Charlie Hebdo: first cover since terror attack depicts prophet Muhammad | Hacker News Reader

Charlie Hebdo: first cover since terror attack depicts prophet Muhammad

theguardian.com

316 pointsdnetesn465 comments

The Charlie Hebdo attacks show that these days, real satire of Islam can't be done without significant risk of violent reprisal. If you doubt that statement, remember The Book of Mormon. (The play, not the actual book.) Could you imagine Trey Parker and Matt Stone making an equivalent Broadway play about Islam? Could you imagine them calling it The Qur'an to Google-bomb the original? Even if they disregarded their own safety, dozens of organizations would do their best to stop it. Venue owners wouldn't take the risk. Insurers wouldn't accept standard policies. Audience turnout would be lower, fearing attacks. And yet, both religions are similar in their ridiculousness. One just happens to encourage less violence in its hosts.

For a little while, we'll all pile-on the cartoon Muhammad bandwagon in show of support. But after this dies down, who will be the first to step forward with some new blasphemous ridicule? Who will single themselves out, risking their life, their family, their friends?

Whoever does so will certainly be braver than me.

Charlie Hebdo? I'm pretty sure they'll keep mocking religions.

Who will raise the bar?

Ouch for the down-votes. When I say raise the bar, I don't mean to incite violence, I mean to say who else is going to take on the task that so little are willing to risk their lives for.

Why does the bar need raised? It's not a competition to see who can piss off religious people the most. The point of the cartoons is to convey a message. Just take a look at the new Charlie Hebdo cover for example. They could have acted in revenge and really, really mocked Islam - and it sounds like that's what you would have done. Instead they created something quite beautiful while still exercising their right to free speech and expression even as radicals tried to stomp them out. It's not a competition to be most offensive. It's trying to convey your message in the best way possible without fear of reprisal compromising that.

Bad ideas deserve to be mocked.

Why? To make you feel smart or better than someone else? If there is an idea you think is bad and you want the other person to realise it is bad mocking it is a stupid way to go about that. Charlie Hebdo took ideas it thought were bad and didn't simply mock them but used satire and cartoons to explain why they were bad or ridiculous in a humorous way.

I agree with your sentiment that mocking should have its limits, but I subscribe to the view that "if you cross the limits of good taste, you're just being an asshole", and definitely not to the idea of shooting such people instead. People should have right to express their opinions safely, even when those opinions aren't in good taste.

Of course. In fact I'm not even sure we should put limits on mocking. My point was that the comment I was replying to simply wants us raise the bar of offensiveness. From what I can tell the point of something like Charlie Hebdo isn't necessarily to offend (that's a side effect). It's to shock and make people think about what they believe in. It's to show how something is silly. To imply that it exists simply to mock others is, in my opinion, offensive to the people who died creating it. I think the new cover shows that there is much more to this work than simply mocking something they don't agree with - I don't think the commenter I was replying to got that.

Isn't it better to teach a good idea than to mock a bad idea?

No need for a cartoon mocking the idea of mocking bad ideas...

  Why does the bar need raised? It's not a competition 
  to see who can piss off religious people the most.

Let's say in the future some other group gets upset at what journalists are saying. Maybe it's the scientologists, or KKK members, or animal rights activists, or hells angels, or anonymous.

They will ask themselves "What have people tried in the past in order to silence journalists, did it work, and can we do it ourselves?"

Then they will say "In the past people have firebombed offices and attacked journalists. Can we do that? Yes we can. Did it work?"

Society and journalists have to decide whether upset groups will say "Yes, it was effective at silencing journalists" or if they'll say "No, it was ineffective, in fact it made the situation worse".

> Could you imagine Trey Parker and Matt Stone making an equivalent Broadway play about Islam?

Team America: World Police? Durka durka?

The depiction of the Arab terrorists in that film was intentionally shallow and not particularly focused on Islam; the worst message you can get from it is 'Muslims are dumb terrorists' which, while hurtful, is nowhere near ridiculing religion to the same degree as Book of Mormon.

Mate he kept saying Allah, Muhammed, Jihad in silly ways. What more you want? I've seen Book of Mormon. I thought it was funny in the same level. It wasn't really attacking christianity, but the dumb followers of it.

You do realize that they were actually mocking the representation of Muslims by western media, right?

