[Aesaar]

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.

[karajorma]

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).

[castor]

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".

[MP-Ryan]

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.

[Mongoose]

Sad timing: while this discussion has been going on, Boko Haram slaughtered more than 2000 villagers in northern Nigeria.

[Flipside]

Edit : You know what, forget it, people are obviously not even trying to listen any more, so I won't bother.

[Phantom Hoover]

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.

[Flipside]

And where were you when Bobboau was accusing me of 'kinda sorta' mentioning him in mine?

Oh yes.. it's you.

[Phantom Hoover]

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.

[Flipside]

That's almost funny considering its source.

Anyway, enough, this thread isn't about this.

[Scotty]

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.

[Flipside]

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.

[GhylTarvoke]

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.

Bad guys vs. bad guys!

A related article: http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/16/technology/security/jester-hacker-vigilante/. Fascinating stuff.