Charlie Hebdo

[Major Dash]

The problem is that you can't touch religion. Personal attack? Go for it. Attack on political party? Go for it. Attack on political leader? Depends on the message... God(s) or religion? Hell no. You just don't go there, especially when there are large numbers of violent fanatics within that religion. I can't say I have ever seen (or remember seeing) a dangerous group of violent Christians, Catholics, Buddhists, or Jews on the news in my entire life. However, we see these radical Islamic people doing stuff like this every month.

[Estonian dude]

Well, you can't see Buddhists because their life philosophy is about pure peace and harmony. Yet they set themselves on fire in protest.

Jews? Pretty often.

Overly religious Christians? Some news about it at least once a year.

Catholics are Christians anyway.

 

All I am saying is that Muslims are made the offenders too much. Happens with every religion. Except in most cases they are toned down. Especially in the US.

[The_Gabe]

Well, you can't see Buddhists because their life philosophy is about pure peace and harmony. Yet they set themselves on fire in protest.

Jews? Pretty often.

Overly religious Christians? Some news about it at least once a year.

Catholics are Christians anyway.

 

All I am saying is that Muslims are made the offenders too much. Happens with every religion. Except in most cases they are toned down. Especially in the US.

Yet you don't see any of them committing massacres like the extremist Muslims.

[sees_all1]

 

 

Well, you can't see Buddhists because their life philosophy is about pure peace and harmony. Yet they set themselves on fire in protest.

Jews? Pretty often.

Overly religious Christians? Some news about it at least once a year.

Catholics are Christians anyway.

 

All I am saying is that Muslims are made the offenders too much. Happens with every religion. Except in most cases they are toned down. Especially in the US.

Yet you don't see any of them committing massacres like the extremist Muslims.

 

Yeah, never seen any atrocities committed by a Christian nation.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

 

 

Alright, what was the Christian response to Piss Christ?

South Park? Bill Maher? RIchard Dawkins? The perverted Judas and Jesus cartoon?

 

Who was shot up, who was blown up, where are all the dead bodies?

 

So a "Christian" nation was at war 80 years ago, how the hell is it relevant to this discussion?

[The_Gabe]

 

 

 

Well, you can't see Buddhists because their life philosophy is about pure peace and harmony. Yet they set themselves on fire in protest.

Jews? Pretty often.

Overly religious Christians? Some news about it at least once a year.

Catholics are Christians anyway.

 

All I am saying is that Muslims are made the offenders too much. Happens with every religion. Except in most cases they are toned down. Especially in the US.

Yet you don't see any of them committing massacres like the extremist Muslims.

 

Yeah, never seen any atrocities committed by a Christian nation.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

 

 

Alright, what was the Christian response to Piss Christ?

South Park? Bill Maher? RIchard Dawkins? The perverted Judas and Jesus cartoon?

 

Who was shot up, who was blown up, where are all the dead bodies?

 

So a "Christian" nation was at war 80 years ago, how the hell is it relevant to this discussion?

 

 

Yeah. We're talking about the present here, not the past.

[Alg]

In the interest of saving time: nations do bad things during wars, and that's terrible.

[Miss Lioness]

Well, you can't see Buddhists because their life philosophy is about pure peace and harmony. Yet they set themselves on fire in protest.

Jews? Pretty often.

Overly religious Christians? Some news about it at least once a year.

Catholics are Christians anyway.

 

All I am saying is that Muslims are made the offenders too much. Happens with every religion. Except in most cases they are toned down. Especially in the US.

 

Their idea of a peaceful protest involves that no harm  may be done to others. Their believe doesn't make note of any harm done to oneself. They believe in liberation, and one of these deeds can be done by setting oneself in fire. Most of the time this is done if the person feels constraint in their current environment, by for example suppression.

[Randox]

The problem is that you can't touch religion. Personal attack? Go for it. Attack on political party? Go for it. Attack on political leader? Depends on the message... God(s) or religion? Hell no. You just don't go there, especially when there are large numbers of violent fanatics within that religion. I can't say I have ever seen (or remember seeing) a dangerous group of violent Christians, Catholics, Buddhists, or Jews on the news in my entire life. However, we see these radical Islamic people doing stuff like this every month.

Why should religion be exempt? What is special about religion that should make it a taboo subject for Satire?

 

As for non Islamic acts of terror, a cursory google search landing in Wikipedia would suggest that some of militias in Africa and India are Christian, so it's a safe bet they've probably been in the news at some point or another, even if their faith was never highlighted. I also feel like while it may not be during your lifetime, Ireland is worth considering as a reasonably recent example of Christian terrorism (the IRA). For a current example working in a different way to the IRA (who very much operated like the contemporary terrorists), consider the fighting in Ukraine.

 

I also feel obliged to point out that any mainstream form of Islam preaches peace and tolerance, perhaps more so (at least on some subjects) than some of the mainstream Christian sects. Using terrorists as a representation of Islam is really no different than considering the Westboro Baptist Church a fair representation of Christians. They're groups of crazy hate filled people who have perverted their faith into a justification for making the world a worse place.

