dislike Muslims when they happen and I hope it's just me being paranoid about it; it'd arguably be like hating all British because of the Cray Twins or all Americans because of Charles Manson.
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We shouldn't be proud of them for saying it. Proud of ourselves for allowing them, but not proud of them.
I thought that's what I said.
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I find it stunning that at the very moment the subject becomes controversial, suddenly all social science tools become irrelevant and even untrustworthy, you should totally ignore what they are saying, don't even acknowledge there's a curtain, etc., etc.
The level of selective anti-social science in this thread is barking.
The poll in question is just not an outlier, and its results are not unclear, check them for yourself: http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/download_pdf-131206-Policy-Exchange-Poll-of-Muslims---Living-Apart-Together.pdf
If you are going to state that a belief that apostasy from islam should be penalized with death is not a "radical" belief, then I think we might have reached the reason why some of you will state this is all just "bull****", but then I am just amazed at what would drive you to consider "radical". Not even the Scientologists go that ****ing far.
Again, this is not an "anti-muslims" commentary. If anything, muslims are the ones suffering its own ideologies the most, but if people will just pretend that reality isn't what it is, and instead chooses to put fingers on their ears, start banning and smothering people's mouths because they are saying uncomfortable factual truths, you're not helping anyone. You're just pretending that a problem does not exist and hopefully it will all go away.
I'll give you this: I don't see any easy solution, and the worst part is that the only ones addressing this like a real problem and trying to come up with solutions come from the xenophobic right wing mindsets. It's no wonder that then these are the only parties rising in popularity in Europe, because they are the only ones actually acknowledging it and not calling people lunatics or bull****ters when they are just seeing reality with their lying eyes.
Both the center-left and the center-right must start acknowledging these problems and start to come up with reasonable, enlightened and empirically tested ideas that start to solve this problem. The alternative is not pretty.
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you should put up a few more sources, especially when you say it is not an outlier. That's always a good idea, especially when bans are being handed out. Populus is a 11 year old marketing firm, do you have something from Pew? Gallup?
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If people start criticizing the cartoons instead, just like they did with the danish cartoons, just like they did with Salman Rushdie, etc., etc., then our civilization has lost to the terrorists.
Yes, the cartoons were probably very offensive.
Yes, they must be absolutely free to draw and publish them.
Freedom to draw and publish them includes the freedom to do so without the fear of being massacred on the spot.
Freedom of Speech means NOTHING if you are only allowed to express things that do not offend anyone.
I agree 100% with everything you've said there, but there is another side to that which people often ignore. Just because you have the right to publish those cartoons, doesn't mean it was a good idea to do so. Yes, we absolutely have the right to decide to hold "Call all Russians Bastards" Day if we so choose. Would it be a good idea? Would it help the international situation any?
This is the thing that so-called defenders of free speech never answer. What good did Draw Muhammed Day do? While I fully believe that you should have the right to draw him if you choose to do so, why is that a good idea? Cause to me it basically seems like an attempt to prove to yourself that you have free speech and damn the consequences.
I tend to feel that free speech also includes responsibilities. Yes you have the right to say whatever you want, but that should be mitigated by not using that freedom to go out of your way to be a dick.
We shouldn't be proud of them for saying it. Proud of ourselves for allowing them, but not proud of them.
I thought that's what I said.
But earlier in this thread you attempted to justify your own version of what they do. Like we should be proud of you for taking a stand on free speech.
By that logic we should be proud of Westbro Baptist too. After all, most people won't allow them to say what they want to say.
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The problem is that, unlike whether saying X or Y or Z is a bad idea in the HLP forums is your business, it's not either mine or your business to tell anyone if making a cartoon about Mohammed is a good or a bad idea at all, and I find it even offensive that this kind of "punditry" is being done not only by anonymous posters in some forgotten forum, but on freaking Financial Times or any other major outlet that have no moral qualms to start their own victim blaming insinuations.
There might be a lot of good reasons to draw these cartoons, and I even think that these people who were murdered who have TOLD us that they were WILLING TO DIE for drawing these cartoons soon after there was a bomb situation, would wipe the floor with this position of yours. The freedom to ridicule the ridiculous is not just a freedom to be a jackass. It's not. It's absolutely not. It's the freedom to call a king naked, it's the freedom to poke ridiculousness into an impossibly authoritarian state of mind and of social interactions between many many muslims trapped in the most backward versions of the Sharia Law.
This is not just a liberty to be fun, or to "make jokes". It's one of our tools against tiranny. One of the most effectives even, given how it ires so many of these absolutist extremists. Hell, it was by ridicule that they eventually killed the KKK. IOW, you do not understand the importance of what is at stake here, and I beg for you to start thinking harder about it.
This because in a sense, the terrorists have won this chapter. Comics will think twice before making fun of islam in the medium and long run. It's inevitable, despite all the bravery of so many cartoonists yesterday and so on. And this will mean that the authocracy in so many muslim cultures won't have as many necessary ideological medicines to get them to a point of stopping to take their Islam so ****ing seriously to the point of negating any cultural advancement regarding women's issues, homossexuality, freedom of religion, and so on and so forth!
you should put up a few more sources, especially when you say it is not an outlier. That's always a good idea, especially when bans are being handed out. Populus is a 11 year old marketing firm, do you have something from Pew? Gallup?
They are everywhere and google is your friend. For instance: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/291
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You miss the point. I'm not even remotely blaming the victim. However by drawing Muhammed you help the extremists. How is that helping to bring down tyrants?
There are ways to ridicule the extremists without pushing the moderates towards them. Why not do that instead?
Let me give you a counter-analogy, would you support an ardent anti-rape feminist who suggested having a get passout drunk and go to a frat house party day as a method of fighting rape culture? Or would you say that while you fully believe that women should be able to get pass out drunk without fear of being raped, that it would be a really bad idea to tell people to do that.
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I don't miss the point, what simply happens is that you are just totally wrong. Here, listen to this conversation and particularly, listen to Nawaz, a well known former extremist and now anti-extremist: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1051109638239227&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=daily_politics&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central
Share the risk. Our freedoms cannot be dependent on ONE newspaper outlet. EVERYONE should step up. EVERYONE should draw Mohammed.
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You miss the point. I'm not even remotely blaming the victim. However by drawing Muhammed you help the extremists. How is that helping to bring down tyrants?
There are ways to ridicule the extremists without pushing the moderates towards them. Why not do that instead?
Ok, wait. Are we really arguing about how it's our duty to tone down the religious mockery? What century is this? Are you going to tell me it's no longer ok to laugh at South Park's satirical episodes now?
No, what our duty is is to fight against Islamophobia and racism in the west (http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/01/herr-henkel-shocked-party-embraces-bigots.html#more-8965) (seriously, read that article. These are the people who control the eurozone right now). Muslim immigrants are not being alienated and marginalized because someone is drawing cartoons making fun of their beliefs.
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Ok, wait. Are we really arguing about how it's our duty to tone down the religious mockery? What century is this? Are you going to tell me it's no longer ok to laugh at South Park's satirical episodes now?
South Park take the piss out of everyone. So it's not like they are picking on one particular group. IF people started saying you should take the piss out of Jesus at the same time, I'd be more willing to listen to them.
No, what our duty is is to fight against Islamophobia and racism in the west (http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/01/herr-henkel-shocked-party-embraces-bigots.html#more-8965) (seriously, read that article. These are the people who control the eurozone right now). Muslim immigrants are not being alienated and marginalized because someone is drawing cartoons making fun of their beliefs.
The same polls Luis seems to be so fond of have only a very, very small percentage saying that Islamophobia is a big problem. I happen to disagree with them on that point cause I consider it to be quite a big problem but I tend to feel that the Draw Muhammed Day nonsense doesn't help matters at all because it helps the wankers doing it feel that they are in the right, that they have support from common people.
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Ok, wait. Are we really arguing about how it's our duty to tone down the religious mockery? What century is this? Are you going to tell me it's no longer ok to laugh at South Park's satirical episodes now?
South Park take the piss out of everyone. So it's not like they are picking on one particular group. IF people started saying you should take the piss out of Jesus at the same time, I'd be more willing to listen to them.
Charlie Hebdo did skewer everyone.
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South Park take the piss out of everyone. So it's not like they are picking on one particular group. IF people started saying you should take the piss out of Jesus at the same time, I'd be more willing to listen to them.
The **** is that Karajorma. That's a strawman. A completely inane one. Hell, we all know that Charlie Hebdo mocked the entire religious scene so what the ****.
It wasn't drawing Jesus that got people shot to death Karajorma. The right to draw mockery of Christianity is not at stake here, Karajorma.
Come. ON.
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Speaking of which, do you know that Comedy Central actually refused to allow them to show a picture of Muhammad on air?
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I remembered that as well. They substituted him for a bear or something, right?
relevant:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4nIfLGqd9s
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That was from a later episode. They literally put up a blank screen the first time.
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The **** is that Karajorma. That's a strawman. A completely inane one. Hell, we all know that Charlie Hebdo mocked the entire religious scene so what the ****.
I was referring to Bobb when I was referring to the entire Draw Muhammed thing. I've not once commented on Charlie Hebdo directly. I'm commenting on the wider movement to make everyone draw Muhammed from people who haven't once posted anything satirical even though that will help the extremists. Now if you also draw Jesus you remove the ability to claim that this is an East vs West thing as it makes it much harder to spin the whole "This is an attack on Islam" thing.
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The only issue with that is Islam has sort of singled it's self out by it's reactions. It's not that you shouldn't mock Taoists, but they are rather out of context, as are Buddhists and Christians.
On DMD the whole point of that was you were not supposed to so much as draw Mohamed, it wasn't even supposed to be a direct ridicule. It was an act of defiance against people who were trying to tell us what to do.
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Are you so unaware of how the Internet works that you think that would have been the end result?
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Now if you also draw Jesus you remove the ability to claim that this is an East vs West thing as it makes it much harder to spin the whole "This is an attack on Islam" thing.
People do draw Jesus quite a lot, even in satirical depictions, but nobody gets killed over it and so nobody sees the need to make it an organised effort to drive home that they will not be intimidated into silence.
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The **** is that Karajorma. That's a strawman. A completely inane one. Hell, we all know that Charlie Hebdo mocked the entire religious scene so what the ****.
I was referring to Bobb when I was referring to the entire Draw Muhammed thing. I've not once commented on Charlie Hebdo directly. I'm commenting on the wider movement to make everyone draw Muhammed from people who haven't once posted anything satirical even though that will help the extremists. Now if you also draw Jesus you remove the ability to claim that this is an East vs West thing as it makes it much harder to spin the whole "This is an attack on Islam" thing.
It's an attack on blasphemic censorship. And last I checked, buddhists or Jains were not exactly murdering cartoonists. The Draw Mohammed Day came as a response to the 2006 attacks. The day someone drawing the Monkey God gets killed guess what happens the next day in the internet.
Again, you are of the mind that given these terrorist attacks, that the society should adapt and stop offending these people. That this is somehow "our fault", we the liberal minded crazy "freedom" people that are too narrow minded to consider we are hurting someone else's feelings.
No. Categorically NO. That should NOT be the reaction of a sane civilization that has PRIDE in itself.
e: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/8/7514251/charlie-hebdo-will-publish-one-million-copies-next-week-with-help
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Are you so unaware of how the Internet works that you think that would have been the end result?
when people participate in that fashion I do not think they should be condemned. and even when they don't I don't think they should be censored.
If it turns into a mockery of a religion I don't find anything wrong with that, I don't like religion, I think all of them are mockable and the ones that we are not supposed to mock are the ones we need to the most. Christianity gets mocked every day of the year, Islam should too, it gets no pedestal. I mean, have you seen some of the **** that gets posted about atheists?
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I also don't think that Karajorma (or me or anyone else) truly understands "how the Internet works" in the real societal sense of a long term equation and all the huge variables involving whole societies and communities around the world. What I see instead is a kind of confirmation of Huntington's thesis about the Clash of Civlizations that was so laughed away back in the nineties.
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well, we all understand that the internet is for trolls. lets not be obtuse.
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Are you trying to prove it to us?
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come on you know he was responding to my comment about the idea behind DMD and that he was implying that it was obvious that people would do offensive things, and you know he is right about that. It doesn't mean he is right about the bigger point.
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well, we all understand that the internet is for trolls. lets not be obtuse.
Imagine how awesome the internet could be if people stopped accepting "Welcome to the internet" as a response to everything?
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come on you know he was responding to my comment about the idea behind DMD and that he was implying that it was obvious that people would do offensive things, and you know he is right about that. It doesn't mean he is right about the bigger point.
I know nothing of the sort. Everyone understood the point of DMD, and yes, insulting "Mohammed" with "offensive" (according to whom anyway ****ing hell) portraits might seem just "trolling", but it's actually cathartic for a lot of people who live in fear of not only imaginary divine threats but also real life threats.
I find it not only not "trolling" but actually a duty of civilization to mock exactly what it is that is deemed as "unmockable" and "untouchable". The moment we let ourselves be censored (by self-censorship, the worst of them all for it is so subtle) like this is the start of the beggining of the end of our beloved morals and values.