Editors all over the western world exercise more caution when it comes to satire about islam than about christianity and in my opinion it borders a form of racism of low expectations.

Then again, who wants to be the next Salman Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, Jyllands-Posten, or Charlie Hebdo. It's not like they stand to gain much from running the risk.

Exactly this. The folks in places such as the White House are very quick to condemn some silly anti-Islam YouTube video, yet when the Palestinians make suicide bomber anti-Jew Seasame Street clones, the White House says nothing about the potential for such productions to be "irresponsible." It's like Muslims are little retarded kids and we aren't allowed to make fun of because the power to control themselves is not expected. Of course, when Piss Christ was exhibited in New York, there were some minor protests (mainly over tax payer funding of the exhibit) but I don't recall southern baptist ministers preaching that the artist and all of the museum employees should be shot up with rifles.

It's a fact that their are crazies in all religions, and plenty of atheist nut jobs as well, but the propensity to massacre a bunch of people because they're "offended" seems to be much higher among Islam. Which is a bit ironic, since my Muslim friends and families are among the warmest and most welcoming people I know.

However, conditions of extreme unemployment, poverty and patriarch-dominance in countries like Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc, combined with a lack of democratic tradition makes these places powerful inncubators for terror.

Islam isn't the cause of terrorism, it's merely a vector.

Islam and Christianity promote peace. But, pretending that everyone is ready to stand hand in hand and do a sing along is just ridiculous.

Don't forget Islam and Christianity along with many other religions also actively promotes violence. In the west we tend to whitewash things, but for a less controversial example if you look at say Peter Pain or fairy tales there very different pre Disneyfication.

PS: Remember when a faith says it's ok or even expected to kill {ex: witch} then all it takes is for someone to be convinced that X in on that list and people feel justified. Consider, many people have little to no problem with killing a mass murder.

I was in Syria before the war(~2006) and there was no patriarch-dominance or extreme unemployment in Aleppo or Damascus. These cities had religious freedom and many Syrians were Catholic. I was fortunate enough to live with locals in both cities for two weeks. The poverty there is not an apples-to-apples comparison to the poverty here in the US or many other parts of the world.

There was some dissatisfaction with Al-Assad[1], but most Syrians supported him and continue to do so. This is not the first time extremist muslims have tried to overthrow him. I remember my hosts telling me he crushed a muslim rebellion in what I can only assume was the 80s or 90s

[1] I believe this had to do with his greedy brother or cousin who taxed businesses for personal profit

You must've realized by now that American foreign policy (& ergo media biases) is distinctly Saudi-centered.

The current debacle with ISIS is likely the result of covert Saudi-CIA funding of "secular" rebels before things went bad (ala Afghanistan): http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isi...

That's not to say I like Abbas, of course, but criticism in the US is always the classic manichean "good" vs "evil", which ends up doing more harm than good.

The other case, being Iran -whose Muslims are far less radical than those in Saudi- is made to appear as some raving mad state (their Govt. is awful no doubt).

Until the propaganda machine changes its mind, you'll keep seeing the violent philosophy of Wahabism spread like a cancer; and being politically correct doesn't particularly help.

People need to learn that it's the extremist violent Wahhabism that is the core of these attacks and Al Qaeda. The mainstream Islam / Muslims do not agree with what one sect has to say.

It'd be like calling all Christians terrorists because of what the Irish Catholics / IRA did in the 90s. Wahhabist Islam regularly attack and kill Shia Muslims by the dozens.

Even then, Wahhabism is a growing philosophy amongst Saudi princes, who have remained good allies to the US. Explicit denunciation of this particular philosophy would run counter to US Foreign Policy. Besides, its not like all Wahhabists are violent. Going back to the IRA example, some Catholics were violent in the 90s... but certainly not all of them.

"I was in Syria before the war(~2006) and there was no patriarch-dominance"

I was in Syria in 2010, also before the war. I travelled around for a fortnight.

I completely disagree. It was an almost entirely patriarchal society. I can't even begin to comprehend how you came to any other conclusion. The dominance of men in positions of authority and in the social life of all the cities I visited, including Damascus and Aleppo, was overwhelming and blindingly obvious.

For example, how many women did you see in cafes without male escorts? How many officials did you interact with who were female? How many times did you see women shopping alone in Souks? I think my answer to that is "pretty much zero".

