Your example and what Charlie Hebdo published are not even anywhere near the same thing. Furthermore, I'm sure the person in question tweeted more than just the word "nigger", even though that is generally seen with hate speech regardless. Taking part in a centuries long tradition of questioning authority and shouting racials slurs are quite dissimilar.
This magazine had a history of publishing offensive covers that specifically attacked Muslims. Calling someone a nigger on twitter is many multitudes lighter than perpetrating institutional racism. This wasn't MAD magazine that got attacked. Where is authority being questioned by comparing girls kidnapped by Muslim extremist with welfare mooches?
This is what I mean by people making the mistake of elevating them to some sort of free speech martyr. This is the equivalent of someone bombing Fox news. Sure Fox news doesn't deserve to be blown up but lets not pretend they weren't assholes. If someone beheaded the Grand Dragon of the KKK on Friday, we do not have to spend Saturday and Sunday talking about how he was a great guy who did nothing but community organize.
This is what I mean by people making the mistake of elevating them to some sort of free speech martyr. This is the equivalent of someone bombing Fox news. Sure Fox news doesn't deserve to be blown up but lets not pretend they weren't assholes. If someone beheaded the Grand Dragon of the KKK on Friday, we do not have to spend Saturday and Sunday talking about how he was a great guy who did nothing but community organize.
Last edited by SuperJail Warden (2015-01-08 17:02:35)
I can't help but feel you're being a little disingenuous here. the case of the guy calling someone a nigger fell in the context of other intimidating and personally targeted responses, delivered to someone's twitter account directly. this is an offence against the person, aggravated by a racial factor. this is quite obviously against someone's rights and constitutes a crime. pillorying institutions or established religions in an impersonal way does not constitute an offence against the person. is this complicated? no. if the magazine was spreading racial slurs or perpetuating negative stereotypes of Muslims then I'd see how you have a grounds for accusing them of criminal behaviour or being bigoted. but they don't home in on radical islam - as you make out - they satirise all religions equally. in a country as proudly secular as France, it's good to have public organs that ridicule all forms of organised religion. how you conflate this with assault and intimidation crimes against the individual is beyond me. as you said yourself, most Muslims are moderate people and would consider killing someone several orders of magnitude above offending a religious principle by drawing images of a prophet. the whole idea of being French is that you identify with your statehood and nation before your religion - hence freedom of expression is privileged above any particular, tribal religious rules. this is why a French paper can blithely offend an entire religion - impersonally - and still see as a supreme expression of individual, personhood. the aim of the satire isn't to demean Islam and insult Muslims: it's to grant French Muslims the ordinary expectations of every other French citizen, to be free of the extremist and tyrannical strictures.SuperJail Warden wrote:
This magazine had a history of publishing offensive covers that specifically attacked Muslims. Calling someone a nigger on twitter is many multitudes lighter than perpetrating institutional racism. This wasn't MAD magazine that got attacked. Where is authority being questioned by comparing girls kidnapped by Muslim extremist with welfare mooches?
This is what I mean by people making the mistake of elevating them to some sort of free speech martyr. This is the equivalent of someone bombing Fox news. Sure Fox news doesn't deserve to be blown up but lets not pretend they weren't assholes. If someone beheaded the Grand Dragon of the KKK on Friday, we do not have to spend Saturday and Sunday talking about how he was a great guy who did nothing but community organize.
this goes for every religion in France equally. religion is meant to be dealt with as a wholly private affair, and any rules that interfere with French subjects confirming to traditional, liberal values are seen as ripe for satire and ridicule. it is not racist or anti-Islam. nor is the satire in this case particularly sophisticated or sensitive. but I don't see why it has to be.
Last edited by uziq (2015-01-09 01:29:37)
France and probably Switzerland are the few countries which have done democracy right.
Freedom of speech is part of that, there's much less of a tyranny of the majority there.
Absolute freedom of expression might seem hard to deal with it, educated, free-thinking grown-ups can ignore it or respond in kind without changing their pulse, its not complex.
