I guess that if he had chosen any other subject for his cartoons, he would still be alive today.
Alive, but lying down, because having capitulated against intolerance.
But for what cause?
Freedom? No.
The ability to mock religion in public? Yes. Hardly an honourable cause. Not one which I consider worth defending.
One of the Ten Commandments says 'Thou shalt not kill'. It was wrong of the Muslim terrorists to kill him.
Another says 'Love thy neighbour as thyself'. It was wrong of Hebdo to draw such an inflammatory mocking cartoon, as he broke that commandment, in my opinion.
Another says 'Love thy neighbour as thyself'. It was wrong of Hebdo to draw such an inflammatory mocking cartoon, as he broke that commandment, in my opinion.
Charb was free , like anyone else, to accept or reject these commandments, which belong to religious sphere.
You have no right to judge the cause he freely decided to engage in according to those religious considerations.
If you consider the long history leading to democracy (in developed countries alone), managing to extract the society to religious obscurantism was a long and painful process. That was Charb's cause. To me it is respectable, because his assassination (and our discussion, in a way) shows that we have not yet reached the end of this process (not to mention the women condition and the human rights situation in islamic countries).
<span style="font-size:16px;line-height:1.4em;">Another says 'Love thy neighbour as thyself'. It was wrong of Hebdo to draw such an inflammatory mocking cartoon, as he broke that commandment, in my opinion.</span>
Charb was free , like anyone else, to accept or reject these commandments, which belong to religious sphere.
You have no right to judge the cause he freely decided to engage in according to those religious considerations.
If you consider the long history leading to democracy (in developed countries alone), managing to extract the society to religious obscurantism was a long and painful process. That was Charb's cause. To me it is respectable, because his assassination (and our discussion, in a way) shows that we have not yet reached the end of this process (not to mention the women condition and the human rights situation in islamic countries)
If Ebdo rejected the commandment to love his neighbour as himself, then the Muslim terrorists also rejected the commandment to not kill.
I think it is better to try and follow these commandments. If you choose to reject the commandments, then you have complete freedom, but that freedom is not necessarily good.
I disagree. There are longterm consequences for our actions, especially when it comes to violence. If we eradicate all these current radicals are we not simply creating an environment for the next generation in the ruble of the havoc we wreaked on their parents, culture, religion, and/or society?
Call me crazy but I'd like to see education and comparison as something we consider as longterm objectives.
All true, however, closing their bank accounts or emptying them seems like a good idea though, or screwing with their command and control. Call me a radical on this (and normally I am not), but I'd like to see Anonymous destroy all ISIS digital capabilities if they can.
The ability to mock religion in public? Yes. Hardly an honourable cause. Not one which I consider worth defending.
One of the Ten Commandments says 'Thou shalt not kill'. It was wrong of the Muslim terrorists to kill him.
Another says 'Love thy neighbour as thyself'. It was wrong of Hebdo to draw such an inflammatory mocking cartoon, as he broke that commandment, in my opinion.
Your comparisons are ludicrous. Mocking a mythical being (aka a god / profit / fairy / goblin/ Santa Clause / tooth fairy) vs killing people? Are you serious? This is the 21st century, well at least it is where I live!
Edit: blame the G&T ! lol ... 'prophet' of course ...
Your comparisons are ludicrous. Mocking a mythical being (aka a god / profit / fairy / goblin/ Santa Clause / tooth fairy) vs killing people? Are you serious? This is the 21st century, well at least it is where I live!
On AI we only mock profit when we discuss Samsung.
You don't have to have the same point of view to support the cause. The main point is that killing someone in response is not acceptable. Kind of like saying I don't agree with what you're saying but I'll defend your right to say it.
Apple wouldn't publish the cartoons themselves just as they wouldn't publish pornography but they would defend the rights of others to fair judgement over the content, which would never result in the loss of life.
We shouldn't be under any illusion that there is a global consensus on what qualifies as material suitable for publication. Is it suitable for a photographer to display pictures of nude children playing/urinating, something you'd see on a beach? Is it suitable to publish war memoranda, swastikas, images of torture? Should sports teams, streets, songwriters, poets continue to use names or words that cause offence to certain groups? Is it ok for sexually explicit Asian anime cartoons to depict younger characters?
'Je suis charlie' doesn't say that what they published was suitable material for mainstream publication, it just says nobody deserves to die for doing that. People who support this cause wouldn't necessarily think that about all material. Anything involving children, there would be calls from people for the death penalty:
Comment at the bottom: "hang them very slowly. Of course the death penalty will never be brought back because the bleeding hearts will never allow it to happen."
Of course there's often a difference between what people write online and how they'd deal with issues in person but the same process that makes someone kill over religious imagery causes people to feel incensed over other forms of media. We spend a lifetime developing positive or negative responses to things. There was a case of someone using twitter to attack the McCann family - the family whose child went missing after they left them at home while they went out:
This ended badly because that person who thought she had the freedom to say what she wanted was pushed into the spotlight by the media suggesting police were investigating her and she took her own life in a hotel room. There was another incident with a lorry crash that happened in the UK:
"Ross Loraine wrote: “So a bin lorry has crashed into 100 people in Glasgow eh, probably the most trash it’s ever picked up in one day that.”