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If you guys truly can't see why drawing Jesus next to Muhammed makes more sense than drawing Muhammed on his own, I give up.
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And if you can't see why it's not my place or your place to design by commitee what exactly should be the right cartoon to make, then I also give up.
You still don't understand that different people will judge differently. Cartoons with both Jesus and Mohammed are legion. Hell, let's even bite that bullet. It won't be as offensive right? Well, tell that to the Jesus and Mo (http://www.jesusandmo.net) people. Perhaps they didn't get the memo that their comics were Halal. Because of course they are not. Nothing is. A blank White Canvas is the only appropriate answer. And it's unnaceptable.
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If you guys truly can't see why drawing Jesus next to Muhammed makes more sense than drawing Muhammed on his own, I give up.
I can see your argument, I just don't agree with your conclusion. I think we value different things slightly differently.
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Imagine how awesome the internet could be if people stopped accepting "Welcome to the internet" as a response to everything?
how Orwellian...
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And demanding that people do live by those anarchic rules because 'it's the Intenet' is any less Orwellian in nature? It's still demanding people live to rulesets they don't want to.
Thing is, take something like 'The Modest Proposal', that got famous as free-speech because it flew in the face of what everyone believed was 'proper' behaviour. At no-point did there arise a group that actually agreed that poor people should be used as food, it was the universal disgust at the concept that caused the fame.
The problem with things like social extremism is that there is no unit of it., what is defined as 'normal' society would be considered extreme by a Victorian or a Puritan, it's all down to perception. There is, however, an attitude on the Internet that anything goes, and any voice that tries to get people to behave in a more tolerant manner towards each other is silenced as being 'against Free Speech', which is an irony that shouldn't be lost on anyone.
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If you guys truly can't see why drawing Jesus next to Muhammed makes more sense than drawing Muhammed on his own, I give up.
At best it would be an empty, meaningless gesture.
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"Look, you can say '**** you', but at least be respectful about it."
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Luis, once again you've failed to get my point. I'm not saying that it should be a Draw Jesus and Muhammed Day, I'm saying I might respect those people more than people who only drew Muhammed if they make it obvious that they're trying to make a stand of their freedom while going out of their way to try to not be offensive.
Of course trying to tell people that they must draw the two would be a bad idea. You'd simply create the world's largest repository of prophet on prophet hentai. But there is something be said for trying to express your rights without making the world a worse place.
Let me try to give another analogy, because this topic is obviously too charged for what I'm saying to get through.
I'm quite happy to say I'm a strong believer in feminism. But the problem is that in any discussion on feminism, you're going to spend a lot of time explaining that RadFem is full of idiots. We've seen that time and time again here on HLP.
Now if you really believe it's important to deal with gender issues because they hurt both sexes, lead to rape and spousal abuse and a whole host of other problems, you're probably not going to be amused by someone who posts saying "All men are rapists!"
Despite claiming to superficially support your cause, they're only making it harder to get your point across. And they're doing it not to actually improve things for the people actually suffering. They're doing it because their ideology is so important to them that actually finding out if it's the truth, and actually would make things better is less important.
Fundamentalism is a big problem. It needs a lot of work to be stamped out. Draw Muhammed isn't helping with that. It's a quick fix to make people feel better. It's a Facebook Like on a post about a cancer charity.
If everyone in the West drew Muhammed tomorrow, it wouldn't decrease fundamentalism on iota. In fact you'd probably see a net increase.
Worse than that though, the very idea is flawed at the basic level. You want to show ISIS and the Muslim world we're not scared of their threats? Don't respond to them at all. Cause in the end, the West (with the exception of Dragon) doesn't even really consider them a threat. France could nuke them back into the stone age if they wanted to. They haven't because no one thinks they're remotely dangerous enough to do that.
In the end, that's how to respond to terrorism, by refusing to let it affect you. Few things ever made me as proud to be an Englishman as my fellow countrymen's response to the 7/7 bombings. Not worries about terrorism but grumbling about how to get home when the underground was shut and questions about when it would reopen..
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We might be less ardent in our desire to focus on Muhammad if that weren't the one thing that TV and print were censoring out of fear.
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You'd simply create the world's largest repository of prophet on prophet hentai.
You English people might be good at weathering terror attacks, but here you have yet another idea that could change the world and make you millions, and you've buried it in a wall of text, treating it like a completely incidental non entity. Does this sound familiar?
Some kid in Algeria is gonna read this post and rocket to international superstardom on the back of prophetonprophet.com, and your struggle in the courts to regain control of your idea will be a footnote in his wikipedia article.
You know what? That's fine, Kara. But don't be bitter about it when he's picking up his Nobel Peace Prize and you're still stuck arguing about entitled feminist gamers on HLP.
I've done my part.
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I've seen very few arguments resolved, however, by someone repeatedly walking up to the person they disagreed with and deliberately performing acts they find insulting or hurtful.
The idea that it is a 'solution' is fundamentally flawed, if you'll pardon the pun, insulting Mohammed is no more a solution to the problem than breaking into a Newspaper and shooting people is, it's one of those cause and effect things again.
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We might be less ardent in our desire to focus on Muhammad if that weren't the one thing that TV and print were censoring out of fear.
And?
Why does that make it the issue you have to spend your time on? There are so many much worthier anti-fundamentalist things you could be doing with your time.
Again, I suspect the reason many people are behind the Draw Muhammed thing is because it requires little effort, it immediately makes people feel they've accomplished something (when really they haven't) and cause you can look down on everyone who doesn't join you as being a coward.
It's Get Kony all over again.
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No. This is the wrong point of view. You are still thinking in terms of not insulting "them", when, first, that's a completely ridiculous criteira to follow: you will always insult islamists no matter how hard you try not to. No matter how benign or fair or commited you are to treat them properly, you are insulting them. This is an old argument, the same that went about how 9/11 was actually a response to what happened in Palestine and Iraq's invasion. But they (Al Quaeda) have written extensively about this. What riled them up was how East Timor was freed from Indonesia's dictatorial grasp (that is why the Embassy where De Mello was was bombed, btw) and how the non halal American troops desecrated holy soil when they parked on Kuwait to free it.
You are still thinking you are dealing with sane people here. You are not. Islamists (not confuse with muslims) are irrational and insane. Now I can still hear you going "yeah that's why we shouldn't rile them up", but that's not the whole story. The main story is how we should NOT ever let the narrative come about on how we allow them to dictate to us what we are allowed or not to do. What is amazing here about the Mohammad shenanigan is that not only they are themselves forbidden to draw him, they somehow put in their freakin minds that nobody else is allowed to do so as well. This is not happening in a vacuum. There is a wide world movement to enact and strengthen blasphemy laws everywhere in the world (the huge lobbys to do this in the UN for instance) and so whether you like it or not, there is a war on free speech acting itself out in front of our very own eyes.
This is a war that must be confronted. And I think the most accessible way for everyone to do so is to either participate in these things or support those who do these satires, etc. In here lines are drawn, it becomes immediately clear where the enemies of free speech are when they start talking bull**** (like Bill Donohue), or so many politicians when they dared say that the real problem was the cartoons (none of that **** now, but I did saw too much of it in 2006).
Works of art like "The Life Of Brian" were also deemed to be immature, senseless riling up and extremely offensive at the time. But they freed minds. And so do cartoons. The number of young people who go to the internet, always thinking that such drawings are extremely forbidden only to find thousands of them, that will slowly start to erode their fanaticism over this issue. And yes, it might radicalize a few. But I think you are miscounting the much bigger silent majority of people who are watching this unfold and go "hey maybe...." in their minds. And it's those who will reform Islam. It's those who will revolutionize their own countries.
The mere existence of a depiction of such a SERIOUS figure in so many unflattering cartoons will be seen by billions of youngsters. And I believe this impact is assuredly positive in the long run.
Also, I do not think of anyone who doesn't participate as "cowards", that is absurd, especially if they don't believe it's useful like you do. I do try to instill this necessity, but I am 100% confident each one of us will do what they believe is right in the end.
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To ask a devout Muslim to not care about an insulting depiction of Muhammed is like asking a devout Christian not to care about an insulting depiction of Jesus though, that's kind of like asking them to stop being Muslim.
That's what I keep saying is wrong with this whole thing, people defend what they believe, that's what Freedom of Speech allows you to do, whether that is through pictures or words. Muslims are fully entitled to get angry about it, march about it, even demand the resignation of those who created it, that's no less than any other group with interests do when they find something that offends them. The idea they should 'just deal with it' is fundamentally flawed.
The problem is when people decide to express their anger by physically attacking people and things, and that's the problem that needs to be dealt with, but simply expecting people not to be offended at things that are designed to be offensive is wishing for the impossible.
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Insult is in the eyes of the beholder. Caring about cartoons is a choice.
Demanding others not draw X because of their *personal beliefs* is unacceptable. You understand?
This is not negotiable. Anger away if you please, by all means. But work that **** out for yourself. In a civilized world, being offended does not grant anyone special rights. People talk about "proportionate responses" and so on. Of course. We should be civilized. This is why I support the cartoons so much. This is why I was deeply against the Iraq War. Killing people is not the answer. You are all behaving as if there is blood involved in a pen. Look, the Islamists have told us what they fear the most: Ridicule. Of all the targets they could have chosen to destroy they went for cartoonists. They are TELLING US what is working against them.
And it shouldn't surprise anyone. Historically this is absolutely true: Ridicule cuts THROUGH the extreme ideologies like knife in butter. This is a PROVEN TACTIC of authoritarian ideological deconstruction. So. It works. They are telling us it works, they are telling us they fear it the most. DON'T STOP IT. DON'T RUIN IT. DIAL IT TO ****ING 11.
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It's not a question of 'demanding' anything, it's a question of using the intelligence we were born with and the ethical compass we develop in a productive manner, it shouldn't have to be demanded because people should be smart enough to figure this **** out for themselves.
And frankly, do you know what another PROVEN TACTIC of authoritarian ideological destruction is? Internally fueled Terrorism.
Like I said, Decadence of Speech, without the limits of common civility, inflammatory speech is pointless, because everyone is doing it in a huge, meaningless circle-jerk that just gets progressively worse with each iteration.
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Yes, worse. As in, "omg that black ink is deeply hurtful in that shape". It's ridiculous, and we should never think of it in any other way.
Islam, in order to reconcile itself with Western Civilization, must understand that its rule that says "Whoever insults a Prophet kill him" is wrong, period.
The struggle against Theocratic Authoritarianism is the very cornerstone of our Modern Civilization. The Enlightenment started in the heels of the Protestants and the Reformers, all the French Revolution ideals and eventual American Independence with all that secular Constitution were battles against theocratic divine rule.
Don't overestimate how secure these rights are. As many people say, the world is a very big place, and it's getting increasingly "multi-cultural", "multi-polar", etc. Pax Americana is slowly fading away as we see a lot of these developing countries getting more and more of the pie (as they should!). We have grown so numb about the certainty of our values that we don't even appreciate how lucky we are for having them and how possible it is that we will slowly lose them by the same rate that these more authocratic cultures are getting more and more important in the whole picture.
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If only that damn provocateur Voltaire hadn't made religious mockery fashionable none of this would have happened! And then when Mark Twain came around none of us stood up against him!
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Let me put it this way, Christians who stand outside an abortion clinic carrying placards saying 'Abortion is Murder' are moderate Christians, they are displaying their opinion in accordance to their Rights and as long as they do not harass or assault anyone, they have every right to behave as they do, even though I do not agree with them.
Christians who break into abortion clinics and set light to them are Criminals who should be apprehended and punished under the law.
However, both groups would be angered by someone yelling at them that 'Jesus should have been aborted' or the like. Now, if someone wants to do that, they do have the right, but they also have to be honest with themselves that they are insulting moderates as well as extremists with what they are saying.
If it was truly a question of attacking the extremists, rather than the religion, the tool used would not be one that is utterly indiscriminate with regards to the attitude of the listener towards extremist views and actions. Attacking the core of a culture is no way to deal with the edges of it.
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Can I just say here that I think the Islamic prohibition of drawing Mohammed is unusually broad as far as the category of 'things religious people get pissed off at' goes, and so I think it's a good case study in how much we let the beliefs of the religious impinge on our freedom of expression in the name of etiquette. Because I mean, it's not like you have to deliberately go out of your way to offend people by doing it the way saying 'jesus was a whore' does; all you need to do is draw any kind of picture of this prominent historical figure. This goes much further than one's right or need to mock religion, it's about the right to depict the world in certain ways.
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The whole discussion about the cartoons themselves is pretty absurd. It's like if you'd say how you don't like someone's hat which would result in them flying into a blind rage and gouging your eyes out. Sure you can discuss how it's not a good idea to tell people you don't like their hat because 1) it's not a very nice thing to do and 2) sooner or later someone will react violently, but the harm caused by the remark is like 0.00001% of the harm caused by the gouging, so the merits of the remark are practically irrelevant in context of the incident, no matter the direct causality between the two.
