Paris, anyone?

[P. G. Tipps]

Like others, I am uncomfortable with the words 'I am Charlie' as a substitute slogan for 'freedom of speech'.

As one or two have pointed out in the media you don't have to support the production of deliberately offensive cartoons aimed at those who happen to hold different views on faith and politics to uphold free expression. I am certainly NOT 'Charlie', but do uphold the right of people to mock and ridicule others and their beliefs if they so wish. Charlie Hebdo staff have as much claim to exist in this world without being brutally gunned down as anyone else.

I suspect most of us would not wish to insult Moslems, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Atheists, or the adherents of any belief-system different from their own, but there are those who quite obviously take some pleasure in doing so. That has to be their right. If we deny people the right to 'offend' others (including ourselves) we are already on the slippery slope to state authoritarianism/totalitarianism.

All this yet again raises the question of double-standards in Western society and the contradictory existence of laws that are often applied to protect some minorities from "insult" but not others.

Hence the charge of 'racism' against Charlie Hebdo staff by some Moslem groups, whilst clearly nonsense, does have an inevitable logic about it, I suppose.

In other words, it is the typical knee-jerk reaction we see everywhere else in society so why not in this particular case as well ... ?

[Don Petter]

I suspect most of us would not wish to insult Moslems, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Atheists, or the adherents of any belief-system different from their own, but there are those who quite obviously take some pleasure in doing so. That has to be their right. If we deny people the right to 'offend' others (including ourselves) we are already on the slippery slope to state authoritarianism/totalitarianism.

Agreed, and unfortunately even if you keep pulling the tails of all the animals, sooner or later one of them is liable to bite you.

[JimD]

I came across this article from the (usually accommodationalist) New Yorker after I wrote no. 33 above:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/blame-for-charlie-hebdo-murders

I think this sentence is apt: "That regularly kills so many Nigerians, especially young ones, that hardly anyone pays attention".

Thanks Pabmusic. A useful antidote to the tendentious casuistry scattered across these boards in implicit defence of the indefensible.

[teamsaint]

IMHO, the defence of the indefensible extends, in the media, all to readily to people like Blair, Cameron, the Saudi government, mossad, the CIA, our secret services......fill in the next few lines for yourselves.

The problems that France has experienced do not begin and end with some apparent lunatics in a contextual vacuum, handy though it would be if they did.

[french frank]

Anyone posted this yet?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/jan/09/joe-sacco-on-satire-a-response-to-the-attacks

[MrGongGong]

Anyone posted this yet?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-...to-the-attacks

Someone sent me that.

What annoys many Muslims is that when ever something terrible like this happens the media insist on finding characters like Anjam Chowdry to give their opinion. Makes for a good story but doesn't really reflect what people believe.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/charlie-hebdo-how-exactly-would-we-like-muslims-to-condemn-these-attacks-9966176.html

[french frank]

the media insist on finding characters like Anjam Chowdry to give their opinion.

At one time it was noticeable that whenever there was a sectarian murder in N. Ireland, they would go to a well-known spokesman for the victim's 'side', who could be guaranteed to condemn the violence in strong terms. That always seemed to me to be the wrong way round. There is a responsibility for the voices of those unafraid to criticise their own to be heard.

[MrGongGong]

There is a responsibility for the voices of those unafraid to criticise their own to be heard.

Unfortunately this doesn't really fit the "script"

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/09/paris-hijackers-hijacked-islam-no-war-between-islam-west

[Quarky]

........characters like Anjam Chowdry to give their opinion. Makes for a good story but doesn't really reflect what people believe.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...s-9966176.html

I would not have thought that the writer of the Independent article is any more representative of what people believe.

Surely, an underlying point here is whether aspects of Islamic religion, as currently practiced, are incompatible with beliefs and traditions of Western European societies.

[MrGongGong]

I would not have thought that the writer of the Independent article is any more representative of what people believe.

Surely, an underlying point here is whether aspects of Islamic religion, as currently practiced, are incompatible with beliefs and traditions of Western European societies.

Posting that wasn't suggesting that he was.

[french frank]

Not being a subscriber to the magazine, I can't generalise on exactly what the cartoons were attacking. It may be entirely selective in its choice,
but Huffington Post chooses these. How sophisticated do you have to be to interpret them as attacking neither 'Islam' nor the Prophet - but what is seen (by the West?) as the excesses and distortions of Islam as practised by 'extremists' (tbd)?

[aeolium]

There's also this comment, by a theologian, on the issue of visual representation of sacred figures:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2015/jan/09/charlie-hebdo-cartoonists-smarter-theologians-than-jihadis

Though it seems not to be entirely true that depictions of the prophet have always been forbidden within Islam. Within the Shia, and particularly the Persian/Iranian traditions, they have been permitted, as suggested here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad#Figurative_visual_depictions

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Surely, an underlying point here is whether aspects of Islamic religion, as currently practiced, are incompatible with beliefs and traditions of Western European societies.

Well, this seems to be an issue that is arising, but I think that Richard Tarleton is more accurate when in #36 he referred to "a particular interpretation of a religion". IIRC from discussions around the time that the Satanic Verses fatwa was imposed, it is against Islamic law for an individual Muslim (or a group) to take upon themselves the "execution" of someone who has not been tried in a court by the genuine representatives of Islamic Law. Under this Law, these people are not regarded as "executioners" but as "murderers", and, by claiming to act in the name of Islam, they are guilty of a far more insidious act of blasphemy than the cartoonists and their publishers.

I think that Westerners are in danger of getting a completely wrong idea of Islam and (in particular) its practices from the activities of a vicious minority of murderers who claim to be acting in the name of Islam. Media reports that continually fail to point this out are doing these people a great service, in that it imposes on Islam their own reinvention of what Islam is, and emphasises their pernicious idea that Islam and "the West" are, indeed, incompatible.


ardcarp earlier mentioned (#40) the brilliant Mark Steel programme - immediately before that programme was a documentary about young Muslim women, Hip in a Hijab, which couldn't have made clearer how false this idea of "incompatibility" is: confident, good-humoured and well-educated women committed to their faith and to expressing themselves as Western Muslims and contradicting stereotyped ideas of "how the Muslims treat their women". It couldn't have been better timed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wwtsn

[Beef Oven!]

This was a few years before the fatwa on Salman Rushdie.

Musical censorship

[MrGongGong]

I think that Westerners are in danger of getting a completely wrong idea of Islam and (in particular) its practices from the activities of a vicious minority of murderers who claim to be acting in the name of Islam. Media reports that continually fail to point this out are doing these people a great service, in that it imposes on Islam their own reinvention of what Islam is, and emphasises their pernicious idea that Islam and "the West" are, indeed, incompatible.

I'm sure Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abdullah Ibrahim would agree (if they were both still with us)