The 19-year-old deleted his Twitter account minutes after posting his comment amid outrage from hundreds of social media users.
When the post went viral as other users made an effort to name and shame Loraine, of Sunderland, he gave himself up to police. He was arrested on suspicion of making a malicious communication and was bailed pending further inquiries."
If that comment had been said months or years later or not in reference to a particular event, it would have passed by unnoticed.
There was an article recently about how people are using encrypted web connections to maintain anonymity and freedom of speech but are using it to continue abuse hidden from the web that most people access (aka the clearnet):
"In the United States, pornography is considered a form of personal expression governed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Pornography is generally protected speech, unless it is obscene, as the Supreme Court of the United States held in 1973 in Miller v. California."
Who determines what is and isn't obscene? The UK just passed a law banning the production of pornography containing previously ok material:
In Eastern countries, their laws have been written to cover a completely different society. People in these countries have been using the same encrypted services described above to bypass censorship laws because they disagree with the law.
The ideal scenario for radical Muslims would be to become a majority population in Western countries and vote to implement Sharia Law. How could Western democracy undo that except the same way they did in Egypt, which was militarily overthrowing the oppressive government. Is it still a democracy if you use military force to overthrow a majority vote in a democratic election that was in favor of oppression?
People are clearly afraid of this kind of scenario taking place:
I think this is why some people hold onto religions because they are seen as unchanging in the face of ever-changing human laws and handed down by an unquestionable authority without realising that they are just really old and restrictive laws written by people like them and the only unquestionable authority is granted to them by the people who believe them.
Eventually we have to all come to the conclusion that we are the masters of our own domain and the rules we implement are by majority. The strength in Islam and Christianity has nothing to do with the minority of people who handed down the texts, it's in the huge numbers of people willing to believe what they say. A magician's magic is only magic to an audience willing to suspend their disbelief. Passive religions speak out against Islam but they're only processing a different text in exactly the same way they are and it's that process that's corrupt.
Other religions may not frequently harm people by murder any more but there are other ways to cause harm. You can deny contraception because it violates your belief system and promote the rise of AIDs and unwanted pregnancy, which in turn causes great harm. Christians condemn Islamic murder but in the same breath would happily say that those people will burn for all eternity in a fiery hell.
It's understandable why people are moderate towards religion because having an unquestionable and highly moral authority (even fictional) does result in good works that otherwise would be difficult to obtain. However, the thought process by which this is reached is far too dangerous. It relies on people denying rational thought. Social progress and peaceful existence can only come about through rational thought because as living organisms we change over time. Change requires dealing with scenarios that are new. Worryingly, the numbers of people who hold to any religion total in a majority of the world:
Almost 6/7 billion. Most of whom get taught to find partners in their own faith, taught that anyone questioning their faith should be seen as an enemy, that it's important to raise their children with the same values.
But if people are taught that there is no unquestionable moral authority then some people will not acknowledge any human authority. Anders Breivik did this when he refused to acknowledge the authority of the court trying him for the murder of 77 people and severe injuries to others in Norway:
He was religiously motivated as a Christian protesting against the rise of Islam.
Control comes about through an authority existing and the people being controlled respecting it. People who follow religion are (without knowing it) respecting the authority of human beings who lived and wrote laws millennia ago. People who follow modern law are respecting the authority of more recent human beings who wrote them. Modern laws are far easier to invalidate because of the abundance of information about why the laws came about and the profiles of the people motivated to write them. This doesn't exist for ancient laws and so people respect them more but people need to understand that it's exactly the same setup and when people scrutinize modern law when it's in conflict of ancient or religious law, they are free to do the same in reverse.
Freedom of speech isn't meant to give people the right to offend others (meaning that offensive material is promoted) in the same way the right to own a weapon doesn't grant the right to commit violence. The goal is always peace. They give you a right to choose how to express yourself and to question everything and your choice will have reasonable consequences. To some Islamists, the consequences dealt out in the Hebdo case were reasonable to them. To people supporting 'Je suis charlie', they were wholly unreasonable consequences, even if they don't promote the same material. As hard as it is to do, reasonable people even in circumstances like this have to continue to lead by example and not retaliate with unreasonable consequences.
It's quite clear that you don't understand the meaning of #JeSuisCharlie. It's probably due to the cultural difference of you being an american/anglo-saxon and me a european with French as his native tongue. It's OK and I understand that.
Freedom of speech and intolerance are seen way differently across the ocean and we as europeans see a lot of hypocrisy in the way americans feel about freedom of speech. Religious intolerance for instance. You may mock everything but not religion (even when it is at the heart of the latest pedophilia scandals). You may show everything but not a nipple or "worse" though the US are the world's greatest consumers of pornography.
But that's not all. The greatest difference between us and you is your intolerance when someone does exercice his freedom of speech. Not convinced? Have a read of US-born posts on this site. Have a read at your last paragraph. Actually to us, relating exercising one's freedom of speech to drawing a drawing a weapon is quite flabbergasting.
So, yes, we are allowed to mock religion and the people living it - especially according to millennial "laws". We are allowed to question the people who question Darwinism. We are allowed to mock the people who distrust vaccinations for religious beliefs. Because, sir, they do too. And they are intolerant in their doing. A secular society has since 3 centuries evolved into a "society of men" (men: m/f).