[Major Dash]

I'm not saying that it should be exempt, I'm saying that it is super dangerous territory that you really shouldn't go wandering in to unless you know that you aren't going too far. You are also offending a larger group of people on a more personal level. I'm super bad at analogies, but lets say you are taunting dogs. You have that one instance where there is a relatively calm dog, you taunt it, and it might bark. No big deal. You taunt an aggressive dog, and it might chase after you and bite. It won't be the end of the world. Then, you decide to taunt a pack of 400 dogs, 375 of them just bark at you, but 25 of them happen to have rabbies, chase you down, and debilitate you.

 

It is just the fact that you don't necessarily know who you will be offending with the satire. And I don't really know how "satirical" this cartoon was, but good satire should make people question their opinions and maybe get a little miffed, not come to murder you. Murder sounds more like you really did something inappropriate.

 

I really like what Rocc0 said earlier about handing out those fliers. It might not be illegal in the sense, but when you are dealing with an extremely sensitive group of people, its better to play it safe then murdered with automatic weapons and rocket launchers.

[Major Dash]

People would stop discriminating against Muslims if it didn't seem like 50% of them were trying to kill all of the Jews, Christians, and whoever they feel like. That is mostly the media's fault, but the media wouldn't cover such things if they never happened in the first place.

[Crocefisso]

I think it must be pointed out that all religious groups commit or have committed atrocities. Today, the most notable Christian group is Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in Africa. In Burma at the past few years, Buddhists of the Rakhine ethnicity have killed many Rohingya Muslims. Irreligious authorities can also play a role: in China, the atheistic government persecutes Muslims and Christians alike. But going on about religious groups only really distracts from the fact that, in Europe, one religious group is difficult, and that's Muslims. 

 

I also don't think that it's fair to blame the media for persecuting Muslims. When I first moved to the UK from Italy we lived in a very ethnically diverse area where white people were a minority, and my mother was a teacher at a primary school. A lot of the stuff Muslims did and do in Britain goes unreported in the press or is passingly mentioned, though it's completely illegal or else plain stupid. E.g.

 

a) imposing sharia law at a local level, although by every western standard it's repressive and backward.

b) polygamy, though you'd never know because all the wives were fully veiled.

c) totally failing to integrate; 2nd and 3rd generation Muslims in the UK often speak very little English. By contrast, 2nd and 3rd generation Hindus often have white British partners.

d) inbreeding: the number of children at my mother's school with special needs who were Muslim was huge, mainly because their parents were first cousins. 

e) refusing to interact with white native Brits because they aren't Muslims.

 

Now, not all Muslims are like this, but across Europe there is an enormous problem with far, far bigger numbers of Muslims failing to integrate than any other minority group. Sometimes they turn to violence at a perceived affront, even though, as I've said, drawing the Prophet Muhammad is a legitimate act of satire and it doesn't go against any of the values of the western societies in which they have voluntarily chosen to live. 

 

Similarly, when people say "Islam is peaceful" what they mean is that the Qur'an is peaceful. But the hadith, which have no Christian equivalent in that they carry almost the theological authority of the Qur'an, are often violent and intolerant. To be a violent Christian or Buddhist is to turn a blind eye to one's own scripture; to be a peaceful Muslim is to turn a blind eye to one's own scripture. That is the fundamental problem, and no amount of gloss about the media or how supposedly gratuitous the cartoon was can change it. 

[sees_all1]

 

 

 

 

Well, you can't see Buddhists because their life philosophy is about pure peace and harmony. Yet they set themselves on fire in protest.

Jews? Pretty often.

Overly religious Christians? Some news about it at least once a year.

Catholics are Christians anyway.

 

All I am saying is that Muslims are made the offenders too much. Happens with every religion. Except in most cases they are toned down. Especially in the US.

Yet you don't see any of them committing massacres like the extremist Muslims.

 

Yeah, never seen any atrocities committed by a Christian nation.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

 

 

Alright, what was the Christian response to Piss Christ?

South Park? Bill Maher? RIchard Dawkins? The perverted Judas and Jesus cartoon?

 

Who was shot up, who was blown up, where are all the dead bodies?

 

So a "Christian" nation was at war 80 years ago, how the hell is it relevant to this discussion?

 

Right, the fundamentalist Christian response to offensive content produced by a majority Christian media in a majority Christian country should be the same as the extremist Muslim response response to offensive content produced by a majority non-Muslim media in a majority non-Muslim country, a country where Muslims are outsiders and are discriminated against systematically (http://www.odt.co.nz/news/world/99211/study-shows-french-muslims-hit-religious-bias). Christians in America are one of the most privileged groups in the developed world, why would there response to offensive material be the same as one of the least privileged groups in the developed world? Yeah, Christians haven't killed anyone for making cartoons that mock Jesus, but then again, Christians aren't continually treated like animals by the people who make those cartoons (for instance, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7333344.stm). This is false equivalency at its worst. Like at the Ferguson riots - "Well white people don't make this much fuss when a white kid gets killed by a police officer." - true, but misses the point entirely.