Freedom of speech is part of that, there's much less of a tyranny of the majority there.
Absolute freedom of expression might seem hard to deal with it, educated, free-thinking grown-ups can ignore it or respond in kind without changing their pulse, its not complex.
Fuck Israel
Mohammad having sex with a pig. Mohammad getting pissed on by a goat. Mohammed being transsexual. Mohammad filming gay pornography. Mohammad raping a child.
I don't see how any of these attack or combat extremist Islam. It insults pretty much every Muslim in the world extremist or otherwise. They might have made a joke about the Pope every so often but that is different from regularly posting pictures of Jesus engaged in gay sex or something else humiliating. They obviously had an issue with Islam. It is like me publishing a newsletter about niggers 6 days a week but every sunday having one complaining about Mexicans or Chinese. See I make fun of everyone. I don't have an issue with black people.
I have studied French history and I know all about their universalism. I also know it has been used as a shield to protect antisemitic policies and views before. Same thing happens here with people trying to use our freedom of religion to fuck over gays.
You can protect freedom of speech without having to claim that the speech was ever meaningful. People in the media on both sides of the Atlantic are giving these comics a pass because Muslim's feeling don't matter to them. Had they published antisemitic comics as often as they published Muslim ones, the response would be a lot different and much more nuanced.
I don't see how any of these attack or combat extremist Islam. It insults pretty much every Muslim in the world extremist or otherwise. They might have made a joke about the Pope every so often but that is different from regularly posting pictures of Jesus engaged in gay sex or something else humiliating. They obviously had an issue with Islam. It is like me publishing a newsletter about niggers 6 days a week but every sunday having one complaining about Mexicans or Chinese. See I make fun of everyone. I don't have an issue with black people.
I have studied French history and I know all about their universalism. I also know it has been used as a shield to protect antisemitic policies and views before. Same thing happens here with people trying to use our freedom of religion to fuck over gays.
You can protect freedom of speech without having to claim that the speech was ever meaningful. People in the media on both sides of the Atlantic are giving these comics a pass because Muslim's feeling don't matter to them. Had they published antisemitic comics as often as they published Muslim ones, the response would be a lot different and much more nuanced.
SuperJail Warden wrote:
I don't see how any of these attack or combat extremist Islam. It insults pretty much every Muslim in the world extremist or otherwise. They might have made a joke about the Pope every so often but that is different from regularly posting pictures of Jesus engaged in gay sex or something else humiliating.
And nobody else was killed over this.
That image has been on news stands all over the world every other week.
A cute little picture from the onion is very different than a magazine continually publishing possible hate material.
A cute little picture from the onion is very different than a magazine continually publishing possible hate material.
Last edited by SuperJail Warden (2015-01-09 12:39:41)
Onion doesn't print anymore
A one off issue by the onion, which most people didn't even know printed anything, is not the same a national magazine repeatedly publishing anti-muslim cartoons.
I don't even know what you are trying to debate me about. My point was that the comics were ugly and unnecessary. If you want to argue about why other religions don't bomb people for comics, you can go do that elsewhere because i don't care.
The Benghazi attack wasn't caused by the video.
"It was not an innocent mob. The video or 9/11 made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their perspective but this was a clearly planned military-type attack."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Bengh … onsibility
I don't even know what you are trying to debate me about. My point was that the comics were ugly and unnecessary. If you want to argue about why other religions don't bomb people for comics, you can go do that elsewhere because i don't care.
The Benghazi attack wasn't caused by the video.
"It was not an innocent mob. The video or 9/11 made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their perspective but this was a clearly planned military-type attack."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Bengh … onsibility
the perpetrators of this attack weren't triggered by the pictures, either. they were radicalised and intent on committing terrorist attacks (cf. plot to blow up the US embassy in paris) years before the staged cartoon furore ever broke out. yes, the cartoonists were the symbolic target. but the cartoons didn't 'cause' shit. these guys were funnelling people towards AQ training and insurgencies before any cartoons were published. they were radicalised by the images from abu ghraib more than the cartoonist's pencil. so quit with your pap. i don't think it's important that you find the style or content tasteful.