It goes way further than defending the freedom of speech. It means that we don't abide with intolerance. It means that we subscribe to Voltaire when he says "I may hate what you say but I'll fight to the death for having you the right to say it".
Apple is quite on the opposite of that school of thought. Which is their right. Which gives me the right to question them publishing #JeSuisCharlie. For they are not.
You don't have to have the same point of view to support the cause. The main point is that killing someone in response is not acceptable. Kind of like saying I don't agree with what you're saying but I'll defend your right to say it.
Apple wouldn't publish the cartoons themselves just as they wouldn't publish pornography but they would defend the rights of others to fair judgement over the content, which would never result in the loss of life.
We shouldn't be under any illusion that there is a global consensus on what qualifies as material suitable for publication. Is it suitable for a photographer to display pictures of nude children playing/urinating, something you'd see on a beach? Is it suitable to publish war memoranda, swastikas, images of torture? Should sports teams, streets, songwriters, poets continue to use names or words that cause offence to certain groups? Is it ok for sexually explicit Asian anime cartoons to depict younger characters?
'Je suis charlie' doesn't say that what they published was suitable material for mainstream publication, it just says nobody deserves to die for doing that. People who support this cause wouldn't necessarily think that about all material. Anything involving children, there would be calls from people for the death penalty:
Comment at the bottom: "hang them very slowly. Of course the death penalty will never be brought back because the bleeding hearts will never allow it to happen."
Of course there's often a difference between what people write online and how they'd deal with issues in person but the same process that makes someone kill over religious imagery causes people to feel incensed over other forms of media. We spend a lifetime developing positive or negative responses to things. There was a case of someone using twitter to attack the McCann family - the family whose child went missing after they left them at home while they went out:
This ended badly because that person who thought she had the freedom to say what she wanted was pushed into the spotlight by the media suggesting police were investigating her and she took her own life in a hotel room. There was another incident with a lorry crash that happened in the UK:
"Ross Loraine wrote: “So a bin lorry has crashed into 100 people in Glasgow eh, probably the most trash it’s ever picked up in one day that.”
The 19-year-old deleted his Twitter account minutes after posting his comment amid outrage from hundreds of social media users.
When the post went viral as other users made an effort to name and shame Loraine, of Sunderland, he gave himself up to police. He was arrested on suspicion of making a malicious communication and was bailed pending further inquiries."
If that comment had been said months or years later or not in reference to a particular event, it would have passed by unnoticed.
There was an article recently about how people are using encrypted web connections to maintain anonymity and freedom of speech but are using it to continue abuse hidden from the web that most people access (aka the clearnet):
"In the United States, pornography is considered a form of personal expression governed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Pornography is generally protected speech, unless it is obscene, as the Supreme Court of the United States held in 1973 in Miller v. California."
Who determines what is and isn't obscene? The UK just passed a law banning the production of pornography containing previously ok material:
In Eastern countries, their laws have been written to cover a completely different society. People in these countries have been using the same encrypted services described above to bypass censorship laws because they disagree with the law.
The ideal scenario for radical Muslims would be to become a majority population in Western countries and vote to implement Sharia Law. How could Western democracy undo that except the same way they did in Egypt, which was militarily overthrowing the oppressive government. Is it still a democracy if you use military force to overthrow a majority vote in a democratic election that was in favor of oppression?
People are clearly afraid of this kind of scenario taking place:
I think this is why some people hold onto religions because they are seen as unchanging in the face of ever-changing human laws and handed down by an unquestionable authority without realising that they are just really old and restrictive laws written by people like them and the only unquestionable authority is granted to them by the people who believe them.
Eventually we have to all come to the conclusion that we are the masters of our own domain and the rules we implement are by majority. The strength in Islam and Christianity has nothing to do with the minority of people who handed down the texts, it's in the huge numbers of people willing to believe what they say. A magician's magic is only magic to an audience willing to suspend their disbelief. Passive religions speak out against Islam but they're only processing a different text in exactly the same way they are and it's that process that's corrupt.
Other religions may not frequently harm people by murder any more but there are other ways to cause harm. You can deny contraception because it violates your belief system and promote the rise of AIDs and unwanted pregnancy, which in turn causes great harm. Christians condemn Islamic murder but in the same breath would happily say that those people will burn for all eternity in a fiery hell.
It's understandable why people are moderate towards religion because having an unquestionable and highly moral authority (even fictional) does result in good works that otherwise would be difficult to obtain. However, the thought process by which this is reached is far too dangerous. It relies on people denying rational thought. Social progress and peaceful existence can only come about through rational thought because as living organisms we change over time. Change requires dealing with scenarios that are new. Worryingly, the numbers of people who hold to any religion total in a majority of the world:
Almost 6/7 billion. Most of whom get taught to find partners in their own faith, taught that anyone questioning their faith should be seen as an enemy, that it's important to raise their children with the same values.
But if people are taught that there is no unquestionable moral authority then some people will not acknowledge any human authority. Anders Breivik did this when he refused to acknowledge the authority of the court trying him for the murder of 77 people and severe injuries to others in Norway:
He was religiously motivated as a Christian protesting against the rise of Islam.