There's all sorts of levels of things which could provoke the other person into gouging your eyes out:
Your face isn't pleasing to them
You look at them the wrong way
You dislike their hat
You dislike their hat, rudely
You punch them in the arm
You punch them in the face
You attack them with an axe
If instead of commenting on their hat you punched them, then sure, that would be worth considering in the discussion; it'd still be disproportionate, but not so disproportionate that it wouldn't be relevant in some manner. But if you just comment on their hat (even if rudely!), then the gouging is so disproportionate that it's absurd to give any real focus to the hat comment, except to illustrate how disproportionate the reaction was to the provocation.
If you dislike their hat and they in turn merely call your mom fat, then that's pretty proportionate and we can discuss the merits of dissing people's hats all day. In this case, the reaction is so disproportionate to the provocation that the details of the provocation should be almost completely irrelevant.
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To ask a devout Muslim to not care about an insulting depiction of Muhammed is like asking a devout Christian not to care about an insulting depiction of Jesus though, that's kind of like asking them to stop being Muslim.
and it's like asking a person who has liberal values to censor speech, and to ask a atheist to not oppose religion. they are not the only people with deeply held sincere beliefs and values.
Christians who stand outside an abortion clinic carrying placards saying 'Abortion is Murder' are moderate Christians
So I think we have identified a major disconnect on our models of reality that might explain a few things.
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If we are going to have a discussion on the depiction of Mohammed in any form then that's a pretty different discussion to the concept of drawing ones that are deliberately insulting though, that's a Shia/Sunni thing that has been going on for years, and it's pretty commonly known that there are depictions of the Prophet in several sacred Islamic locations.
It's just the concept that showering a culture with what is largely interpretable as an image of hatred and resentment for their entire culture is doing anything to allow moderates anywhere to actually fix the problem that irks me.
Yes, this reaction was wrong and criminal and should be treated as such, but I don't agree that pelting an entire culture with images designed to be offensive to them is a sensible way to achieve anything. People have the Right to draw those images without fear of repercussion, that's a given, but to actually try to hide behind an excuse of 'we're bringing about Peace by deliberately offending them' is kind of weird and doesn't ring true to me.
@Bobboau : They are 'Moderate' as in they are not doing anything that they are not allowed to do, that's why I differentiated, as I continued to say in the same post, I don't agree with them, and I find what they say slightly offensive, but they have the right to say it as long as they harm no-one, that's the point of Freedom of Speech.
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Christians who stand outside an abortion clinic carrying placards saying 'Abortion is Murder' are moderate Christians
So I think we have identified a major disconnect on our models of reality that might explain a few things.
On a scale from Moderate to Extreme where Extreme is killing people and burning buildings, picket protest is pretty ****ing Moderate.
And also a legal expression of the right to peaceably assemble and free speech. It's pretty much the ideal outlet for that sort of antipathy.
Even if you vehemently disagree with their viewpoint you can't really call that Extremism. To do so devalues the concept of extremism, and reeks of painting everything you don't like with a broad brush.
Please note that carrying signs saying "Abortion is Murder", while certainly abrasive and disagreeable to some, is not even in the same league with the sort of **** the Westboro Baptist Church does.
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However, both groups would be angered by someone yelling at them that 'Jesus should have been aborted' or the like. Now, if someone wants to do that, they do have the right, but they also have to be honest with themselves that they are insulting moderates as well as extremists with what they are saying.
But here's the thing: people already do exactly that to Christians all the goddamn time. It's ubiquitous. There are certain examples of it (like that one asshole who took a picture of himself shoving a nail through the Eucharist and throwing it in the garbage for no reason whatsoever) which have offended me, and others (like a few of those Charlie Hebdo covers) which I chuckle at myself. But even in the case of the assholes, I don't sit there thinking that it would be better if people chose not to be assholes, because hell, sometimes I'm an asshole myself. No one has the right to not be offended, and the roles of the offender and offendee can flip-flop at a moment's notice, so to suggest that one side should withhold comments because of some potential future harm feels like nothing short of a chilling effect on speech.
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I'm not saying we should ban it, though, never have. My position throughout this is that if people are given a responsibility like Freedom of Speech then they should respect that right for what it is, something that puts faith in their own ability to use it in a positive manner.
The whole reason that people choose to shower the entire Islamic culture with insulting symbolism has been given as 'making them get used to it'. Cultural Abuse, that world famous peacemaker and social anesthetic...
It's not the existence of the cartoons that is the problem, it's the huge ball of pretense that this is a 'positive' thing to do with regards to dealing with extremism that has formed around them.
If people want to do it, by all means, go ahead, but please don't tell me you're doing it for the sake of making the world a better place.
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Mongoose, you said it yourself, those people are arseholes. No one is talking about how you should self-censor to avoid a comment that gets taken out of context and becomes offensive. What I'm saying is that you've got to think hard when you decide to go out of your way to be offensive. People forget what the comics originally were about, assuming that they were accidental. Here's Noam Chomsky on the issue.
One of the main newspapers, Information, I think, published on 15 February a background of what had happened. They reported that the Minister of Culture in Denmark gave a speech at a conservative conference, where they quoted some abusive, vicious, racist speech attacking the Muslim minority for not being truly Danes, and not conforming to Danish culture, and virtually called for an attack on the Muslim minority, which I think is seven per cent. And a couple of days later Jyllandsposten printed the cartoons. They regarded it as a consequence; they said, yes, it was a consequence of the Minister of Culture’s decision to wage an ideological war on the Muslim minority. It was no issue of freedom of press; it was no issue of freedom of expression. This is just ordinary racism under cover of freedom of expression. And, yes, they should have the right to. The New York Times should have the right to publish anti-Semitic Nazi caricatures on the front page. That should be a legal right. Are they going to exercise their right? No. So if you do it is another reason. In fact Jyllandsposten, as you probably know, a couple of years earlier had turned down cartoons caricaturing Jesus, on the grounds that it would create a public uproar.
The decision of Charlie Hebdo to reprint the comics is more nuanced, by that time there was an issue of free speech. But lets look at the original publishing. Was it a good idea? Did it make the world a better place? Or was it a deliberate attempt to have a go at a minority living in the country it was published in? Bear in mind that the issue was largely ignored by the Muslim world outside of official protests for 3-4 months. It was only when a group of Danish Imams took a trip to the Middle East that one of them has later claimed was completely wrong. So if that trip hadn't happened, would the same people defending the decision to publish still defend it? Or would they take it for what it was, a nasty, racist, attack on immigrants.
What about Chomsky's point about anti-semetic Nazi cartoons? Cause self-censorship around the Holocaust is rife. Should we publish that sort of thing so that people stop being offended about the Holocaust all the time? Does anyone here think that publishing such cartoons couldn't end in violent protests in Israel? Especially if they were done by a Muslim country (i.e a country which is seen as disliking them already).
In the end, people like to make blanket statements like "Self-censorship is bad". Like that draws a line in the sand and they'll never do it again. It's nonsense, we do it all the time. How do I know? Well, we don't all live alone with no friends. Humans self-censor all the ****ing time. It's an attribute of our tribal origins that make us think "Better not say that in this room cause I might offend people I know" but fail to care about anyone outside our monkeysphere (http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html). If you wouldn't walk up to a devout Muslim friend of yours and draw Muhammed in front of him even though you knew would upset him then don't kid yourself about this being about freedom of expression. It's not. It's about the layers between you and random Muslims on the net giving you the freedom to be an arsehole of the sort you wouldn't be in person.
And if you would do that....well congratulations on being an arsehole I guess. At least I can respect your convictions. Doesn't make you someone I'd want to be friends with though, I've seen how you treat your friends.
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Is this guy (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8525/8525-h/8525-h.htm) an asshole? Taking shots at Genesis like that?
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Do you think that Mark Twain wrote that just so he could feel good about himself? Sometimes there are reasons to be offensive. Sometimes it is important to be offensive.
I'm saying that Draw Muhammed Day is not one of those times. It's not art. It's not trying to make a contribution to society. As I keep pointing out it's a Facebook Like. It's entitling you to feel you have done something worthy to end a serious world issue when in fact you have done nothing at all.
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that's you opinion and you are entitled to it.
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As is your opinion on the worthiness of Draw Muhammed Day. Doesn't mean that either of us can't persuade the other that they are in the wrong.
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It should also be noted that there is a marked difference of social and phsychological impact between having your culture insulted by a member of said culture, and having it insulted by a separate culture. Mark Twain and Voltaire focused most of their attention on attacking perceived faults in their own culture, not other peoples.
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Late to the party.
When a sufficiently large group wants to kill people because of something they said, wrote, or drew, the thing they said/wrote/drew needs to be made and distributed. No concept, idea, belief, etc should be inviolate. Ever.
My position throughout this is that if people are given a responsibility like Freedom of Speech then they should respect that right for what it is, something that puts faith in their own ability to use it in a positive manner.
Sorry Flipside, but that's not free speech. Freedom of speech doesn't come with caveats, provisos, or requirements. It simply is. I'd like freedom of speech to be used positively, but that's exactly why it's important that it isn't always used positively.
Were the cartoons in Charlie Hebdo offensive? Umm, yes. Did they really contribute anything constructive to discussion? Likely not. Is it unbelievably important that things like that exist and be spread? Absolutely. Those are the things that ensure freedom. It's not a very free ****ing society if nobody is ever offended. Productivity, value, etc are irrelevant - the point is, these things are the litmus test of freedom. It doesn't matter whether anyone thinks publishing the cartoons was good/bad/awful - what matters is that they have the legal right to do so and they should be able to do so without fear of being murdered on the spot by a a few oversensitive wackjobs who managed to get ahold of weapons. In that sense, today, anyone who stands up for free speech and liberty generally should be supportive of the past and continued publication of this [IMHO] offensive and tasteless material precisely BECAUSE people were murdered because of it.
Also - there are 1.6 billion or so Muslims on Earth. Only a small minority of them believe the Quaranic prohibition on idolatry extends to drawings. Stop infantilizing an entire religion over the hangups of a small proportion of its members that are fundamentalists.
Because this nonsense infuriates me so much, I'm going to shamelessly quote myself from Twitter last night:
People killed in 2015 by cartoon drawings: 0
People killed in 2015 because they drew cartoons: 12+
#freespeech #CharlieHebdo #ParisShooting
And if you say "but also acknowledge the cartoons were bad/wrong/etc" in the next breath, I have three words:
So ****ing what?
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Did you know: if you quote someone on a page without refreshing it, the quote will take into account any edits made since the page was opened, but will not update to reflect those on the actual post displayed? It's very confusing.
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Did you know: if you quote someone on a page without refreshing it, the quote will take into account any edits made since the page was opened, but will not update to reflect those on the actual post displayed? It's very confusing.
No, and sorry, I have a bad habit of adding additional material after the initial post is made ;)
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You know what, forget it, troll away, I'm sure it will make things so much better. Simply asking humanity to try and make the effort to show a better part of themselves in the face of adversity is obviously far more than we can achieve, guess I should have learned that by now.
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Did you know: if you quote someone on a page without refreshing it, the quote will take into account any edits made since the page was opened, but will not update to reflect those on the actual post displayed? It's very confusing.
I discovered that in this thread too :)
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You know what, forget it, troll away, I'm sure it will make things so much better. Simply asking humanity to try and make the effort to show a better part of themselves in the face of adversity is obviously far more than we can achieve, guess I should have learned that by now.
While your goal is laudable, the point here is that someone, somewhere, is always going to find the most innocent statement problematic. It's a guarantee. So while we can strive for politeness and constructive discussion - which I fully agree with - it should not be an expectation or subtle condition of speech and thought. The moment it is is when you see codified restrictions on speech.
Satire - even outrageous, offensive, trashy satire - serves a very important role in the criticism of politics, religion, and human civilization. Something that's missing from this discussion is how many Muslims across the Middle East regularly use satire to make these points themselves. There is a massive campaign against ISIS being conducted by Muslims in Muslim countries right this moment which is being waged entirely through satire, mockery, and ridicule.
The fact that 12 people were murdered over what is frankly bad satire simply proves how important it is that bad satire be free to exist unfettered by niceties. Under no circumstances should drawing and writing be met with bullets, and on the day we as a species can unanimously reach that conclusion then I *might* agree with your earlier sentiment. Until then, I do not support an expectation of self-censorship to avoiding offending certain people. It should be up to the individual to determine what they will or will not say, with no external influence of fear or threat.
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Because I can already feel the straw men burning, please note that MP-Ryan's declaration there at the end fully allows for the inclusion of internal influence. He is not saying that we must all be assholes at all times, or that no thought should go into speech. If anyone tries to claim otherwise it will be a warning and a day off.
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Yes it should be up to the individual to determine what they will or will not say. And people like Flipside and myself have every right to say perhaps you should try to change your mind about what you decide to say before you say it. No one on this thread is talking about forcing people to not publish pictures of Muhammed. Ironically though I have seen posts saying that those who don't want to do that should be shamed or don't support free speech.
In that sense, today, anyone who stands up for free speech and liberty generally should be supportive of the past and continued publication of this [IMHO] offensive and tasteless material precisely BECAUSE people were murdered because of it.