Damascus was definitely much more liberal than other places. I don't recall the same being true of Aleppo.

I agree, however, that the poverty wasn't too bad, compared to other countries.

Popular support for Al-Assad was complicated. It's hard to assess people's true feelings about a situation when they live partly in fear of the consequences of their criticism.

Men certainly dominated the govt and positions in high society; however, this was really where the partiarchal dominance ends. The mother of the friends I stayed with in Aleppo actually played for Syria's national basketball team. The woman I stayed with in Damascus was widowed yet she was able to continue with her life as her husbands brother took great care of her.

I must admit that all of the families I stayed with were Catholic, but there was no difference in these families than the average American family in terms of respect between husband and wife.

I was trying to dispel the image that the culture of Saudi Arabia represents the entire middle east.

>However, conditions of extreme unemployment... Islam isn't the cause of terrorism

I think underestimates the influence of the founders. Jesus mostly preached to turn the other cheek and didn't kill anyone.

Here is a list of people killed by Muhammed http://wikiislam.net/wiki/List_of_Killings_Ordered_or_Suppor...

It goes on a bit and the sources vary in their authority but overall impression is pretty pro violence.

Most of the 911 guys were well off Saudis who felt they were following the teachings. Obviously you can interpret the founders of a religion in different way and most Muslims are peaceful but it's hard to understand what's going on if you ignore that stuff.

That list is worth looking at in light of recent events. Not only because of how many are ordered killed, but because of how many are ordered killed because of poetry mocking Muhammed.

Any muslim who kills a satirist who mocked islam has pretty good grounds to be saying that their actions are in line with what Mohammed would have done!

Yeah, I think you'll find most people who get called terrorists think they are on the side of good and in the case of Islamists, doing the work of Allah. Not that Christians and atheists are immune to killing people for what they think is a good cause. Indeed probably majority of the killings in the last century have been of that nature.

> Jesus mostly preached to turn the other cheek and didn't kill anyone.

And yet from the time it achieved the kind of power in any society from which to exert substantial influence well into the modern period, Christians were killing people -- in other countries, in their own countries, etc. -- in the name of Christ all the time. The Crusades (and not just the ones in the "Holy Land" and/or targeting Muslims) were a thing. The Inquisition was a thing. Europe's Wars of Religion were a thing. There is a reason the word "pogrom" exists.

The modern Western concept of freedom of religion isn't a direct product of some religious parallel to the Ruby's community's maxim "Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice", its a product of the exhaustion of Western European Christians after more than a millenium of killings -- not least of all of Western European Christians by Western European Christians -- in the name of Christ.

The idea that Christianity is somehow inherently more peaceful than Islam requires ignoring pretty much the entirety of the history of Christianity.

I agree basically. Christians have killed plenty of people as have atheists. Though with slightly different rationals oftentimes.

Without a doubt extreme unemployment and poverty contributes to radical and criminal behavior. But saying that patriarch dominance and lack of democratic tradition leads to terrorism...where is this coming from? So by your logic, democratic countries are free of terrorism and non-democratic countries are riddled with it. Of course we can shoot all kinds of holes in that notion through counter-example. And blaming terrorism on patriarchy? Most societies in history, even traditional European society, were patriarchal. To say they cause terrorism (with zero elaboration) just waters down your otherwise insightful comment by exposing your strong Western liberal/feminist bias.

in my opinion it borders a form of racism of low expectations.

Agreed, but sadly those expectations are met often enough, and dramatically enough (as in the cases you mentioned) that many people are not willing to take the risk.

The story of the Mormons is a lot easier to make fun of though, and they are drop in the ocean compared to Islam (the second biggest religion in the world). Even so would you put that play on in Salt Lake City? I doubt there would be massacres but I expect there would be some form of defacement or attempts at suppression by fundamentalists.

And it's not just Islamic religion that would cause this, exactly what you described happened when North Korea threatened "The Interview".

http://saltlakecity.broadway.com/shows/book-mormon-baa/

Woah, I stand corrected.

Edit: Although it hasn't opened yet, so what I said might well happen.

>I expect there would be some form of defacement or attempts at suppression by fundamentalists. The fundamentalists are spread thin, in remote communities across the western US. They just want to be left alone. Not a hint of defacement or suppression would come from them.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have actually said basically what you just said.