 

Interesting that you put Christian in quotes there. Interesting that you think being "at war" is a relevant condition (ask extremist Muslims if they're at war with Christians and Jews, I think I know the answer). Interesting that you think recency has anything to do with it.

 

The example content is offensive to not just U.S Christians, it is offensive to ALL Christians.

The example content is much more relevant to this discussion than supposed atrocities commited by a country at war 80 years ago. If the Vatican was carpet bombing civilian territories in Muslim countries in the past few decades, you might have a point.

[RpgGamer]

Supposed atrocities? History happened. If you don't acknowledge and learn from it, it'll happen again.

[obfuscator]

Mainstream islam: (from a peace conference, no less).

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpeIS25jhK4&feature=youtu.be

[obfuscator]

Supposed atrocities? History happened. If you don't acknowledge and learn from it, it'll happen again.

There are certain things that all countries do when they're at war, because war is messy and fundamentally "atrocious". Find me a major war where one of the sides didn't do anything atrocious and I'd say you have a good point.

[sees_all1]

Supposed atrocities? History happened. If you don't acknowledge and learn from it, it'll happen again.

 

First start with internment. Yes, ethnic persecution is awful in any form, but compare it to the "final solution" that was going on in Germany at the same time, and it doesn't compare.

 

Then look at bombing civilians. 80 years ago, smart bombs did not exist. The idea that a nation could exclusively target munitions factories or military complexes is just plain absurd.

 

So the examples given were terrible, and really have no place in this discussion.

[Crocefisso]

^ That's a strawman. Crime in the African-American community is a socio-economic phenomenon. Islamic extremism has theological roots - some jihadists may be poor, others aren't. Bin Laden came from a multimillionaire family. Ayman al-Zawahiri is a qualified doctor. 

 

@ obfuscator: on a side note, the European wars of the 18th century were quite orderly and gentlemanly, e.g. the War of the Austrian Succession. At the Battle of Fontenoy, for example, the opposing generals met up to toss a coin (I think) to decide which side would fire first.

[obfuscator]

@ obfuscator: on a side note, the European wars of the 18th century were quite orderly and gentlemanly, e.g. the War of the Austrian Succession. At the Battle of Fontenoy, for example, the opposing generals met up to toss a coin (I think) to decide which side would fire first.

There's nothing gentlemanly about throwing hundreds of people's lives away on a coin toss. I also doubt the actual reality of the war was nearly as nice as some generals having a talk.

 

In world war one, the two sides stopped to play soccer on christmas day. Does that mean it was a "nice" war?

[Crocefisso]

Fine, it is a primarily socio-economic phenomenon. It doesn't detract from the fact that positing it in contrast with Islamic extremism is an entirely false analogy. The cultural determinant is far stronger in the latter case. Unless many African American thieves hold advanced medical qualifications. 

 

@ obfuscator: I assumed you meant wars with negligible civilian losses. Asking for examples of wars with no military casualties is like asking for a pie without pastry, which is maybe what you intended to demonstrate, although I think most of us already knew that war is bad. Though there have been some such wars (e.g. the Pig War). 

[RpgGamer]

Who was the crazy bastard who crossed enemy lines during WWI just to ask for a game of soccer?

[Alg]

Who was the crazy bastard who crossed enemy lines during WWI just to ask for a game of soccer?

Someone with bigger balls than any man alive today.

[Crocefisso]

 

Unless many African American thieves hold advanced medical qualifications. 

Well, you managed to list one, so it's not as though we're tripping over them here.

 

 

Osama Bin Laden was a multimillionaire; Ayman al-Zawahiri is a doctor; Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has a PhD; Anwar al-Awlaki was a civil engineer by qualification; Abu Yahya al-Libi was, supposedly, an Islamic scholar. Again, in spite of the quibbling, my original point still stands.

 

In other news, Charlie Hebdo have confirmed that their next issue - the first since the incident - will feature the Prophet Muhammad on the cover. I for one am delighted.

[baileydafrog]

 

Who was the crazy bastard who crossed enemy lines during WWI just to ask for a game of soccer?

Someone with bigger balls than any man alive today.

 

3 germans waving their arms. Took loads of pictures with each other, swapped things with each other, they were going to meet up at new years to show the developed pictures but the higher ups refused the pleasantries. The football was only a tiny bit of it despite being the most famous bit, apparently the germans won the match though, 3-1 I believe </3

[Arceus]

Hey, at least we fared better in that match than Brazil last year!

[sees_all1]

 

The fact that these individuals participated / orchestrated Islamic terrorism is proof that Muslim extremism isn't socioeconomically motivated? Utter nonsense.

 

All muslim extremists are muslims, but I'd suppose you'd tell me religion has nothing to do with it either.

 

Anyhow, I'm failing to see a point in what you're arguing, other than your first post where you wrote that you shouldn't poke an angry bear with a stick.