So a simple question. Would you republish anti-Semitic literature because someone got killed by a Jew for publishing it?
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People mock Judaism all the time. It's really common.
Hell, just look at Borat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3IMTJjzfo) for an incredibly blatant example. And that movie was actually pretty well received. Yeah, it's anti-Semitic as hell. It's also obviously a joke, and should be taken as such. Those who get offended by media like that don't need to watch/read it.
Why should Islam be exempt from this kind of mockery?
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Karajorma's question fails to address why there haven't been any murders of any cartoons or any satirical writer against judaism, despite there being reasons for perhaps a hundred times more grievances than any islamists could ever grab on to. (That's why islamism is usually riddled with holocaust denial, they cannot bear the thought of not being the most oppressed group in the world)
I'm sorry, but uncomfortable truths are what they are. The moment I knew that satirical cartoonists were massacred I instantly knew the culprit's religion. This is a problem, and we better step up from the boorish "Yes it was an atrocity BUT..." attitude that is pervading and degenerating our dignity, and despite anything that Karajorma or Flipside might say, it actually betrays an overconfidence and burgeois entitled paternalistic attitude regarding not only the satirists themselves, but even more ironically, the muslims themselves.
Liberal Muslims are out there publicly fighting the real fight against these attacks on Freedom of Speech. They realise what is at stake here. The thought that this fight is better fought by doing nothing is ridiculous and would never cross their minds. Help them. Fight alongside them.
Drop all this bull**** attitude of "Well that's not really in good taste". That's not remotely ****ing helpful. That's NOT what is at stake here. You're insinuating victim blaming atttitudes, and that is profoundly surprising to me coming from whom it comes from.
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Nothing is at stake here.
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While your goal is laudable, the point here is that someone, somewhere, is always going to find the most innocent statement problematic. It's a guarantee. So while we can strive for politeness and constructive discussion - which I fully agree with - it should not be an expectation or subtle condition of speech and thought. The moment it is is when you see codified restrictions on speech.
I'm sorry for the double post, but I have to quote this again and reiterate it because I deeply believe some people in here do not understand the enemy in question. These are not reasonable people. We are a constant insult to them and their way of life. The way we "let" "our" women behave, have property rights, dress, talk as if they are our equals, the way we let homossexuals be free to do what they enjoy doing in their own privacy, the whole western culture as being "depraved", "materalistic" and so on and so forth. They hate our ****ing guts. These are not people you will EVER not insult.
If you drop the skirmish over the cartoons, if you surrender the Draw Mohammed field to them, they will pick on ever further terrains of our liberties. They will kill and murder people actually trying to do good in the world, not just cartoonists. Why? Because probably their vaccines are un holy and so perhaps polio vaccination teams would be targeted by jihadists (http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/646209-cleric-says-polio-vaccination-un-islamic-warns-of-jihad-against-docs).
I don't get some of the reaction here. I simply don't. I mean here we are, in a battlefield that couldn't be remotely less bloddy and dangerous like drawing ****ing cartoons. It's the exact BEST field of engagement against radicalism and extremism that could ever be! It's like paradise in contrast against "wars on terror" and other hugely failed costly and murdering policies that have ever been fostered.
Nothing is at stake here.
And this is where brain power goes to die.
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This article NAILS IT, just read it whole:
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/je-suis-charlie-its-a-bit-late/
The irony is that those who most suffer from a culture of censorship are minority communities themselves. Any kind of social change or social progress necessarily means offending some deeply held sensibilities. ‘You can’t say that!’ is all too often the response of those in power to having their power challenged. To accept that certain things cannot be said is to accept that certain forms of power cannot be challenged. The right to ‘subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism’ is the bedrock of an open, diverse society. Once we give up such a right in the name of ‘tolerance’ or ‘respect’, we constrain our ability to confront those in power, and therefore to challenge injustice.
Yet, hardly had news begun filtering out about the Charlie Hebdo shootings, than there were those suggesting that the magazine was a ‘racist institution’ and that the cartoonists, if not deserving what they got, had nevertheless brought it on themselves through their incessant attacks on Islam. What is really racist is the idea only nice white liberals want to challenge religion or demolish its pretensions or can handle satire and ridicule. Those who claim that it is ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’ to mock the Prophet Mohammad, appear to imagine, with the racists, that all Muslims are reactionaries. It is here that leftwing ‘anti-racism’ joins hands with rightwing anti-Muslim bigotry.
What is called ‘offence to a community’ is more often than not actually a struggle within communities. There are hudreds of thousands, within Muslim communities in the West, and within Muslim-majority countries across the world, challenging religious-based reactionary ideas and policies and institutions; writers, cartoonists, political activists, daily putting their lives on the line in facing down blasphemy laws, standing up for equal rights and fighting for democratic freedoms; people like Pakistani cartoonist Sabir Nazar, the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, exiled to India after death threats, or the Iranian blogger Soheil Arabi, sentenced to death last year for ‘insulting the Prophet’. What happened in the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris was viscerally shocking; but in the non-Western world, those who stand up for their rights face such threats every day.
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Luis there are only so many times I can state that I don't give a **** about what the extremists want or about insulting them. I just don't see any point in insulting moderates too. You basically are labelling any non-extremist collateral damage and that's what I take exception to.
This (http://9gag.com/gag/a2PXrAZ) on the other hand, is fine by me.
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So instead you actually reading the article and understanding what I mean with what I am saying you went out to restate your opinion for the nth time.
That's it, I'm done here, it's like talking to a wall.
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Regardless of everything else said on this topic (And Luis, just FYI, your words here managed to sway me from my initial positions on the subject of freedom of speech to be more along the lines of your views), I just wanted to state that my personal hero in this mess is not the staff of Charlie Hebdo, but Ahmed Merabet, a french police officer and devout muslim who was executed by the terrorists on their way out of Charlie Hebdo's offices. After all, he (unknowingly) embodies the spirit of "I disagree with your opinions, but will defend your right to voice them".
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Karajorma: Again, why should Islam be exempt from the kind of mockery we feel no hesitation subjecting Judaism and Christianity to? Why is it wrong to draw Muhammad, but fine to draw Jesus as a zombie? Why is it wrong to mock Islam's touchiness but perfectly fine to caricature the Republican party as a bunch of crusty rich old white guys?
It's a ****ing joke, and I'd argue that given the fact that reading a magazine or looking at drawings of Muhammad on the internet is a purely voluntary thing, it's actually an excellent environment in which to make such jokes. They don't like it? They can turn off their computers or not buy the magazine in question. At no point does it become acceptable to stop other people from seeing or reading something just because you might find it offensive.
I'm going to reiterate Luis' point as well: If we surrender here, how long until theyfind something else? Maybe they'll go after the West' willingness to allow women to dress how they like? After all, women walking around uncovered and having the audacity to challenge men goes against the Qur'an in their minds, and that's profoundly offensive to Islamists.
Luis Dias: that's an excellent article.
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Who says it should be exempt? I'm against people asking for the doors to be opened and for every idiot in the world to post pictures of Muhammed. Leave comedy to the comedians.
So instead you actually reading the article and understanding what I mean with what I am saying you went out to restate your opinion for the nth time.
That's it, I'm done here, it's like talking to a wall.
Ironically that article is blocked in China. I went with the excerpt that you posted and flagged the rest for when I can get access. But understanding is a two-way street Luis and you haven't stopped arguing that my objection is to pissing off extremists.
Karajorma's question fails to address why there haven't been any murders of any cartoons or any satirical writer against judaism, despite there being reasons for perhaps a hundred times more grievances than any islamists could ever grab on to. (That's why islamism is usually riddled with holocaust denial, they cannot bear the thought of not being the most oppressed group in the world)
I look forwards to seeing you repeat Ernst Zündel's Holocaust denial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Z%C3%BCndel). Just not on this board, mkay.
If free speech really is that important, let's see you defend it when it's something you really hate. Okay, he wasn't killed but I assume that's the point of the article you just posted.
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Who says it should be exempt? I'm against people asking for the doors to be opened and for every idiot in the world to post pictures of Muhammed. Leave comedy to the comedians.
Who are the comedians? Are we going to start issuing licenses to determine who can mock Islam and who can't?
And here's the article's text. Hopefully pastebin isn't blocked: http://pastebin.com/w94Lsnyc
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Karajorma, can you please not re-edit your previous comments in a way that makes my replies look like ****?
I have written extensively on why these depictions are necessary. The battleground is in the big silent majority of muslims' hearts and minds. You feel as if these cartoons are offensive to them and so counter-productive. I feel that these cartoons are the necessary medicine to the authoritarian mindset within their own communities. I believe history proves my thesis is much stronger than yours. Irregardless (what a word!), it's the enlightenment tradition of free speech, from Marquis de Sade to Mark Twain to a gazillion people, that we must enact and hold dear. So yeah, what if trolls be trolls and they will just express a graphical "**** you!" to Islam? It's still defiance against authocratic autoritarianism, and it's not just healthy and commendable, it's necessary.
Some will be more childish than others. Everyone will do their best.
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I have written extensively on why these depictions are necessary. The battleground is in the big silent majority of muslims' hearts and minds. You feel as if these cartoons are offensive to them and so counter-productive. I feel that these cartoons are the necessary medicine to the authoritarian mindset within their own communities. I believe history proves my thesis is much stronger than yours. Irregardless (what a word!), it's the enlightenment tradition of free speech, from Marquis de Sade to Mark Twain to a gazillion people, that we must enact and hold dear. So yeah, what if trolls be trolls and they will just express a graphical "**** you!" to Islam? It's still defiance against authocratic autoritarianism, and it's not just healthy and commendable, it's necessary.
Some will be more childish than others. Everyone will do their best.
And some will use it as a massive opportunity to spread their hate-filled agenda. There are far too many people who would twist that idea into something, nasty, ugly and racist.
I find it hugely ironic that some of the people I'm having to explain that to are the very same people who were against Gamergate because they believed that the whole thing was basically a paradise for internet trolls, doxxers and general scum. Is it so hard to see that a call on the average internet user to Draw Muhammed would be far, far worse than Gamergate ever was?
Don't call for Draw Muhammed. Call for people to draw the leaders of ISIS. Make this personal. Cause that will be far more productive than Drawing Muhammed ever will.
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Free speech means having to accept people will use that freedom to say **** we don't like. It's still worth it.
It's not laws against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial that keep Nazism down.
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And people like Flipside and myself have every right to say perhaps you should try to change your mind about what you decide to say before you say it.
Which is fine, although the reason I keep seeing come up - that such cartoons are offensive to Muslims as a group and they accomplish little - is dubious. The cartoons serve a very important purpose - they show there are people who say they are part of a religion who are willing to threaten and kill other people over drawings.
Ironically though I have seen posts saying that those who don't want to do that should be shamed or don't support free speech.
Individuals? No. Media organizations - like our own cowardly CBC? Oh hell yes they should be shamed for it.
In that sense, today, anyone who stands up for free speech and liberty generally should be supportive of the past and continued publication of this [IMHO] offensive and tasteless material precisely BECAUSE people were murdered because of it.
So a simple question. Would you republish anti-Semitic literature because someone got killed by a Jew for publishing it?
Change this Charlie Hebdo situation motivating material to any other group, religion, politician, etc and I would still be saying the exact same things in this thread. Would I personally republish it? Probably not, because I don't tend to publish extremely offensive material as a rule (one of the reasons I haven't posted a number of the Hebdo cartoons directly). Would I link to it and shout that "people were murdered for these words!" Oh yes. Very much yes.
I'm going to reiterate Luis' point as well: If we surrender here, how long until theyfind something else? Maybe they'll go after the West' willingness to allow women to dress how they like? After all, women walking around uncovered and having the audacity to challenge men goes against the Qur'an in their minds, and that's profoundly offensive to Islamists.
Freedom of speech is the right and freedom upon which all of our other rights and freedoms depend. Any restriction on it restricts fundamental liberty. Courts have rightly carved out some very limited exceptions where freedom of speech does not apply, but, as I said - very limited.
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karajorma, just to clarify something, are you in favor of removing any depiction of women without burkas on television (and other media)?
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Kara isn't saying it shouldn't be allowed, or that it's even not right. He's saying that it's counter productive and stupid for the reasons stated. With the amount of misinterpretation going on in this thread you'd think some members of this forum were running for political office and want to get practice arguing totally unrelated issues in.
I highly suggest that everyone in this thread take an extra five minutes next time they post and try to avoid projecting things no one has said into posts they disagree with.
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Things are just getting worse. Yesterday one police officer was killed, today these scumbags took hostages in a shop with kosher food.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cab_1420806403
Probably that's the same animal which is responsible for the death of policewoman.
Looks like there will be a lot of work for French security services in the nearest future. :rolleyes:
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I find it hugely ironic that some of the people I'm having to explain that to are the very same people who were against Gamergate because they believed that the whole thing was basically a paradise for internet trolls, doxxers and general scum. Is it so hard to see that a call on the average internet user to Draw Muhammed would be far, far worse than Gamergate ever was?