Last edited by uziq (2015-01-10 10:52:39)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Sydne … m_protestsSuperJail Warden wrote:
A one off issue by the onion, which most people didn't even know printed anything, is not the same a national magazine repeatedly publishing anti-muslim cartoons.
I don't even know what you are trying to debate me about. My point was that the comics were ugly and unnecessary. If you want to argue about why other religions don't bomb people for comics, you can go do that elsewhere because i don't care.
The Benghazi attack wasn't caused by the video.
"It was not an innocent mob. The video or 9/11 made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their perspective but this was a clearly planned military-type attack."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Bengh … onsibility
Fuckers who joined ISIS showed up at the protest as well. They protested about a shitty film nobody saw.On 15 September 2012, a protest against an anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims was held in Sydney, New South Wales. While the protest started peacefully, violent confrontations between police and protesters began when protesters reached the United States Consulate General.
Good thing I was only talking about Benghazi
Indeed.SuperJail Warden wrote:
That image has been on news stands all over the world every other week.
A cute little picture from the onion is very different than a magazine continually publishing possible hate material.
But as others have said, and you have ignored (and denied), they lampoon Christianity in exactly the same way.
The content published by the magazine is not the issue here.
Last edited by Bertster7 (2015-01-11 11:38:36)
nor should it be. i find myself identifying with Charlie Hebdo - Je suis charlie, as it were . . .
This whole crap reminds me of the situation with Isaac Hayes and South Park.
For 9 years, he was the voice actor for the Chef character, apparently having no problem with how the series made fun about religions like Christianity or Islam, minorities and everything else.
Then suddenly, his religion Scientology is satirized and he feels the urge to protest and in the end left the show.
Everything is always funny until you yourself get a load of it.
Middle Eastern and/or Islamic newspapers are full stupid, anti-Semitic and anti-West caricatures and comics, including Holocaust denying ones.
These countries and cultures, which are mostly lead by Islam and Sharia laws as their core idiology, lack the Age of Enlightenment that took place in most Western societies during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Unfortunately, in the Middle East, that phase was substituted by imperialism and colonialism, which is a bad setting to get enlightened of course.
And after that, it was replaced by totalitarian systems in many cases.
Followed by a short, blossomless Arab Spring, which did not result in any democratic fruits (apart from Tunisia).
For 9 years, he was the voice actor for the Chef character, apparently having no problem with how the series made fun about religions like Christianity or Islam, minorities and everything else.
Then suddenly, his religion Scientology is satirized and he feels the urge to protest and in the end left the show.
Everything is always funny until you yourself get a load of it.
Middle Eastern and/or Islamic newspapers are full stupid, anti-Semitic and anti-West caricatures and comics, including Holocaust denying ones.
These countries and cultures, which are mostly lead by Islam and Sharia laws as their core idiology, lack the Age of Enlightenment that took place in most Western societies during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Unfortunately, in the Middle East, that phase was substituted by imperialism and colonialism, which is a bad setting to get enlightened of course.
And after that, it was replaced by totalitarian systems in many cases.
Followed by a short, blossomless Arab Spring, which did not result in any democratic fruits (apart from Tunisia).
not only is that a massive reduction and generalisation, it also presumes the idea that 'enlightenment' is some sort of logical progression or 'successful' path towards some defined futurity. it patently isn't. not all societies are naturally heading towards the same sort of 'enlightenment', nor any sort. globalisation spread at the same time as western europe's rapid expansion, so they tend to go hand-in-hand as ideologies. the locus of revolt in the middle-east and other outposts against the western way of life is precisely located in this perception that the flattening, one-size-fits-all ideology of western democratic liberalism is poisonous to their own rich histories. and so it is. the middle-east may be 'unenlightened' - so far as that denotes a specific intellectual development highly dependent upon specific socio-cultural circumstances - but it hardly means their own development has never been rational or sophisticated (or capable of tolerance). in fact, the culture of averroes is far beyond what many european states have ever achieved. it's not so simple as this big, scary, fanatical 'Other' lacking the sophistication or intellectual development of us, way out ahead in a universally-measured 'race' of progress. some islamic cultures have fostered intellectual inquiry, philosophy, arts, and the better treatment of jews than many christian ones.globefish23 wrote:
This whole crap reminds me of the situation with Isaac Hayes and South Park.