In episode "201" (S14E06) all the celebrities South Park has parodied over the years collectively sued South Park town for making fun of them. The town would be ruined by the lawsuit, and beg for the celebs to drop the lawsuit. They agree to drop the lawsuit for just one thing - if the city could give them Muhammed.

The celebs had developed a machine that would extract the magic goo that makes it impossible to mock Muhammed from him. Eventually they get Muhammed and extract the magic goo. Tom Cruise eats it, but is shocked to discover that people can still make fun of him.

Comedy Central, ironically, totally beeped out the speech that followed (but thankfully it leaked Jan last year):

Kyle: That's because there is no goo, Mr. Cruise. You see, I learned something today. Throughout this whole ordeal, we've all wanted to show things that we weren't allowed to show, but it wasn't because of some magic goo. It was because of the magical power of threatening people with violence. That's obviously the only true power. If there's anything we've all learned, it's that terrorizing people works.

Jesus: That's right. Don't you see, gingers, if you don't want to be made fun of anymore, all you need are guns and bombs to get people to stop.

Santa: That's right, friends. All you need to do is instill fear and be willing to hurt people and you can get whatever you want. The only true power is violence.

South Park was right as always.

All their Muhammad episodes should be watched, in this order:

1. S05E04 (Super Best Friends). It's the only uncensored episode with Muhammad, and ironically he's a pretty cool guy. Only on torrents, Comedy Central has tried to erase it from history.

2. S10E03 (Cartoon Wars Part I)

3. S10E04 (Cartoon Wars Part II)

4. S14E05 (200)

5. S14E06 (201). Comedy Central actually bleeped all mentions of the name Muhammad in this episode plus the speech above. Watch the censored version first before you torrent the real version - the censorship is downright tragicomical.

> Only on torrents, Comedy Central has tried to erase it from history.

That's bizarre. A quick Google search led me to the full episode here: http://pollystreaming.com/South-Park-Season-5-Episode-3-Supe...

I'm not sure if this is due to the Streissand Effect.

But isn't that just a pirate 'tube site? Same idea. I think the previous poster just meant that you won't find it on any of the DVDs, digital sales, or official streams.

Fair enough. All the good stuff is usually highly visible online regardless of companies' intentions.

Super Best Friends is particularly interesting. It's only about 14 years ago that it was broadcast and at the time nobody made a big deal out of it.

and if i recall correct, the first few seasons opening sequence song has mohammad and super best friends - so the image is in every episode of those seasons.

> real satire

"Real" satire of Islamic culture has been performed for decades. For the most part, you don't have to include the image of Mohammed for every statement you want to make of Islam.

However, I do agree that you should be allowed to do so without fear of violent reprisal. Unfortunately, this is not the world we live in at the moment. It's going to take a while before Islamists change their views on this issue.

> It's going to take a while before Islamists change their views on this issue.

It's only been 1,500 years. Lets give them a little more time mmm-k?

Funny statement. Where was Christianity in year 1,500?

I don't know the answer to your specific question, but where is Christianity today COMPARED to 1500? Where is Islam today COMPARED to 1500?

That is the real question in my mind, at least.

The answer to that question is simple: Christianity experienced enlightenment and Islam did not.

So they're effectively to be compared with pre-enlightenment Christianity and then the differences are much smaller. The world does not move in lockstep. Sooner or later Islam will also experience its enlightenment (hopefully sooner) and then we will see the end of this nonsense.

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

This guy had the right idea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk

Sadly, missed opportunity and Turkey in spite of leading the way is currently in turmoil.

Seriously jacquesm? I'm truly shocked at this coming from you. I have a lot of respect you & love reading your stuff, but really?

"Christianity experienced enlightenment and Islam did not"?

Surely you're not so ignorant as to dismiss the thousand years where the Islamic world was the abode of knowledge, science and civilization while Europe was in the dark ages.

Yes, shit sucks for them now. But to say they never experienced enlightenment (btw, the effects of the Islamic world on the "enlightenment" is well known). Part of the problem is that we're not over our colonial instincts. Just look down on the other cultures, we're obviously the best. Our country, our people, our skin color, right?