I would like to just point out I have been entirely consistent here.
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I find it hugely ironic that some of the people I'm having to explain that to are the very same people who were against Gamergate because they believed that the whole thing was basically a paradise for internet trolls, doxxers and general scum. Is it so hard to see that a call on the average internet user to Draw Muhammed would be far, far worse than Gamergate ever was?
I would like to just point out I have been entirely consistent here.
And I would just like to point out that if talking about gamergate is not kosher here (and I fully accept with the rationale), then could the moderators not toy with these shenanigans? I don't accept the analogy here, but to explain why it would drive me towards an unwarranted and unwanted topic.
Having said that, given the choice between "moderation", "self-censorship", "not be obscene", etc and "free expression everywhere", I'll choose the latter every god damned second. And it's not because I'm an anarchist asshole (I probably am), but because I do not recognize other people's moral authority to declare what third parties' sense of humour are correct or not. Not even merely in principle, in "etiquette" fashion. All these calls I see in some media right now on the "decorum" and "let's not be racist" and other idiotc simplistic moralizing concern trollings are failing our civilization.
This should be a watershed moment, and still I see some people hesitating. (Although I'm happy people like The_E are coming down from their fence-sitting in this particular case).
e: warn me if I'm going too aggressive here. I've drunk a couple coffees and I feel the caffeine boiling my blood a bit. It might express itself a bit around here, my apologies.
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Would I personally republish it? Probably not, because I don't tend to publish extremely offensive material as a rule (one of the reasons I haven't posted a number of the Hebdo cartoons directly).
And this is the exact same point I have been making for four pages now with everyone else saying that they should do it and encourage other people to do the same or worse.
Would I link to it and shout that "people were murdered for these words!" Oh yes. Very much yes.
Where have I said I wouldn't do that?
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Having said that, given the choice between "moderation", "self-censorship", "not be obscene", etc and "free expression everywhere", I'll choose the latter every god damned second. And it's not because I'm an anarchist asshole (I probably am), but because I do not recognize other people's moral authority to declare what third parties' sense of humour are correct or not. Not even merely in principle, in "etiquette" fashion. All these calls I see in some media right now on the "decorum" and "let's not be racist" and other idiotc simplistic moralizing concern trollings are failing our civilization.
This should be a watershed moment, and still I see some people hesitating. (Although I'm happy people like The_E are coming down from their fence-sitting in this particular case).
I should be clear here: Were I in a position to do so, I wouldn't publish cartoons as the ones under discussion here. Not because of fear of the reaction, but because like Karajorma, I don't think they're helping the cause. They're a form of preaching to the choir, and while there is a place for that, it's not one I would want to provide. That being said, I am perfectly fine with others publishing such works and wouldn't want them to stop just because I disagree with them on that count; The best remedy for speech that offends being more speech and all that.
Basically, yes, you have a right to troll as hard as you want and not get killed over it. However, that does not mean that you have a duty to do so, or that doing so is a sacred act that must be enshrined.
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My disagreement lies in the description of the act as trolling, but I do understand why it is being discussed as such. If it were mere trolling, I would be agreeing with both you and Karajorma on that point. I don't see it as trolling, and especially not as being addressed to the choir. I tried to convey exactly why that was not the case, and I think I can't "one up" myself at that, so there's that.
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Kara isn't saying it shouldn't be allowed, or that it's even not right. He's saying that it's counter productive and stupid for the reasons stated.
What the difference between "not right" and "counter productive and stupid"?
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You have the right to be counter productive and stupid if you wish. I've never said that people can't draw Muhammed. I've said that I really wish they'd understand that the end results might not go the way they wanted and think about whether they should do it or not a lot harder.
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and you have the same right.
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If any of you are wondering, the terrorists involved in this have just been dealt with, and another gunman who held hostages in a Kosher supermarket (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30752239). Hopefully there'll be no more events in the coming days.
(If I may a moment, I can't help but be sickened a little at how two people (and one admin through their goading), none of whom were really affected by this event, have turned this topic into a rant-match lasting eight pages, which throughout has never mentioned the fact over a dozen (if not two dozen) people lost their lives, and seemingly focused instead on soapboxing themselves. Have you ever wondered whether it's people like you that cause stuff like this to happen? Apologies for being brutal, but someone has to.
Go and think about the dead, and think about yourselves too please. None of us deserve to put up with this kind of rubbish).
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And I thought my jokes were bad.
Clearly you have problems with people using forums to actually speak about the issues they are thinking about. There's an easy solution for that.
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you're bad and you should feel bad!
well the important thing is that you managed to find a way to feel superior to both sides.
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(If I may a moment, I can't help but be sickened a little at how two people (and one admin through their goading), none of whom were really affected by this event, have turned this topic into a rant-match lasting eight pages, which throughout has never mentioned the fact over a dozen (if not two dozen) people lost their lives, and seemingly focused instead on soapboxing themselves. Have you ever wondered whether it's people like you that cause stuff like this to happen? Apologies for being brutal, but someone has to.
Go and think about the dead, and think about yourselves too please. None of us deserve to put up with this kind of rubbish).
Oh please. "Thinking about the dead" won't bring them back, and it won't bring comfort to their families. Do you think this thread would be better if it was nothing but weeping about people no one here actually knew? The issues highlighted by their deaths matter, and they're worthy of discussion. If you don't want to "put up with this kind of rubbish", there's absolutely nothing forcing you to read the thread.
As callous as it sounds, people die every single day. The only reason we have a thread about this particular incident is the reason why it happened, and who it happened to. Two dozen people dying? That probably happened again in the time it took me to write this reply. Should we have a thread about them?
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Go and think about the dead, and think about yourselves too please. None of us deserve to put up with this kind of rubbish).
Meanwhile, in the arab world:
http://imgur.com/a/zd5rl/#JeSuisCharlie
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That's a good thing to see :) Recent events are tragedy but also... an opportunity. For Muslims to say it loud and clear that killing in response of a silly cartoon is just cruelty and such actions should be rejected entirely even if the actions of the terrorists have been motivated by their religion (I know, bad interpretation stuff but the roots of this killing are sadly in ideology which is connected directly to Islam) . And that must be a strong reaction. If there will be not enough resistance against terror acts among the Muslims themselves or they will stay neutral on that issue..... then I simply cannot imagine how our cultures can coexist without such violent incidents. By not resisting the violence we give the "bad guys" quiet permission for their actions.
And this is not only about the drawings of the Prophet. it's also about stoning women, hanging gay people and many other issues. We Europeans (and not only) shall not tolerate any form of support for such beliefs. It simply stays against our code of morality. Of course we should not involve in Muslim countries issues. it's their land and rules. But in Europe. Our values, our rules, our morality, our laws. And it is our duty to stand behind them.
I hope I didn't offend anybody ;)
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that is indeed good to see.
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Aye gotta say thanks for sharing the link. Never thought responses like this (newspaper cartoons etc) would come in from so far and wide; get the feeling the Newspaper cartooning community worldwide is quite closely knit.
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they need to make sure nobody starts making their commentary subtle in case the readers catch on
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I don't want to be part of this Forum any more.
"We hurl abuse at Christians, and that gives us the right to hurl abuse at Muslims!'
Really? That's what 'Free Speech' has come to?
Humanity is doomed.
Just like people think they have the 'right' to make rape jokes because they haven't been raped...
General Discussion has become the pit it always tried so hard to become.
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Yes, you must long for the days of an0n, Kazan vs Lib, and the vadar_1/Stealth flamewar. Truly a more civilized age.
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Oh put them away, they went years ago, and were no worse than some of the people we have today, stop thinking there's been an improvement.
I'm on the side of Free Speech and even I'm beginning to see how radicalization happens with attitudes such as this. So apparently, when Islam wants the entire world to work to its values, that's evil, but when the West wants the whole world to live to its values, that's Freedom....
As disgusting as I find the acts of Terrorists of recent days, the whole idea that attacking the entire culture for it is some kind of solution is ridiculous.
I remember during the desegregation of South Africa, there was an interview with a white couple who said they thought whites and blacks could live together but the blacks would 'have to come up to our standards'. For some reason that interview pops into my mind.
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I wouldn't call it an improvement - the admins let a lot of flaming through, but the freer atmosphere let this place take advantage of some really smart, funny, and opinionated people. The admins could also take criticism a lot better too. And hey, at least Stealth and vadar snapping at each other was entertaining in a train wreck kind of way, as opposed to the passive-aggressive slap fights you carefully referee now.
You want my actual opinion on this stuff? The CH cartoons are tacky. They're not genuinely racist the way the Dutch cartoons were. If noone had been already been killed for drawing a mocking picture of Muhammad, my response would "guys, come on, cut that **** out".
Now we have news outlets afraid to post the unblurred images because they don't want men with guns to come after them. We need to show we're not afraid, that if you attempt to stop blasphemous disrespect of your beliefs by violence, it will backfire. Horribly. We can call out this stuff for being tacky once we make it clear through action that self censorship is not an appropriate response to violence. Don't try to cross the bridge before you come to it.
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Ageed, self censorship is not a solution, but neither is the act of bombarding that culture with more offensive images. The whole idea that you can cast abusive comments into another culture and it will have the same effect as it would in your own culture is flawed.
We are trapped now, these stupid drawings have become some kind of flagship.
The whole point about 'extreme' forms of speech was the rarity, so when people like Wilde, Voltaire or Twain made those comments, it raised eyebrows, people paid attention, that was the point of using Free Speech. Voltaire wasn't trying to get the Church to get used to be being abused, he was trying to promote a dialogue for change, he wasn't just doing it for 'likes'.
If you make that the norm, where everyone is using abuse to prove their point, then it becomes totally pointless in and of itself, it just becomes abuse for the sake of abuse, and the point gets lost.
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Free speech means having to accept people will use that freedom to say **** we don't like. It's still worth it.
And every now and then, the speech will aggravate a mad man or two, enough to make them blow up stuff. And *that* fact will not be helped by any amount of cartoons drawn (nothing short of planet wide lobotomy would help).
That's why, regardless of the subject, it makes sense to think about the expected outcome before exercising the freedom of speech. Otherwise it's like you're bringing a knife to a gun fight, you are free to do so, but what sense does it make?
Personally, I think this whole idea about cartoons helping here is mostly a juvenile day dream of sorts. Depending on the background of the person viewing the images, the source will be rated as either a troll, an idiot or an evil being - not someone providing information to be integrated into ones view of the world.
I don't expect anything else but steel to be of help in this mess. Plenty of it, in the correct place, at the correct time.
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The West is perfectly willing to let other parts of the world wall its self off if they wish but the way things work in the west is people are allowed to say things, anything they want. you can get pissed, you can protest, you can say things in response, anything you want in response, What you can't do is silence anyone. (Or that's how it's supposed to work anyway, many parts of the supposedly western world now have crimespeek laws.) This is what we do, Not doing this would be betraying our own values. To the people on the other end of the world if they cannot handle this they need to wall themselves off from us like North Korea did. that simply is the way it is, Our values might actually be compatible, and I am not about to compromise mine, least of all for anyone's skydaddy.
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And there are other people in other cultures who also feel just as strongly, in a way, understanding that fact gets halfway to the root of the problem.
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I understand that fact, like I said, our values might actually not be compatible, it might actually turn out that that is the case after all. I have to consider that possibility and it's your discussion here that led me to consider it.
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I think it's rather interesting how people expect, when it is at its very basest cultural violence, Draw Muhammed Day to do anything helpful. This is, on a cultural scale, picking on the kid who lives in the beat up trailer until he punches someone, and then getting pissed off that he punched you and retaliating by making fun of the kid even harder, and spreading it around to all of his friends, too. Does that make the kid right to throw a punch? Of course not. But how can we consider this a positive thing when we're the ones escalating it still further?
If the best way to respond to terrorism is to not let it affect you, we failed really ****ing hard if that's our next step.
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I think the question of compatibility is a question of what input you use, as it were. I think most societies (except possibly North Korea, which has been allowed by circumstances to become something of a mutant state - and no, I don't mean Genosha :P) can be compatible on a certain level, that's why humanity invented Diplomacy, it's not simply a question of 'Political Correctness', it's of finding a manner in which societies can interact despite the differences between them.
Maybe, with more familiarity, this sort of thing will just end up getting shrugged off, but there's a difference between a friend jibing you and a rival insulting you, even if that difference is nothing more than your own perspective.
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Would I personally republish it? Probably not, because I don't tend to publish extremely offensive material as a rule (one of the reasons I haven't posted a number of the Hebdo cartoons directly).
And this is the exact same point I have been making for four pages now with everyone else saying that they should do it and encourage other people to do the same or worse.
There is a difference between saying individuals should do it and saying media should. If people in this thread (and I didn't read pages 1-5 that closely) are saying individuals have that obligation, I respectfully disagree. If they are saying media should then I wholeheartedly agree. The cartoons are inherently newsworthy, they are integral to understanding the gravity of the story, and people died as a result of their publication. The media frankly has an obligation to reproduce them in the context of their reporting, and any media organization that doesn't (but turns around and publishes other Hebdo cartoons, like the ones insulting politicians or Christians, as our idiotic CBC did) deserves to be scorned for it. If you are a serious enough news organization to report on the cartoons, you should be a serious enough news organization to show them and not force your readers to Google the damned things.