For 9 years, he was the voice actor for the Chef character, apparently having no problem with how the series made fun about religions like Christianity or Islam, minorities and everything else.
Then suddenly, his religion Scientology is satirized and he feels the urge to protest and in the end left the show.
Everything is always funny until you yourself get a load of it.
Middle Eastern and/or Islamic newspapers are full stupid, anti-Semitic and anti-West caricatures and comics, including Holocaust denying ones.
These countries and cultures, which are mostly lead by Islam and Sharia laws as their core idiology, lack the Age of Enlightenment that took place in most Western societies during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Unfortunately, in the Middle East, that phase was substituted by imperialism and colonialism, which is a bad setting to get enlightened of course.
And after that, it was replaced by totalitarian systems in many cases.
Followed by a short, blossomless Arab Spring, which did not result in any democratic fruits (apart from Tunisia).
yes, we had an enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. but the fact that we are clashing with the extremist fringes of other world cultures shows up as many faults in our own system as it exposes us to the 'barbarism' of the Other. this is far from a liberal apologia for terrorism, but what i am saying is that to simply relegate islamic discontent with the west as them 'lacking enlightenment', as if the endpoint of all human civilisation is middle-class cosmopolitanism and the enthronement of 18th century liberalism, is totally wrong. also you are completely glossing that the west had to go through many tyrannies and failed projects of its own before it could reach a stage of tolerating free speech - even up to and including the 20th century. the rank hypocrisy of so many world leaders turning up to the charlie protests, when their own contemporary societies are still battling so much repression and stricture, shows that it is clearly not a 'us and them' division, nor a matter of the 'enlightened' and the 'unenlightened' in the ante-chamber of (a single) history.
Last edited by uziq (2015-01-12 13:05:37)
Sunni Fundamentalism (wahhabism) is essentially an anti-colonial muslim narrative. The ME had its golden age in the 16th century where it kept all ideas of Greek democracy, mathematics, philosophy etc. It's just now Wahhabism has largely been alleged to cause Sunni extremism due to the ideology being bankroll by Saudi oil money in developing country.globefish23 wrote:
This whole crap reminds me of the situation with Isaac Hayes and South Park.
For 9 years, he was the voice actor for the Chef character, apparently having no problem with how the series made fun about religions like Christianity or Islam, minorities and everything else.
Then suddenly, his religion Scientology is satirized and he feels the urge to protest and in the end left the show.
Everything is always funny until you yourself get a load of it.
Middle Eastern and/or Islamic newspapers are full stupid, anti-Semitic and anti-West caricatures and comics, including Holocaust denying ones.
These countries and cultures, which are mostly lead by Islam and Sharia laws as their core idiology, lack the Age of Enlightenment that took place in most Western societies during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Unfortunately, in the Middle East, that phase was substituted by imperialism and colonialism, which is a bad setting to get enlightened of course.
And after that, it was replaced by totalitarian systems in many cases.
Followed by a short, blossomless Arab Spring, which did not result in any democratic fruits (apart from Tunisia).
That's why I said that the Western imperialism and colonialism is at fault for this situation. After their enlightenment, they basically suppressed any chance for others to continue after their Golden Ages.
And that is a massive reduction and generalization as well.
And that is a massive reduction and generalization as well.
Iran was progressing pretty well until the West got involved. Now look at it.
Fuck Israel
tariq ali sometimes annoys me, but:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n02/tariq-ali/short-cuts
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n02/tariq-ali/short-cuts
Can't miss the NFL playoffs