Control comes about through an authority existing and the people being controlled respecting it. People who follow religion are (without knowing it) respecting the authority of human beings who lived and wrote laws millennia ago. People who follow modern law are respecting the authority of more recent human beings who wrote them. Modern laws are far easier to invalidate because of the abundance of information about why the laws came about and the profiles of the people motivated to write them. This doesn't exist for ancient laws and so people respect them more but people need to understand that it's exactly the same setup and when people scrutinize modern law when it's in conflict of ancient or religious law, they are free to do the same in reverse.
Freedom of speech isn't meant to give people the right to offend others (meaning that offensive material is promoted) in the same way the right to own a weapon doesn't grant the right to commit violence. The goal is always peace. They give you a right to choose how to express yourself and to question everything and your choice will have reasonable consequences. To some Islamists, the consequences dealt out in the Hebdo case were reasonable to them. To people supporting 'Je suis charlie', they were wholly unreasonable consequences, even if they don't promote the same material. As hard as it is to do, reasonable people even in circumstances like this have to continue to lead by example and not retaliate with unreasonable consequences.
It's quite clear that you don't understand the meaning of #JeSuisCharlie. It's probably due to the cultural difference of you being an american/anglo-saxon and me a european with French as his native tongue. It's OK and I understand that.
Freedom of speech and intolerance are seen way differently across the ocean and we as europeans see a lot of hypocrisy in the way americans feel about freedom of speech. Religious intolerance for instance. You may mock everything but not religion (even when it is at the heart of the latest pedophilia scandals). You may show everything but not a nipple or "worse" though the US are the world's greatest consumers of pornography.
But that's not all. The greatest difference between us and you is your intolerance when someone does exercice his freedom of speech. Not convinced? Have a read of US-born posts on this site. Have a read at your last paragraph. Actually to us, relating exercising one's freedom of speech to drawing a drawing a weapon is quite flabbergasting.
So, yes, we are allowed to mock religion and the people living it - especially according to millennial "laws". We are allowed to question the people who question Darwinism. We are allowed to mock the people who distrust vaccinations for religious beliefs. Because, sir, they do too. And they are intolerant in their doing. A secular society has since 3 centuries evolved into a "society of men" (men: m/f).
#JeSuisCharlie means, literally, I am Charlie.
It goes way further than defending the freedom of speech. <span style="line-height:1.4em;">It means that we don't abide with intolerance. It means that we subscribe to Voltaire when he says "I may hate what you say but I'll fight to the death for having you the right to say it".</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">Apple is quite on the opposite of that school of thought. Which is their right. Which gives me the right to question them publishing #JeSuisCharlie. For they are not.</span>
I am Charlie means tolerating evil.
How far should we tolerate evil? How should we react when our loved ones are murdered?
Put the murderer of a child in front of its mother, and she will probably claw his eyes out, because the provocation is too great.
So it was with the Muslim terrorists.
There is no such thing as free speech.
Tolerating evil, for me, means turning the other cheek. In practice, that means locking people up for grave sins, rather than responding in kind.
As such, it would be wise for France to instigate a law banning the portrayal of certain subjects in cartoons, with penalty of imprisonment. If that law had been in place a few days ago, those twelve lives would have been saved.
This quote (in French) comes from an arabic philosopher (Abdennour Bidar). He issues the problem related to religion being at the centre of everything
Quote:
Qu'as-tu d'admirable aujourd'hui, mon ami ? Qu'est-ce qui en toi reste digne de susciter le respect et l'admiration des autres peuples et civilisations de la Terre ? Où sont tes sages, et as-tu encore une sagesse à proposer au monde ? Où sont tes grands hommes, qui sont tes Mandela, qui sont tes Gandhi, qui sont tes Aung San Suu Kyi ? Où sont tes grands penseurs, tes intellectuels dont les livres devraient être lus dans le monde entier comme au temps où les mathématiciens et les philosophes arabes ou persans faisaient référence de l'Inde à l'Espagne ? En réalité tu es devenu si faible, si impuissant derrière la certitude que tu affiches toujours au sujet de toi-même... Tu ne sais plus du tout qui tu es ni où tu veux aller et cela te rend aussi malheureux qu'agressif... Tu t'obstines à ne pas écouter ceux qui t'appellent à changer en te libérant enfin de la domination que tu as offerte à la religion sur la vie toute entière. Tu as choisi de considérer que Mohammed était prophète et roi. Tu as choisi de définir l'islam comme religion politique, sociale, morale, devant régner comme un tyran aussi bien sur l'État que sur la vie civile, aussi bien dans la rue et dans la maison qu'à l'intérieur même de chaque conscience. Tu as choisi de croire et d'imposer que l'islam veut dire soumission alors que le Coran lui-même proclame qu'«Il n'y a pas de contrainte en religion» (La ikraha fi Dîn). Tu as fait de son Appel à la liberté l'empire de la contrainte ! Comment une civilisation peut-elle trahir à ce point son propre texte sacré ? Je dis qu'il est l'heure, dans la civilisation de l'islam, d'instituer cette liberté spirituelle - la plus sublime et difficile de toutes - à la place de toutes les lois inventées par des générations de théologiens !
The gist of it is that religion cannot adapt to society when it dictates not only the spiritual life, but politics, moral and social order as well.
