Author Salman Rushdie attacked on lecture stage in New York
apnews.com
apnews.com
To each his own, but I wouldn't be celebrating someone writing books intended to piss off black people or the LGBT community either.
Someone tried to attack Dave Chapelle on stage just a few weeks ago for making jokes about trans. What rock are you living under?
Yes, you should be allowed to offend whoever you want in a free society.
But admiring people because of their intent to offend large groups of people is just weird.
But "like offending people" is not objective. The burden has to lie with offendee as well. Flat earthers might be offended by someone saying Earth is round, but that doesn't mean that person saying that likes offending flat earthers.
So it's just pure hypocrisy and pretending otherwise is silly.
This is a false framing. The person who wrote the post you originally replied to does not appear to be doing that; the comment praises Rushdie for saying uncomfortable things and challenging entrenched views, not for insulting people.
It may be (as as been suggested in these comments) that Rushdie was indeed trying to offend people, but even if that were the case, it does not mean that his supporters are celebrating him for that.
In fact, I feel it is fairly safe to say that, for most of his supporters in this matter, he is something of a MacGuffin: they support the position you concur with in your second paragraph, and he just happens to present a case where it is under significant threat. Opposition to terrorism (state-sponsored terrorism, no less) does not necessarily imply or depend on supporting the victim's position or all of their actions, any more than opposition of the death penalty is an endorsement of murder and its perpetrators.
Even people who have reservations about your second paragraph can see that Rushdie was not threatening anyone, directly or indirectly.
I guess nobody's getting death threats for still saying "blacklist" or "quantum supremacy", but people who are oversensitive enough to care deserve to get offended.
That said, I don't think we should encourage causing people offense. It's worth being aware that a person may get offended by harmless things because of mental illnesses like psychosis, so it's worth being sensitive to that.
I kinda disagree with this. There are certain parts of the book that I don't think could be interpreted any way other than antagonization.
Reading the book, I felt like he even went out of his way to antagonize muslims. There were parts when I had to ask myself, "Is xyz really essential to the plot?"
I'm not muslim, fwiw. And this goes without saying, but no one should be persecuted for what they write.
Being a voluntary member of an organization is a choice.
This kind of behaviour is not related to us or our religion, no matter what the fundamentalists say.
I hope they punish the attacker(s) in harshest possible way! And that should be a lesson for anyone who attacks defenceless people.
I hope Mr. Rushdie makes a full recovery! He is a very brave man.
I love our Abrahamic brothers despite our differences. I will be praying for Mr Salmon Rushdie as well.
Who gets to say what is done in the name of your religion? There are plenty of islamic clerics (of all stripes) who support these actions and there are many followers of these clerics who do the same. While your denunciation of these activities is commendable it does not mean all your fellows in Mohammed are in agreement. Where the Catholic church has a clearly defined leadership structure which gets to say what goes and what does not in the name of the church this is not the case for Islam nor is it the case for the various Christian Protestant denominations. The lack of a central leadership figure or council means that the denunciation of these activities has to come from the adherents of your religion - like you did here. It also means those adherents need to speak up in public about their denunciation and they need to pressure their leaders - of which there are many - to do the same. It is this what is lacking and it is this what has made it possible for Khomeini's fatwa to still be in force after decades. Speak up and speak loudly, have your mullahs and imams and other leaders do the same so that eventually the fatwa - and all similar fatwas - will be nullified. Until this happens, until those leaders clearly state that they denounce the actions of both those leaders which have called for such manhunts as well as those who heeded those calls it can not be said that those calls are not made in the name of your religion.
And fundamentalism is a misnomer when it comes to Islam because any deviation from fundamentals is violently opposed. It’s a religion that never moved away from fundamentals. It has never had any reform that secularised and drew power away from the clergy.
You are probably a good, kind person but when this happens to Rushdie or any blasphemer it represents exactly what unreformed Islam is.
If lets say 100 people follow religion "X". The religious text says to "Love thy neighbour". After a century, 90 out of the 100 people turn violent on their neighbours. Can the 10 good people of the religion still use the argument that "this kind of behaviour is not related to our religion, no matter what the 90 people did" to defend their religion ?
Looks like he was stabbed multiple times including in the neck.