Does that make the kid right to throw a punch? Of course not. But how can we consider this a positive thing when we're the ones escalating it still further?
If the best way to respond to terrorism is to not let it affect you, we failed really ****ing hard if that's our next step.
Under no circumstances should an offensive cartoon be considered an escalation of anything but a war of words. This is my problem with the whole line of "well, they're offensive and republishing them doesn't help anything." Actually, it does. It says "Look, assholes might murder people over these cartoons but we're going to publish them again anyway until other assholes get the damn point that it's just words and images." It says "We will not cave on ideas just because you threaten to kill people over them." It shows the world that the right of free expression, even when exerted by offensive ideas, will always be defended because it is a just right that deserves unconditional protection.
All expression has value in the sense that it IS expressed. If we decline to express ourselves because someone is going to murder us for it, that's worse than self-censorship - that's tyranny. As I said before, ALL fundamental liberties are based on the presumption of freedom of speech. Nobody has a right not to be offended. We all have a very important right - if one that should be infrequently used - to cause offense with words, drawings, and beliefs however and wherever we damn well please. How that looks in practice may not be pretty, but it's important. Many people don't have that right - where it does exist, it needs to be defended and promoted vigorously.
I am also really getting annoyed - not specifically at anyone here, but generally in the greater Internet discussion - at the people insisting 1.6 billion Muslims are going to be oppressed and inflamed by ****ing drawings. No. Stop infantilizing these people. For Pete's sake, the bloody leader of Hezbollah came out and denounced the people committing these acts and said they place far more shame on Islam than the cartoons ever have.
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It's interesting to hear the word 'infantilizing' being used in a conversation about rude drawings of the central figure of a religion, particularly in that specific context...
So, what you are saying is that the only influence these drawings have is to make people already angry enough to kill even angrier, and has no impact on the sort of people you'd want to talk to anyway?
So.... why are they being created?
Edit : Because if it is, in some way, to turn the former into the latter, I don't think it will work.
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So.... why are they being created?
Well, because religions are like the bread and butter of satirists.
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Yup, and if those pictures had appeared in isolation and Muslim groups had got all offended about it, I would, like everyone else, have told them to shut up and put up.
The problem is, it's become a 'thing', this whole Draw Mohammed day, actually trying to make a tradition of it. What's it for?
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you know what our response to that question is.
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No, I genuinely don't, because if it's an expression of Freedom of Speech, then that still doesn't explain why the Muslim culture was singled out. If it is a fight against Terrorism then it is aiming squarely at its own foot because the only people it affects are those who are just looking for an excuse to take offense in the first place, we are merely supplying it, and by trying to make it a tradition, it just makes it look like policy instead of a spontaneous symbol of unity.
I really don't know what purpose it is trying to serve.
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Under no circumstances should an offensive cartoon be considered an escalation of anything but a war of words. This is my problem with the whole line of "well, they're offensive and republishing them doesn't help anything." Actually, it does. It says "Look, assholes might murder people over these cartoons but we're going to publish them again anyway until other assholes get the damn point that it's just words and images." It says "We will not cave on ideas just because you threaten to kill people over them." It shows the world that the right of free expression, even when exerted by offensive ideas, will always be defended because it is a just right that deserves unconditional protection.
I get what you're saying. I really do, and for what it's worth my ire was directed specifically at the concept of deliberately making more of these images for the singular purpose of pissing people off. That's the part I don't like. At that point it's not a demonstration of free speech, it's an organized and deliberate attempt to hurt an entire culture and religion for daring to have a belief. It no longer targets the people who threaten to kill over it, it targets everyone.
Would you be upset at an organized effort by thousands or millions of people all around the world to post explicit sexual content all around the parts of the internet that your kids visit, because you don't think young kids should be exposed to porn? I would. What makes this any different? That doesn't mean that porn is bad and should be banned anymore than it means that everyone who hates porn should be forced to watch it until they get over their weird inhibitions. But there is a point at which the target audience becomes a target as opposed to an audience.
Hundreds of millions of Muslims don't kill people over cartoons of Muhammed. And yet, Draw Muhammed Day is an organized effort specifically to anger and punish this group of people for something they didn't even do. This is flooding your kids' facebook (for example) with porn because some TV executive took away Skinemax. It's a disproportionate response of scale, targeting hundreds of millions of innocent people because a vocal, violent couple of million (at best) did something objectionable.
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The ironic part is, the concept of 'Draw Muhammed Day' isn't a bad one, if you picked a different target each year, so one year it's Kim-Jong-Il, the next it's Vladimir Putin or Obama, the next one it's Jesus etc, if it worked that way, I think it would be an excellent vehicle for Freedom of Speech, where it's inclusive of all forms of speech, not just its current scope.
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Would someone kindly explain to me why suddenly we're talking about Draw Mohammed Day, when we were talking about a satirical publication which publishes crass satirical cartoons of all manner of things, among them things that offend Muslim sensibilities? Are we talking at cross purposes? Because generally I think something like "Draw Mohammed Day" is punching down and deserving of scorn - a social consequence of speech. This Charlie Hebdo matter is another issue entirely.
Something that I think is important about the publication and re-publication of Charlie Hebdo cartoons: the paper never did only satire about Muslims, it never just singled out Muslims, and the cartoons being repeated are not just about Muslims, yet some people are getting hung up on specifically the satirical Islamic cartoons as being offensive. That speaks volumes about commitment to free speech. I argued with one writer on Twitter today who argued against publishing the cartoons because it was a powerful group (I guess all cartoonists are white, male, and middle-upper class in some people's minds; nevermind the brilliant satire coming out of several Arab countries, some of it by women no less) picking on a less powerful group. I didn't know the right to free speech was modified by one's level of "privilege," but the whole concept of theoretical "privilege" espoused by some feminists is something I regularly get annoyed about anyway. I digress.
It is important that this material - both the satire not concerning Muslims, and the satire concerning Muslims - be republished to reinforce the principle that free speech not be cowed by violence from extremist groups. This has nothing to do with being offensive to Muslims specifically, and it has nothing to do with relative levels of "privilege" if you subscribe to that particular theoretical bent - this is to tell EVERYONE that ideas will not be quenched and restricted because someone chooses to resort to extreme violence in light of some of them.
TL;DR
I am arguing that free speech means publication without regard for the reaction (or potential offense) of the audience, and also regardless of the merits of the idea being published.
Some of you appear to be arguing we should take other people's feelings and the general utility of the idea into account. That isn't free speech. I agree that it's a nice sentiment, but that's it - it is neither a requirement nor an expectation, nor should it be. Anything is offensive to someone.
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I really don't know what purpose it is trying to serve.
really? you haven't asked this question and had it answered 50,000 time in this thread already? ok, fine I'll say it again, it is a defense of freedom of speech. it's as much about sending the message to islamist who use terror to silence people they don't like that that doesn't work as it is about sending a message to people in our own communities that censorship and self censorship is unacceptable.
you want to know the history of it? it came about 'spontaneously' as a result of comedy central's self censorship of a south park episode, which was (both the episode's plot and the censoring) a result of the Danish Muhammad cartoons riots and the murder of Theo van Gogh.
why the Muslim culture was singled out.
they singled them selves out.
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@MP-Ryan
The conversation has been orbiting around the 'Draw Muhammed' thing for the last 5 pages.
I think pretty much everyone has made clear both their revulsion at the attacks and their belief that the paper had every right to publish those pictures without fear of repercussion, that's more or less a given and it's something I've made clear on several occasions.
The discussion has been about the response to those attacks, not so much about whether the paper should have the right to publish those cartoons, but about the impact of them.
@Bobboau
'they singled themselves out'
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Apologies; I got my wires crossed from earlier in the thread when it was being discussed, and the current line of discussion strongly reminded me of it. Even if it doesn't apply in particular to what you're saying (which I happen to mostly agree with), I think it's important to remember that regardless of whether there is a point at which someone can't do or say something there is a very real point at which someone should be strongly discouraged from doing or saying something.
No, apparently it was Bobboau I was talking to, my mistake.
The idea that self-censorship is unacceptable makes me wonder how you go through the day, Bob.
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with a reputation for often saying wacky, off the wall, and controversial things.
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Well, at least we've established that it is apparently for their own good and they bought it on themselves...
Sounds like something a Victorian General would say about depopulating an island, but there you go...
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for their own good
and I said that?
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There is a difference between saying individuals should do it and saying media should. If people in this thread (and I didn't read pages 1-5 that closely) are saying individuals have that obligation, I respectfully disagree.
I got into this discussion because of Draw Muhammed Day and calls for everyone to draw Muhammed in protest. I've pointed out several times that to do so would be to open a torrent of trolling and stupidity from the darker corners of the internet and let it lose on the world while simultaneously saying "We're doing this because of what happened". We would basically allow ourselves to be represented not by satirists like Charlie Hedbo but by 4chan and racist groups. Because it is those cartoons that would be the ones that the Muslim world passed around. It would be those ones that got recirculated under the message "This is what the West thinks of Islam"
I've said before that's why I feel that Draw Muhammed Day is a bad idea and that we should "Leave comedy to the comedians" rather than trying to get everyone to make a statement and confusing the issue.
I am also really getting annoyed - not specifically at anyone here, but generally in the greater Internet discussion - at the people insisting 1.6 billion Muslims are going to be oppressed and inflamed by ****ing drawings. No. Stop infantilizing these people. For Pete's sake, the bloody leader of Hezbollah came out and denounced the people committing these acts and said they place far more shame on Islam than the cartoons ever have.
The problem is that the people who try to make out that this is about cartoons are also infantilising the same damn people. Cause it isn't about Muslims seeing some cartoons and going all "HULK SMASH" over it. When the original (nasty, bigoted) cartoons appeared in Jyllands-Posten what was the response of the Muslim world? Exactly the same as when this cartoon (http://www.timesofisrael.com/norway-paper-rapped-for-anti-semitic-cartoon/) was published in Norway. The leaders of several Muslim countries made diplomatic protests. So why the difference in outcomes? Is cause Muslims are inherently violent man-children? Bollocks.
The reasons are many-fold but some of the main reasons are
1) The President of Denmark hid behind Free Speech and refused to personally denounce the cartoon. In this sort of diplomatic row, having the leader of the country denounce the insulting material is usually enough to separate "This particular newspaper is written by bigoted arseholes who hate you" and "This country's leaders are bigoted arseholes who hate you"
2) More importantly, a group of radical Danish clerics toured the Middle East with a 100 page document on "Western views of Islam" which contained the cartoons but which also contained material far worse (A cartoon of Muhammed as a pedophile, a Muslim apparently having sex with a dog while praying and picture of a man in a pig mask which was claimed to be the real representation of Muhammed but which was actually some random guy from a French pig-squealing contest). The clerics also allowed the impression that Jyllands-Posten was run by the Danish government to propagate (or that it was owned by the President of Denmark). The dossier the clerics handed out also claimed that Islam was not a recognised religion in Denmark and made out that Muslims in Denmark were mistreated.
One of those clerics has since stated that he should not have done it as it caused so much violence and that the cartoons themselves are ok.
Now I'm pretty certain that if some radical rabbi went to Israel with the picture I linked to above, added some pictures from other sources making fun of the Holocaust and made out that Norway's government supported it, some violent **** would go down at the Norwegian embassy.
When Charlie Hebdo reprinted those pictures they did so against that background. When they later printed an issue with Muhammed as the editor, they reminded people that they agreed with pig-faced Muhammed. Don't kid yourself into believing this is just about some cartoons of Muhammed. To do so is to be just as disrespectful to Muslims as you claim other people on the internet are being.
EDIT : Clerics not imams.
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@Bobboau
You didn't specifically say those words, but then, I didn't say you did, but certainly the general consensus seems to be that it is intended to achieve something in the Middle East, if they didn't think anyone who would be insulted would be looking at them, then no-one would be drawing the pictures.
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I think you kinda implied I did.
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'Kinda implied' is a very broad definition, it's sort of hard not to fit into that slot.
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I think it's rather interesting how people expect, when it is at its very basest cultural violence, Draw Muhammed Day to do anything helpful. This is, on a cultural scale, picking on the kid who lives in the beat up trailer until he punches someone, and then getting pissed off that he punched you and retaliating by making fun of the kid even harder, and spreading it around to all of his friends, too. Does that make the kid right to throw a punch? Of course not. But how can we consider this a positive thing when we're the ones escalating it still further?
This is a ****ing horrible analogy, it validates everything Luis and friends have been saying throughout this thread, and you should feel ashamed for making it.
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This is an interesting development: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11335676/Hacktivists-Anonymous-says-it-will-avenge-Charlie-Hebdo-attacks-by-shutting-down-jihadist-websites.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11335676/Hacktivists-Anonymous-says-it-will-avenge-Charlie-Hebdo-attacks-by-shutting-down-jihadist-websites.html).
Bad guys vs. bad guys!