Continuing on Islam, he says it is in contradiction with the Qu'ran itself (La ikraha fi Dîn). Freedom of thought has been turned into a web of constraints.
In such a society, where then is the freedom of thought?
Finally, if I look at the american society, where ideas like "intelligent design", "creationism" coming from the dark middle ages are finding ground again, I'm not particularly optimistic either. I read it, I hear about it, and at the same time I smell the nauseous smell of people burned at the stake.
In the past, courageous people have dared to say that woman is equal to man, that slavery is an abomination, etc ...
By doing so, they have been considered as offensive, and frequently have been assassinated for this.
Forumers living in democratic countries benefit from the space of liberty they have conquered, but that many other people, in other parts of the world, still do not enjoy. (sometimes, when I read AI threads , I have the impression that this space of liberty is still a battle, including in some developed countries ...).
Fight against religious intolerance is a fight for freedom. Criticize it as "offensive" is ridiculous, and is a desperate argument of those who cannot stand criticism and democracy.
That isn't even close to accurate. That sounds like something from FOX News.
I've studied the Bible pretty extensively. The constraints Christians operate under (aka the New Testament) make it pretty clear killing people is not kosher.
"If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."
"If a man or woman living among you in one of the towns the Lord gives you is found doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God in violation of his covenant, and contrary to my command has worshiped other gods, take the man or woman who has done this evil deed to your city gate and stone that person to death. On the testimony of two or three witnesses a person is to be put to death, but no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. The hands of the witnesses must be the first in putting that person to death, and then the hands of all the people. You must purge the evil from among you.
If cases come before your courts that are too difficult for you to judge—whether bloodshed, lawsuits or assaults—take them to the place the Lord your God will choose. Go to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office at that time. Inquire of them and they will give you the verdict. You must act according to the decisions they give you at the place the Lord will choose. Be careful to do everything they instruct you to do. Act according to whatever they teach you and the decisions they give you. Do not turn aside from what they tell you, to the right or to the left. Anyone who shows contempt for the judge or for the priest who stands ministering there to the Lord your God is to be put to death. You must purge the evil from Israel. All the people will hear and be afraid, and will not be contemptuous again."
"Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): "I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instil terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them.""
"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter;"
These texts are all written by people who had a desire to control other people - large groups of poorly educated people millennia ago that they couldn't control by force, which is testament to the power that writing and ideas have over weapons. Lots of people have been killed as a result because words are open to interpretation.
Fortunately modern Christians are able to ignore more violent parts of the texts by excusing them as being limited to a particular time period because things like stoning are archaic forms of punishment. In Eastern countries, stoning is still used so there is not a more passive culture to balance with the texts. For Muslims that have integrated into Western society there is but there are still holdovers like honor killings and violent attacks for infidelity or disagreeable relationships.
Having a tolerant/liberal attitude towards others is what makes the problems go away. No one was ever killed because someone tolerated their ideas too much. It's intolerance/conservatism and rigidly following an unchanging ideology that causes the problems. It's the unwillingness to accept differences. That doesn't mean being tolerant of intolerant ideologies. It means promoting the idea of tolerance to people who are intolerant by nature.
On the topic of free speech, many people have come out promoting this but we don't really have free speech i.e speech without consequences including suppression. Someone can be sued or arrested for messages they send on twitter. A newspaper most likely wouldn't be allowed to print headlines like 'the country is full of n*rs, jews and gypsy immigrants, they should f* off back to where they came from' or 'kill all the gays'. That sort of thing would fall under hate speech and something would be done about it.
"The reason why fighting words are categorically excluded from the protection of the First Amendment is not that their content communicates any particular idea, but that their content embodies a particularly intolerable (and socially unnecessary) mode of expressing whatever idea the speaker wishes to convey. The Supreme Court embraced the idea that hate speech is permissible unless it will lead to imminent hate violence."
"In the United Kingdom, several statutes criminalize hate speech against several categories of persons. The statutes forbid communication which is hateful, threatening, abusive, or insulting and which targets a person on account of skin colour, race, disability, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, or sexual orientation. The penalties for hate speech include fines, imprisonment, or both."
"France prohibits by its penal code and by its press laws public and private communication which is defamatory or insulting, or which incites discrimination, hatred, or violence against a person or a group of persons on account of place of origin, ethnicity or lack thereof, nationality, race, specific religion, sex, sexual orientation, or handicap. The law prohibits declarations that justify or deny crimes against humanity, for example, the Holocaust."
As with religious texts, laws are similarly written to control large groups of people (with varying degrees of education) without the use of physical force. They act as pre-emptive conditioning. Children are taught the same way - they are conditioned to behave a certain way with words before they can do harm to themselves or others e.g don't go near the fire.
We can't have completely free speech because it allows people to use hateful speech, one example in the wikipedia article was the cross-burning on the lawn of a black family. It would also allow Muslim clerics to stand in the streets and proclaim death to all non-believers of Islam. It does allows Christians to picket funerals protesting homosexuality.
Killing should never be the result of hate speech but then amputation shouldn't be the result of theft either. The culture that fundamentalists come from promotes the notion of harsh punishment for minor crimes.