"Woke" is suspiciously similar to another word that marked the end of its respective culture - "euphoric" as applied to New Atheists. Both words describe basically good things to be - woke people are aware, euphoric people are happy. Both were originally (supposedly) used in a non-ironic way, by true believers, to praise their respective movements. Both sounded so over the top that people started using them to make fun of believers. Both became so iconic that even now, five years later, if someone gets too annoying about atheism, you can just roll your eyes and say "Euphoric!" and it will be universally understood as a devastating retort that means you win the argument.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction/salman-rushdie-rea...
I think it's fairly simple and we should be able to put 2 and 2 together.
It doesn't really matter if that's reported today or tomorrow, when we can operate on facts rather than assumptions (even if those assumptions are likely to be true). And taking back wrong reporting is basically impossible as many people will never see the correction.
Many articles mention the calls for his assassination and bounties placed on him by Islamic extremists.
But without learning more about the attacker it would be wrong to rush to accuse anyone.
> Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous. A year later, Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.
> A bounty of over $3 million has also been offered for anyone who kills Rushdie.
> Iran’s government has long since distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but anti-Rushdie sentiment has lingered. In 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised the bounty for Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
> ... the AP doesn't seem to be reporting on that yet.
Seemingly to suggest that they should currently be reporting on it.
(I do understand that you are probably simply pointing out that it is true that they are not reporting on it.)
https://twitter.com/NotThatRKelly/status/1558115783674404864
original comment below:
https://twitter.com/NotThatRKelly/status/1558110761217654787
> To summarize reports: Author Salman Rushdie was stabbed after taking stage at a Chautauqua Institute event. He received aid on-site and was able to eventually walk off stage with assistance. This man has been detained by police:
> The tweets reporting that he walked off stage have been deleted, and no status has been reported.
Generally speaking, you just draw a line somewhere, and the open society ends there. Nazi apologist in Germany? You won't get the same privileges as the rest of the population. The challenge is to find a location for such line that is not clearly oppressive towards minorities with a right to exist (i.e. not the nazis).
It's not that hard in practical terms. Most children know this... it takes academic philosophers to turn it into a quaqmire.
The only problem is that you need a value system geared toward long-term sustainability for any of this to be viable.
A fatwa is just a declaration of intolerance of intolerance, but with a different working definition.
Tolerance in my mind is usually a cultural idea about how you teat legal behavior you disagree with.
How do you treat someone with different values that you disagree with.
No, That literally is the antithesis of tolerance.
Also, IF (and that's a big if) some things are to be proscribed, they must be proscribed BY THE LAW and with DUE PROCESS, not "violently" as you claim.
But now I see that that could not possibly have been what you meant because this isn't Twitter and people on this forum aren't that dumb.
I don't like that phrase. Because it's extremely vague and implies that things other than physical violence could be a focus of suppression. Intolerant opinions and speech are not and should not be policed in any meaningful way. The free and open exchange of ideas is crucial to a free society. Even those that are "intolerant" or offensive.
And, after seeing what happened over the last couple of years, I wonder how far people these days would take "intolerance of the intolerant"? Can a person who is known to be "intolerant" be banned from a grocery store for no other reason than their opinions? Can they be banned from all grocery stores? Should they be? Should they be fired from their jobs? Should they be harassed whenever they leave their house?
There are way too many ways to abuse the notion that you should be "intolerant of the intolerant".
The irony is that mainstream platforms tend to censor responsibly (even if false positives tend to occur due to the use of bots), while free speech absolutist platforms like Parler would ban you for merely having a different opinion.
The other irony is that free speech absolutists are responsible for nearly all the terror attacks in the United States. The harmful ideas of these absolutists are rejected by society for a reason, but this was the case even before the internet. Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences.
HN, etc. really shouldn't be "platforms" moderated by a central entity, anyway. If I like Dang's moderation, I should be able to pick and choose it. Maybe there's another potential moderator out there whose sensibilities line up more neatly with my own; I should be able to choose their moderation, too.
Decentralized/splintered moderation, that's what we need.
(I've never been on Parler. Do they actually ban people for disagreeing with them?)
(Is it possible that rejecting people from society makes them more likely to be violent?)
Who decides when it's time to be "selectively violent" and who gets to apply this "selective violence"?
Because I'm sure this same principle of "selective violence" could be easily used (and would gladly be used) as justification by the folks who think they're "fighting fascism" and the like.
let's hope so
That said, this should remind us death threats are not to be taken..lightly.