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"We hurl abuse at Christians, and that gives us the right to hurl abuse at Muslims!'
Uuh, yeah? Why should people not make satire about Islam when it's permissible to make satire about everything else? That's what Charlie Hebdo does. At what point did freedom of speech stop being the freedom to laugh at anything?
I don't give a **** about Draw Muhammad Day. It's just typical internet trolling, and it happens because it gets a rise out of people. The reason you don't see Draw Kim Jong-un or whatever is because those people don't give a ****. Islam is targeted precisely because it pisses the extremists off. But again, that shows something, doesn't it? The Internet can mock Kim Jong-un, can mock Hitler, Obama, Jesus, the Republican Party, whatever. Mock Islam though, and it suddenly becomes objectionable. Why?
Again, the only reason Draw Muhammad Day is a thing is because people give a **** about this particular thing being mocked.
As an aside, one of my friends was raped, and she makes rape jokes as a way of coping. She says it's her way of not letting that experience determine how she lives her life. Perhaps it's not your place to dictate what jokes people should or shouldn't make.
And every now and then, the speech will aggravate a mad man or two, enough to make them blow up stuff. And *that* fact will not be helped by any amount of cartoons drawn (nothing short of planet wide lobotomy would help).
That's why, regardless of the subject, it makes sense to think about the expected outcome before exercising the freedom of speech. Otherwise it's like you're bringing a knife to a gun fight, you are free to do so, but what sense does it make?
So basically, give the terrorists what they want? Show them that their threats work? Like MP-Ryan said, individuals don't have a responsibility to do anything here. But the media does. That's the entire point of the media. And more often than not, they're failing.
And let me be clear: neither the cartoonists or the people spreading the images bear any responsibility for the acts of terror carried out in reaction to them. None.
I think it's rather interesting how people expect, when it is at its very basest cultural violence, Draw Muhammed Day to do anything helpful. This is, on a cultural scale, picking on the kid who lives in the beat up trailer until he punches someone, and then getting pissed off that he punched you and retaliating by making fun of the kid even harder, and spreading it around to all of his friends, too. Does that make the kid right to throw a punch? Of course not. But how can we consider this a positive thing when we're the ones escalating it still further?
This is a horrible, horrible analogy. Drawing cartoons of Muhammad, not matter how offensive they are, is not emotional abuse or harassment. It's not even remotely close. It infringes on no one's rights. This is some bull**** that paints these extremists as angry victims rather than the thin skinned ****wits they are.
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@Aesaar, the problem isn't about the Right to abuse people, it's about the continuation of it into a 'trend', because it becomes institutionalized, it's about the fact that whilst raised voices is a way to get attention to an important issue, if everyone is shouting, no-one is listening.
See, my problem isn't with 'Christian' or 'Muslim', it's with abuse, because it has become the primary and, in many cases, only form of communication invoked in these situations, and in doing so, it has lost its meaning.
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I think it's rather interesting how people expect, when it is at its very basest cultural violence, Draw Muhammed Day to do anything helpful. This is, on a cultural scale, picking on the kid who lives in the beat up trailer until he punches someone, and then getting pissed off that he punched you and retaliating by making fun of the kid even harder, and spreading it around to all of his friends, too. Does that make the kid right to throw a punch? Of course not. But how can we consider this a positive thing when we're the ones escalating it still further?
This is a ****ing horrible analogy, it validates everything Luis and friends have been saying throughout this thread, and you should feel ashamed for making it.
The analogy is meant only to relate to an organized effort to antagonize all Muslims everywhere ala Draw Muhammad Day. Perhaps the initial clause is wrong (I'm willing to concede it's certainly not perfect), but the idea isn't along the lines of "oh no, we better not do that again or we'll get punched!" It's along the lines of be the better ****ing party. That isn't even to say stop making fun of Muslims, or Muhammad, or religion (or anyone else) at all! It's to say not to escalate. Escalation is the primary vehicle of terrorism to enact negative change, and something like that is playing right into their hands.
inb4 if you disagree with me the terrorists win
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@Aesaar, the problem isn't about the Right to abuse people, it's about the continuation of it into a 'trend', because it becomes institutionalized, it's about the fact that whilst raised voices is a way to get attention to an important issue, if everyone is shouting, no-one is listening.
See, my problem isn't with 'Christian' or 'Muslim', it's with abuse, because it has become the primary and, in many cases, only form of communication invoked in these situations, and in doing so, it has lost its meaning.
I don't think that's the case. I think the more civilized dialogue just doesn't get media attention because it's not remarkable/news-worthy. See, I don't think the free-speech thing is actually an issue for most people, and you can look at the reactions of reasonable Muslims as a perfect example of this. Most of them don't care if others draw Muhammad, just like most Christians don't care if others draw Jesus as a zombie. It's the extremists that makes this an issue, and I don't think there's a possibility of or need for reasonable discourse with them.
And I strongly disagree with your notion that this is abuse in any way. It really, really isn't.
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I'm pretty sure at this point we're talking in slightly diverging directions. Namely, that one group is talking in general (you guys), and one group is talking about a specific occurrence (me and Flipside). In general I agree with you. In terms of that specific occurrence, yeah I'm pretty sure that qualifies as some kind of abuse.
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Maybe, but the specific instances don't actually matter, because you can't do anything about them. You can't start going around deciding what's good mockery and what isn't, simply because opinions will vary.
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The whole point of the thing is supposedly to enforce the belief that you can say something that is insulting to someone else, which is great, but if you make a repeating campaign out of it, then it takes on a far more worrying undertone from my perspective.
The fact it centers on a single target because 'they did it to themselves' is something I find slightly terrifying. This has moved from 'showing the world we have Free Speech' to 'showing the extremist Muslims we have Free Speech'. But, I suspect that whilst most Muslims wouldn't be up in arms about it, they wouldn't turn round and say that they are not abusive.
So, basically, a minority of Muslims have bought it on a majority of them, which isn't really fair, however you look at it.
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I would agree that Draw Muhammad Day is specifically about showing the extremist Muslims we have Free Speech. The reason for that is really simple: they're the ones who seem most hell bent on taking it away with fear and violence. It's human nature to react strongly to that, and tbh, I have difficulty disagreeing. I don't participate, but I don't have strong feelings against it either.
And like I said before, I don't think most Muslims give a flying **** about Draw Muhammad Day. I've no evidence for this, it's just me thinking most Muslims are as reasonable as most Christians or Jews. It's no that they're not up in arms about it. I genuinely think most of them would react with "so what?".
IMO, it wouldn't become abusive until mosques and Muslim households start being pelted with drawings of Muhammad. Which may happen, I don't know. If it does, that I have a problem with.
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Did you not read anything I wrote?
It's not that only extremists care about drawing Muhammed. It's that no one ****ing cares.
Even the vast majority of extremists don't give a **** if you draw a picture of Muhammed. If they did they would be blowing up things in the Middle East that had his face on them. The extremists are responding to the perceived institutional bigotry aimed at their religion behind the people drawing Muhammed. And you know what, they're right to be ****ing upset about it. When a newspaper prints a cartoon designed to insult and alienate the Muslim minority within that country, I don't know why you are assuming the majority of Muslims wouldn't be pissed off about it. As I've already pointed out the Jyllands-Posten drew international protests even before they were fanned by the clerics tour.
Hell, you should be ****ing pissed off too!
What the extremists are wrong about is how they deal with it. So yeah, stop assuming that Draw Muhammed Day is simply about people getting angry at cartoons. They have every right to be angry at people in the West lining up to take a **** on them again.
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I think you'd find that if you tried to have a certain day dedicated to drawing insulting images of Christians or Jews, you'd see an outcry from interest groups, you'd probably even see the odd crazy deciding to take it as far as violence, the feeling of persecution is life-blood to extremism.
That doesn't mean that such voices should be silenced, not in the least, but this is as much about understanding how we are perceived as it is about dealing with it. After ISIS are gone, we will still have to deal with these countries, these opinions will still exist, after all, we aren't fighting Sharia Law, we are fighting Extremism, though some mistakenly conflate the two. Saudi Arabia have Sharia, they just sentenced a liberal blogger to 5000 lashes for insulting Islam, and they are our 'friends'; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30744693
That's the thing, this isn't a binary situation, there are so many shades of grey involved.
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I'm getting some major deja vu..... I feel like we just had a thread that touched on why moderates get no attention.... hnnng trying to remember.
Oh wait it's still on the front page of GenDisc. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=88892.0)
Color me.... either disappointed or bemused at the lack of self-awareness on display here.
(That was a seriously good analysis in the linked posting, and everybody involved here really should stop for a moment and read that. Actually, never mind "should". Do it, or I'll .....do something appropriately zany/putative. Try me.)
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So, basically, a minority of Muslims have bought it on a majority of them, which isn't really fair, however you look at it.
I'll give you this.
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Did you not read anything I wrote?
It's not that only extremists care about drawing Muhammed. It's that no one ****ing cares.
Even the vast majority of extremists don't give a **** if you draw a picture of Muhammed. If they did they would be blowing up things in the Middle East that had his face on them. The extremists are responding to the perceived institutional bigotry aimed at their religion behind the people drawing Muhammed. And you know what, they're right to be ****ing upset about it. When a newspaper prints a cartoon designed to insult and alienate the Muslim minority within that country, I don't know why you are assuming the majority of Muslims wouldn't be pissed off about it. As I've already pointed out the Jyllands-Posten drew international protests even before they were fanned by the clerics tour.
Hell, you should be ****ing pissed off too!
What the extremists are wrong about is how they deal with it. So yeah, stop assuming that Draw Muhammed Day is simply about people getting angry at cartoons. They have every right to be angry at people in the West lining up to take a **** on them again.
So the fatwa against Rushdie was only because he was the vanguard of a "perceived institutional bigotry"?
"We are from Allah and to Allah we shall return. I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, a text written, edited, and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qur'an, along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death. I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. And whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, Allah Willing. Meanwhile if someone has access to the author of the book but is incapable of carrying out the execution, he should inform the people so that [Rushdie] is punished for his actions."
That bigotry turns Muslim immigrants into recruits does not change the fact that certain Middle Eastern religious leaders are perfectly happy to call for death for something as small as drawing Mohammed, if you make a big enough splash.
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I think you'd find that if you tried to have a certain day dedicated to drawing insulting images of Christians or Jews, you'd see an outcry from interest groups, you'd probably even see the odd crazy deciding to take it as far as violence, the feeling of persecution is life-blood to extremism.
First off why would we? again everyday is Make Fun of Christians Day. You want one day in particular? you have any sort of organizing principal to it? any sort of irony to it? I'm sure if I thought about it for a while I could come up with something but nothing great leaps to my mind. Just because Zombie Jesus Day isn't catching on as well doesn't mean the DMD is the Fourth Reich.
Second "drawing insulting images of" you keep doing this. you keep intentionally misrepresenting the people you are talking to and what they are saying. Draw Mohamed Day is a day to draw Mohammed. To do so because we were told we were forbidden, not a day to make fun of Muslims. Yes it's obvious many of them are going to be offensive, and yes I have been arguing in favor of the rights of the people who do that, and yes when you say something like "you can't make fun of them" I respond with something like "we have to make fun of them" but what you said is a mischarictarisation of the subject, and it's hard to always realize you've done that and call you on it rather than just simply respond to what you've said. you and a few other people keep doing this and it is like you are trying to play some sort of game of gotcha where you try and slowly corral people into the shoe-box you have for them. This feels more than a little disingenuous.
oh, wait, the whole zombie thing does happen (http://www.google.com/search?q=happy+zombie+jesus+day&tbm=isch) and on Easter, the most sacred of Christian holidays none the less. and unlike DMD this actually IS an intentional mockery (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/zombie-jesus) of the religion, that IS the idea, and Christians are offended (http://christwire.org/2010/04/atheists-continue-to-disrespect-easter-with-zombie-jesus-jokes-photographic-sacrilege/) by it. and it's more popular too. (evedence (http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#q=Zombie%20Jesus%2C%20draw%20mohammed%20day&cmpt=q&tz=) suggests that DMD's birth was twice as popular as ZJD that year, but ZJD has been consistently orders of magnitude more popular each year since)
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Did you not read anything I wrote?
It's not that only extremists care about drawing Muhammed. It's that no one ****ing cares.
Even the vast majority of extremists don't give a **** if you draw a picture of Muhammed. If they did they would be blowing up things in the Middle East that had his face on them. The extremists are responding to the perceived institutional bigotry aimed at their religion behind the people drawing Muhammed. And you know what, they're right to be ****ing upset about it. When a newspaper prints a cartoon designed to insult and alienate the Muslim minority within that country, I don't know why you are assuming the majority of Muslims wouldn't be pissed off about it. As I've already pointed out the Jyllands-Posten drew international protests even before they were fanned by the clerics tour.
Hell, you should be ****ing pissed off too!
What the extremists are wrong about is how they deal with it. So yeah, stop assuming that Draw Muhammed Day is simply about people getting angry at cartoons. They have every right to be angry at people in the West lining up to take a **** on them again.