Western societies draw lines at content that we are prepared to tolerate. Those lines are too liberal for some Eastern cultures and with 1.6 billion followers of Islam (1 in 5 people on Earth), they're going to try to change that and a small portion with violence. That can't be allowed to happen.
Stephen Fry among others called to republish the cartoons, the magazine has ramped up publication for the next edition:
That thought had crossed my mind but the goal is to encourage peace and not war. Do we expect Muslims to be more tolerant towards more liberal Western society by doing this? They need more reasons to be tolerant, not fewer. This doesn't apply much to the murderers, they've made their life choice already and violated their own ideology by murdering a Muslim police officer. They shouldn't be allowed to act as representatives for 1.6b people nor should those billions of people be given reasons to passively support them.
People like to compete and when a member of a competing ideology makes an offensive move you retaliate (support, defense, offense), ignore (walk away) or accept defeat. Hebdo made multiple offensive moves, Muslim extremists retaliated by offense. 'Je suis charlie' is a form of support and defense of what the publisher did, republishing is further offense, defeat (accepting the killings as justified) is not an option. Walking away would probably be accepting that the cartoon material causes offense and not continuing to do it. That means making new judgements over what kind of speech is hateful and what isn't and what exemptions exist for a satirical context.
We know the goal, that's the easy part and that is to have an outcome that pleases everyone - promoting the feeling of freedom of expression while at the same time promoting the suppression of hate. Reaching that balance is not easy but as I say, the best way forward is to promote the benefits of tolerance rather than give people reason to justify their intolerance.
"Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them"
I've studied the Bible pretty extensively. The constraints Christians operate under (aka the New Testament) make it pretty clear killing people is not kosher.
So I'm erroneously attributing the Old Testament as part of the Christian religion, or are you choosing to ignore the negative parts while still adhering to other parts?
Taking Deuteronomy out of context doesn't work.
I, for one, cannot wait for you to put those excerpts into the proper context.
For your information, Christ was born at the birth of Christ. ????
I fear it's only a matter of time before this kind of thing (group of Islamic extremists with military-grade weapons doing rampant shooting on street) happens in other European cities, or even the US.
IS must be rubbing their hands with joy when they saw what a few could do to the metropolitan city protected by polices with only handguns. It's way easier than taking Kobani for sure. And anyone did it will be way more famous.
Indeed,
And the solution? Remove the immigrants most likely to be terrorists—ie those who profess to be Muslims. It would mean that most of the Muslim immigrants who have no intention of terrorising anyone would also have to leave, but that is the dilemma facing France, England and the rest of Europe: either allow immigrants to roam freely and accept that terrorists will murder your citizens, or put very strict controls on immigration, far stricter than is the case today, which will reduce the chance of terrorist murder substantially and lead to a better, more Christian society.
The liberal ideology of multiculturalism has failed.
Comments
But for what cause?
Freedom? No.
The ability to mock religion in public? Yes. Hardly an honourable cause. Not one which I consider worth defending.
One of the Ten Commandments says 'Thou shalt not kill'. It was wrong of the Muslim terrorists to kill him.
Another says 'Love thy neighbour as thyself'. It was wrong of Hebdo to draw such an inflammatory mocking cartoon, as he broke that commandment, in my opinion.
Charb was free , like anyone else, to accept or reject these commandments, which belong to religious sphere.
You have no right to judge the cause he freely decided to engage in according to those religious considerations.
If you consider the long history leading to democracy (in developed countries alone), managing to extract the society to religious obscurantism was a long and painful process. That was Charb's cause. To me it is respectable, because his assassination (and our discussion, in a way) shows that we have not yet reached the end of this process (not to mention the women condition and the human rights situation in islamic countries).
"Love" and "Please" are two separate issues !
If Ebdo rejected the commandment to love his neighbour as himself, then the Muslim terrorists also rejected the commandment to not kill.
I think it is better to try and follow these commandments. If you choose to reject the commandments, then you have complete freedom, but that freedom is not necessarily good.
Torah? Says kill everyone who doesn’t believe.
Would you care to quote the verse that states this?
Another says 'Love thy neighbour as thyself'.
While it is true that the Bible states this, I feel it's necessary to mention that it is not one of the Ten Commandments
It's all been hunky dory. :rolleyes:
All true, however, closing their bank accounts or emptying them seems like a good idea though, or screwing with their command and control. Call me a radical on this (and normally I am not), but I'd like to see Anonymous destroy all ISIS digital capabilities if they can.
Your comparisons are ludicrous. Mocking a mythical being (aka a god / profit / fairy / goblin/ Santa Clause / tooth fairy) vs killing people? Are you serious? This is the 21st century, well at least it is where I live!
Edit: blame the G&T ! lol ... 'prophet' of course ...
Your comparisons are ludicrous. Mocking a mythical being (aka a god / profit / fairy / goblin/ Santa Clause / tooth fairy) vs killing people? Are you serious? This is the 21st century, well at least it is where I live!
On AI we only mock profit when we discuss Samsung.
…mock profit…
Crispycrunchytenderflakycrust!
…
I’m so alone.
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You don't have to have the same point of view to support the cause. The main point is that killing someone in response is not acceptable. Kind of like saying I don't agree with what you're saying but I'll defend your right to say it.