What you don't seem to understand is that the extremists aren't reacting to any specific thing. They're against the mere existence of Western civilization. If Western countries implemented laws banning disrespecting Islam, they'd shift their focus to something else. These are people who view the parts of society they dislike as "institutional bigotry", as you put it. You want to see how they think? Just take a look at Anjem Choudary's twitter (https://twitter.com/anjemchoudary).
No, it's not about pictures of Muhammad. That's not what has them riled up. It's just what they're focusing on, because it's easier to frame their outrage in a (comparatively) reasonable manner. It lets Islamists like Choudary say "this wouldn't happen if people in the West accepted their responsibility to moderate their speech so they don't disrespect the Prophet and Islam". It lets them frame their agenda in such a way that it isn't completely condemned. And it lets them shift part of the blame onto their victims. And the funniest part is that it's actually somewhat working.
Their thinking is very similar to the thinking of fundamentalist Christians in the USA who believe that Christians are persecuted because their religion isn't being indulged in every way. That's how these extremists are, and they aren't going to stop. The cartoons? That's just a mutually agreed upon battleground. For them because it lets them look more reasonable than if they attacked something like women's rights (and lets them play the angry victim), and for us because it isn't much effort and lets us make a statement too. Draw Muhammad Day is just the Internet's petty way of showing them they're not winning.
These extremists don't do this because Muslims are marginalized and oppressed. They do this because they want Shari'ah law in western countries, and they think that if they win the free speech fight, they'll be able to win the next ones. They'll get no sympathy from me.
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I've confined my responses mostly to Draw Muhammed Day. As you keep point out, that's the agreed battleground. A battleground full of innocent civilians.
Why not choose a different battleground then? One better suited for us? Why not make it personal? I've already linked to the picture Choudary wants removed from the internet. Why not make your free speech battle there? Somewhere where it's not going to hit people who want no part in the battle but get involved cause it happens where they live.
See, when Fred Phelps acted like a wanker, I'd shut down anyone who took the piss out of Christianity on these boards. If you want to go after Phelps, go after him, but don't make HLP a place deemed anti-Christian because you're going after one bigot. Why not do the same thing here?
So the fatwa against Rushdie was only because he was the vanguard of a "perceived institutional bigotry"?
"We are from Allah and to Allah we shall return. I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, a text written, edited, and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qur'an, along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death. I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. And whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, Allah Willing. Meanwhile if someone has access to the author of the book but is incapable of carrying out the execution, he should inform the people so that [Rushdie] is punished for his actions."
That bigotry turns Muslim immigrants into recruits does not change the fact that certain Middle Eastern religious leaders are perfectly happy to call for death for something as small as drawing Mohammed, if you make a big enough splash.
You do realise that The Satanic Verses flat out took the piss out of Ayatollah Khomeini, right?
Now I'm not going to say that people weren't pissed off about the book before the fatwa was issued or that there weren't extremists causing problems before that, but the thing everyone remembers isn't quite as much about Islam as everyone thinks.
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Besides, the man is obviously just a Muslim version of Katie Hopkins or that sort of ilk. In fact the image of someone promoting fundamentalist views over Twitter would be almost amusing if it weren't slightly tragic that these people actually get a following.
If you based your opinion of the West on 'shock-jocks', you'll get a distorted version of the West, same goes for other cultures, the loudest voices are often not the ones that represent the majority.
Thing is, pretty much everyone on here is in agreement that we should defend our right to Freedom of Speech, and that these cartoons were an example of such. We've pretty much agreed that many are childish and immature in nature, and yes, Freedom of Speech covers childishness and immaturity, though I'll state that it isn't a requirement of it. Nobody is going to take away your Right to do that, it simply isn't going to happen, even Fundamentalists know that the harder they try, the less successful they will be. That's nothing to do with campaigns such as this, it is just basic human psychology.
Sometimes, I actually wonder who is goading who to be honest, because I don't doubt that attention seekers from all sides have noticed their ability to promote a Pavlovian response from the public by ringing certain bells.
See, if I can see a potential for discrimination in the nature of Draw Muhammed day, and I even support many of the concepts of what it claims to represent, you can bet your bottom dollar it's being pointed out as the founding principal of it elsewhere.
I get it that you don't hate Muslims, but, I wonder, if you showed these images to someone in, say, Saudi Arabia and then told them you don't hate Muslims, would they believe you?
As Kara said, if this is about Extremists and Fundamentalists, take it to them. Submit a drawing of Choudary running in terror from a pen, call it 'The courage of Extremism', something like that is using the point of the pen instead of a jumbo marker.
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I've confined my responses mostly to Draw Muhammed Day. As you keep point out, that's the agreed battleground. A battleground full of innocent civilians.
Why not choose a different battleground then? One better suited for us? Why not make it personal? I've already linked to the picture Choudary wants removed from the internet. Why not make your free speech battle there? Somewhere where it's not going to hit people who want no part in the battle but get involved cause it happens where they live.
Because constantly posting the picture Choudary wants removed from the Internet angers no one but Choudary, and he's not the only extremist out there. No one's shooting up magazine offices and sending death threats over his picture being posted. The point of drawing Muhammad is to tell the extremists "we're not afraid of you, and to prove it, here's us doing the thing you don't want us to do". It's not a terribly good approach, but it's a more satisfying way of doing it than taking the piss out of one man. The former attacks the whole movement. The latter does not. As contemptible as Choudary is, he's not responsible for these attacks.
Like I said before, I don't really give a **** about Draw Muhammad Day. It's quite petty to me, like asking for Facebook likes. I'm just explaining why people take part in it.
See, when Fred Phelps acted like a wanker, I'd shut down anyone who took the piss out of Christianity on these boards. If you want to go after Phelps, go after him, but don't make HLP a place deemed anti-Christian because you're going after one bigot. Why not do the same thing here?
The thing about Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church is that it's very easy to mock them without mocking all Christians. Most Christians I know don't really care if you mock the fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Often, they'll laugh right along with you. Not the case for everyone, obviously, but some members of my family are religious, and most of them laugh at fundamentalists and creationists as much as I do.
It helps that Westerners tend to be more educated about Christanity than Islam, of course.
Flipside: Like a lot of conflicts, it's become rather self-sustaining. Someone draws Muhammad, some people get angry (some more than others), people interpret that as an attack on free speech, they draw Muhammad some more. It'd be really nice if we could casually take the piss out of Islam the way we do for everything else, but I think, most of the time, neither side can help turning it into a political issue. Free speech isn't something we can compromise on, but I will agree it isn't something we need to make a huge show about either.
I get it that you don't hate Muslims, but, I wonder, if you showed these images to someone in, say, Saudi Arabia and then told them you don't hate Muslims, would they believe you?
Probably not, but they are not required to. I don't live in Saudi Arabia, and I don't want to live there. Yes, the Internet means they can see it, but I wouldn't think highly of someone who went to Saudi Arabia purely to spread images of Muhammad, just like I wouldn't think highly of a Saudi who tried to extend his country's anti-blasphemy laws to the West.
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Because constantly posting the picture Choudary wants removed from the Internet angers no one but Choudary, and he's not the only extremist out there. No one's shooting up magazine offices and sending death threats over his picture being posted. The point of drawing Muhammad is to tell the extremists "we're not afraid of you, and to prove it, here's us doing the thing you don't want us to do". It's not a terribly good approach, but it's a more satisfying way of doing it than taking the piss out of one man. The former attacks the whole movement. The latter does not. As contemptible as Choudary is, he's not responsible for these attacks.
It attacks the whole movement, and also a lot of people not even slightly connected to the movement. There is a name for that, Collective Punishment.
This policy of attacking people who had to do with this incident is the sort of thing people would get very angry about were it occurring over pretty much any other topic. I can think of dozens of cases of people on HLP getting very angry about groups or governments taking things out on the wrong people because they might get a few guilty people too. But as soon as it comes down to Muslims, well **** those guys, they brought it on themselves, right?
The best way to show you're not scared of bullies is not to insult everyone of the same race or religion, but to find the biggest bully, walk up to him and to his face say you aren't scared of him.
Like I said before, I don't really give a **** about Draw Muhammad Day. It's quite petty to me, like asking for Facebook likes. I'm just explaining why people take part in it.
I know why they do it. I'm pointing out solid reasons why they shouldn't. I'm pointing out why they are better things they could be doing which are similar but don't make the problem worse. But people want to dig their heels in and say that their method is the best and anything else is wrong. Ironically they act more like the fundamentalists by doing so than they probably realise.
The thing about Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church is that it's very easy to mock them without mocking all Christians.
It's pretty easy to mock fundamentalist Muslims too. It's only because we only discovered it after he was dead that the internet isn't paved with jokes about Bin Laden's porn fetish, but even before he died there was a **** load of stuff we could and did take the piss out of him about. There is no need to resort to using the jumbo marker when the pen will do (as Flipside put it).
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And every now and then, the speech will aggravate a mad man or two, enough to make them blow up stuff. And *that* fact will not be helped by any amount of cartoons drawn (nothing short of planet wide lobotomy would help).
That's why, regardless of the subject, it makes sense to think about the expected outcome before exercising the freedom of speech. Otherwise it's like you're bringing a knife to a gun fight, you are free to do so, but what sense does it make?
So basically, give the terrorists what they want? Show them that their threats work?
Not at all, rather resist them in ways that work. Just swipe out terrorists as quickly and quietly as possible, otherwise don't give a flying **** about their drivel.
Intention should be, that the term "jihadist" would translate to: "the one who went a way, we've never heard of him since, we'll never hear of him again".
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Since the discussion has moved two pages since the last bout of my posts/replies, I won't bother quoting. Suffice to say it seems a few people are talking purely about Draw Mohammed Day and a few people are talking about the general issue of violence in response to religious satire, and it's not clearly delineated who is talking about what in most of the posts. This is causing some confusion in responses - I most certainly wasn't talking about DMD, which I think is generally pointless and ridiculous, but rather the broader situation and the context of Charlie Hebdo and republication.
Along those lines, and in response to the last two pages, what I find disconcerting about the voiced reasons for opposition to DMD and even republication of the Charlie Hebdo images is a constant concern for impact, result, rationale, reason. While we all take these things into account as internal reasons in interpersonal relationships, I don't think they should or do apply to contentious subjects on a global scale. In point of fact, people taking offense to the level of a willingness to commit mass murder to something as ridiculous as a cartoon is a very good reason to publish cartoons of that nature, because it is an EXTERNAL censoring force that's being cited for the rationale not to publish.
Regarding DMD, I'm perfectly OK with people saying that they personally don't want to participate because they find it offensive and don't want to be offensive to others. That is very different from arguing we shouldn't be drawing cartoons of this nature because it offends a group of people. The first is a social and interpersonal judgement. The latter is caving to the censorship demands of a group of people.
We wouldn't be having this discussion if the demands were being issued by North Korea, or the Russian government, or the Republican Party in the US, or UKIP in the UK, or extreme radfem, or any other purely political movement. Religion does not deserve any sort of reverent exemption, yet that is exactly what a number of people (not necessarily people on HLP) seem to think is appropriate - that religions, particularly Islam in this case, deserve kid gloves and extra sensitivity because their followers will get offended and may act irrationally.
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Sad timing: while this discussion has been going on, Boko Haram slaughtered more than 2000 villagers in northern Nigeria.
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Edit : You know what, forget it, people are obviously not even trying to listen any more, so I won't bother.
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MP-Ryan, if you continue putting words into my mouth that I did not say, I'm going to start getting annoyed about it.
Good thing you've backtracked on this because he didn't even mention you in his post.
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And where were you when Bobboau was accusing me of 'kinda sorta' mentioning him in mine?
Oh yes.. it's you.
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Jesus christ it wouldn't be so bad that you're resorting to playground tactics if you weren't claiming the moral high ground over satirising religion.
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That's almost funny considering its source.
Anyway, enough, this thread isn't about this.
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PH, the edit function exists in part to take back ill-advised posts. You are neither requested to, expected to, or particularly wanted to quote them in order to shame the person who obviously felt they were not what they wanted to say or needed to be said. If Flipside had stood his ground on the issue, or otherwise not retracted the statement things might be different, but they are not.
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I will finish my stint on this thread with a final statement, since it seems relevant.
If your idea of rising above is to put those around you down, then you are not rising you are simply providing yourself with the illusion of doing so. If you are content with that illusion, then good for you, you'll probably live a happier life than me, but for my part I cannot be content with it.
I guess that's all I'm trying to say, there is a place in the world for ridicule and satire, the original images were a scalpel that cuts, but now we've turned it all into a club that bludgeons.
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This is an interesting development: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11335676/Hacktivists-Anonymous-says-it-will-avenge-Charlie-Hebdo-attacks-by-shutting-down-jihadist-websites.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11335676/Hacktivists-Anonymous-says-it-will-avenge-Charlie-Hebdo-attacks-by-shutting-down-jihadist-websites.html).
Bad guys vs. bad guys!
A related article: http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/16/technology/security/jester-hacker-vigilante/ (http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/16/technology/security/jester-hacker-vigilante/). Fascinating stuff.