Apple wouldn't publish the cartoons themselves just as they wouldn't publish pornography but they would defend the rights of others to fair judgement over the content, which would never result in the loss of life.
We shouldn't be under any illusion that there is a global consensus on what qualifies as material suitable for publication. Is it suitable for a photographer to display pictures of nude children playing/urinating, something you'd see on a beach? Is it suitable to publish war memoranda, swastikas, images of torture? Should sports teams, streets, songwriters, poets continue to use names or words that cause offence to certain groups? Is it ok for sexually explicit Asian anime cartoons to depict younger characters?
'Je suis charlie' doesn't say that what they published was suitable material for mainstream publication, it just says nobody deserves to die for doing that. People who support this cause wouldn't necessarily think that about all material. Anything involving children, there would be calls from people for the death penalty:
http://news.sky.com/story/1389725/sexual-messages-to-children-to-be-made-illegal
Comment at the bottom: "hang them very slowly. Of course the death penalty will never be brought back because the bleeding hearts will never allow it to happen."
Of course there's often a difference between what people write online and how they'd deal with issues in person but the same process that makes someone kill over religious imagery causes people to feel incensed over other forms of media. We spend a lifetime developing positive or negative responses to things. There was a case of someone using twitter to attack the McCann family - the family whose child went missing after they left them at home while they went out:
This ended badly because that person who thought she had the freedom to say what she wanted was pushed into the spotlight by the media suggesting police were investigating her and she took her own life in a hotel room. There was another incident with a lorry crash that happened in the UK:
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/glasgow-bin-lorry-tragedy-sick-4869716
"Ross Loraine wrote: “So a bin lorry has crashed into 100 people in Glasgow eh, probably the most trash it’s ever picked up in one day that.”
The 19-year-old deleted his Twitter account minutes after posting his comment amid outrage from hundreds of social media users.
When the post went viral as other users made an effort to name and shame Loraine, of Sunderland, he gave himself up to police. He was arrested on suspicion of making a malicious communication and was bailed pending further inquiries."
If that comment had been said months or years later or not in reference to a particular event, it would have passed by unnoticed.
There was an article recently about how people are using encrypted web connections to maintain anonymity and freedom of speech but are using it to continue abuse hidden from the web that most people access (aka the clearnet):
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/31/dark-web-traffic-child-abuse-sites
There's an interesting video here about how it works:
What the abusers are doing is against the law but they disagree with the law. Laws change over time, back in the 60s/70s, this was legal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_the_United_States
"In the United States, pornography is considered a form of personal expression governed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Pornography is generally protected speech, unless it is obscene, as the Supreme Court of the United States held in 1973 in Miller v. California."
Who determines what is and isn't obscene? The UK just passed a law banning the production of pornography containing previously ok material:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-acts-just-got-banned-in-uk-porn-9897174.html
In Eastern countries, their laws have been written to cover a completely different society. People in these countries have been using the same encrypted services described above to bypass censorship laws because they disagree with the law.
The ideal scenario for radical Muslims would be to become a majority population in Western countries and vote to implement Sharia Law. How could Western democracy undo that except the same way they did in Egypt, which was militarily overthrowing the oppressive government. Is it still a democracy if you use military force to overthrow a majority vote in a democratic election that was in favor of oppression?
People are clearly afraid of this kind of scenario taking place:
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/11/05/3589225/alabama-votes-to-ban-foreign-laws/
I think this is why some people hold onto religions because they are seen as unchanging in the face of ever-changing human laws and handed down by an unquestionable authority without realising that they are just really old and restrictive laws written by people like them and the only unquestionable authority is granted to them by the people who believe them.
Eventually we have to all come to the conclusion that we are the masters of our own domain and the rules we implement are by majority. The strength in Islam and Christianity has nothing to do with the minority of people who handed down the texts, it's in the huge numbers of people willing to believe what they say. A magician's magic is only magic to an audience willing to suspend their disbelief. Passive religions speak out against Islam but they're only processing a different text in exactly the same way they are and it's that process that's corrupt.
Other religions may not frequently harm people by murder any more but there are other ways to cause harm. You can deny contraception because it violates your belief system and promote the rise of AIDs and unwanted pregnancy, which in turn causes great harm. Christians condemn Islamic murder but in the same breath would happily say that those people will burn for all eternity in a fiery hell.
It's understandable why people are moderate towards religion because having an unquestionable and highly moral authority (even fictional) does result in good works that otherwise would be difficult to obtain. However, the thought process by which this is reached is far too dangerous. It relies on people denying rational thought. Social progress and peaceful existence can only come about through rational thought because as living organisms we change over time. Change requires dealing with scenarios that are new. Worryingly, the numbers of people who hold to any religion total in a majority of the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups
Almost 6/7 billion. Most of whom get taught to find partners in their own faith, taught that anyone questioning their faith should be seen as an enemy, that it's important to raise their children with the same values.
But if people are taught that there is no unquestionable moral authority then some people will not acknowledge any human authority. Anders Breivik did this when he refused to acknowledge the authority of the court trying him for the murder of 77 people and severe injuries to others in Norway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik
He was religiously motivated as a Christian protesting against the rise of Islam.
Control comes about through an authority existing and the people being controlled respecting it. People who follow religion are (without knowing it) respecting the authority of human beings who lived and wrote laws millennia ago. People who follow modern law are respecting the authority of more recent human beings who wrote them. Modern laws are far easier to invalidate because of the abundance of information about why the laws came about and the profiles of the people motivated to write them. This doesn't exist for ancient laws and so people respect them more but people need to understand that it's exactly the same setup and when people scrutinize modern law when it's in conflict of ancient or religious law, they are free to do the same in reverse.
Freedom of speech isn't meant to give people the right to offend others (meaning that offensive material is promoted) in the same way the right to own a weapon doesn't grant the right to commit violence. The goal is always peace. They give you a right to choose how to express yourself and to question everything and your choice will have reasonable consequences. To some Islamists, the consequences dealt out in the Hebdo case were reasonable to them. To people supporting 'Je suis charlie', they were wholly unreasonable consequences, even if they don't promote the same material. As hard as it is to do, reasonable people even in circumstances like this have to continue to lead by example and not retaliate with unreasonable consequences.
It's quite clear that you don't understand the meaning of #JeSuisCharlie. It's probably due to the cultural difference of you being an american/anglo-saxon and me a european with French as his native tongue. It's OK and I understand that.
Freedom of speech and intolerance are seen way differently across the ocean and we as europeans see a lot of hypocrisy in the way americans feel about freedom of speech. Religious intolerance for instance. You may mock everything but not religion (even when it is at the heart of the latest pedophilia scandals). You may show everything but not a nipple or "worse" though the US are the world's greatest consumers of pornography.
But that's not all. The greatest difference between us and you is your intolerance when someone does exercice his freedom of speech. Not convinced? Have a read of US-born posts on this site. Have a read at your last paragraph. Actually to us, relating exercising one's freedom of speech to drawing a drawing a weapon is quite flabbergasting.
So, yes, we are allowed to mock religion and the people living it - especially according to millennial "laws". We are allowed to question the people who question Darwinism. We are allowed to mock the people who distrust vaccinations for religious beliefs. Because, sir, they do too. And they are intolerant in their doing. A secular society has since 3 centuries evolved into a "society of men" (men: m/f).
#JeSuisCharlie means, literally, I am Charlie.
It goes way further than defending the freedom of speech. It means that we don't abide with intolerance. It means that we subscribe to Voltaire when he says "I may hate what you say but I'll fight to the death for having you the right to say it".
Apple is quite on the opposite of that school of thought. Which is their right. Which gives me the right to question them publishing #JeSuisCharlie. For they are not.
I am Charlie means tolerating evil.
How far should we tolerate evil? How should we react when our loved ones are murdered?
Put the murderer of a child in front of its mother, and she will probably claw his eyes out, because the provocation is too great.
So it was with the Muslim terrorists.
There is no such thing as free speech.
Tolerating evil, for me, means turning the other cheek. In practice, that means locking people up for grave sins, rather than responding in kind.
As such, it would be wise for France to instigate a law banning the portrayal of certain subjects in cartoons, with penalty of imprisonment. If that law had been in place a few days ago, those twelve lives would have been saved.
@Marvin
This quote (in French) comes from an arabic philosopher (Abdennour Bidar). He issues the problem related to religion being at the centre of everything
The gist of it is that religion cannot adapt to society when it dictates not only the spiritual life, but politics, moral and social order as well.
Continuing on Islam, he says it is in contradiction with the Qu'ran itself (La ikraha fi Dîn). Freedom of thought has been turned into a web of constraints.
In such a society, where then is the freedom of thought?
Finally, if I look at the american society, where ideas like "intelligent design", "creationism" coming from the dark middle ages are finding ground again, I'm not particularly optimistic either. I read it, I hear about it, and at the same time I smell the nauseous smell of people burned at the stake.
This, is at the heart of Charlie Hebdo's satire.
I know, it's the cartoonists fault...
They had what was becoming to them
In the past, courageous people have dared to say that woman is equal to man, that slavery is an abomination, etc ...
By doing so, they have been considered as offensive, and frequently have been assassinated for this.
Forumers living in democratic countries benefit from the space of liberty they have conquered, but that many other people, in other parts of the world, still do not enjoy. (sometimes, when I read AI threads , I have the impression that this space of liberty is still a battle, including in some developed countries ...).
Fight against religious intolerance is a fight for freedom. Criticize it as "offensive" is ridiculous, and is a desperate argument of those who cannot stand criticism and democracy.
I agree with both Möbius and you.
If you kill them, you are responding with more evil.
To respond with love is a narrow and hard path.
That was before Christ.
Even blasphemy will be forgiven, except that against the Holy Spirit.
Quite.
For your information, Christ was born at the birth of Christ. ????
Indeed,
And the solution? Remove the immigrants most likely to be terrorists—ie those who profess to be Muslims. It would mean that most of the Muslim immigrants who have no intention of terrorising anyone would also have to leave, but that is the dilemma facing France, England and the rest of Europe: either allow immigrants to roam freely and accept that terrorists will murder your citizens, or put very strict controls on immigration, far stricter than is the case today, which will reduce the chance of terrorist murder substantially and lead to a better, more Christian society.
The liberal ideology of multiculturalism has failed.