I've read about outwardly atheist and vocal scientists and philosophers from the 1100's in the Islamic world. And he was pretty revered (although today they wouldn't be able to walk down the streets of most Muslim countries with their head intact).

Many of our principles are borrowed from Islamic civilization that preceded us. It's the equivalent of dismissing Egyptians and saying their problem is that they never achieved civilization like us.

I still can't express how shocked I am at the shallowness of your comment. I really hope it is because you're upset.

EDIT: btilly was kind enough to point out where I misinterpreted what jacquesm was stating. I took his comment as a slight, whereas it was far better thought out observation.

'Killah911' ? Right...

As for what the enlightenment was all about, maybe you should read up on that first before starting a rant like this:

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

So no, Islam did not experience enlightenment. The closest they came to that was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk and his attempt to reduce the influence of religion on politics but it mostly failed outside of Turkey and recent events there should make you worried about whether or not his legacy will last.

The fact that there are anecdotes about atheists in the 1100's does nothing to contradict what I said.

Nice, if you look at my profile, you'd see there's a reason I still stick on my hacker handle form the 90's. Sorry for the ranty nature of my comment. I saw your comment and was and was about to breeze past until I saw your handle. I can appreciate your view on Kemal Ataturk. But I humbly differ in my views of him.

What I was saying weren't just some anecdotes. May I humbly suggest you read up on the subject a little more before making such pronouncements. I don't care if some random person says something. But I think hope in the future rests in someone like you being informed and balanced in your views.

The internet is an amazing thing. It can help melt away prejudices and connect people who think from around the world. People who have the power to shape the future. We must be more sensible and informed. (It may sound elitist, but lets face it, this place in some way is a cafe that anyone from the US or Afghanistan can join in and discuss).

I'd argue that Ataturk was the wrong kind of leader. What the Muslim world needs is a Gandhi. Someone who doesn't force them to be this way or that way. All freedom need not look the same. I may be naive in thinking this, but maybe the world just needs better internet. There are people who destroy and people who build. If we could get the builders in the same community globally and get them communicating, there may be hope for a better yet.

(Advance apologies for the second rant)

Peace.

> What the Muslim world needs is a Gandhi.

That would be a good thing indeed.

What I meant with the Ataturk reference - in case that wasn't clear - is that it should be possible to have an enlightened muslim state, one where the trend to fanaticism can be stopped maybe even reversed, and that such a state could set an example for the rest of the muslim world.

Right now Turkey is once again in turmoil, it's not unlike former Yugoslavia in composition and I fear for how that will all turn out. You are right in that this directly links back to how the union was achieved in the first place (mostly by force, rather than by consensus).

No, he's right that Islam never experienced the Enlightenment. Nor was it in any way directly responsible for that.

Credit belongs to the Islamic world for keeping classical knowledge alive and reintroducing it to Europe at the beginning of the Renaissance. However the Enlightenment refers to a later period in European history where people came to terms with the result of decades of very nasty civil wars over Protestant vs Catholic, and came up with principles which allowed people of different beliefs to peacefully coexist within society.

That is the source of Western ideas like "freedom of religion" and "freedom of speech". Which very importantly say that while you can take offense at another's words or beliefs, you can't actually do anything about it. Like go over and kill them. And they have to reciprocate by not killing you in turn.

The Muslim world has nothing like this. Sure, they say that you're free to follow another religion of the book. But their teachings are very explicit that this only works so long as you don't do anything offensive to muslims. Like mock the prophet, convert muslims to your faith, and so on. Do that, and you die. Unless the Muslim world internalizes the Western version of that idea, we're going to continue having problems reconciling Islam and Western civilization.

Incidentally the golden age of Islam that you refer to traditionally ended with the sack of Baghdad in 1258. However contemporary scholars point to evidence that relative enlightenment continued until the great economic decline that resulted from Western countries establishing direct trade routes with the East, which reduced commerce along the Silk Road.

You're right (I appreciate the thoughtful response). I see what you're saying. And I agree with you on the principles of being tolerance being a good thing. I'm reminded of the Hindu-Muslim riots in India or the more recent events in Burma. I think the enlightenment and the dark ages and lessons form them are parts of western history, not shared by other cultures. (Although the Serbian conflict doesn't reconcile with this view if they're to be considered western beneficiaries of the enlightenment). What they have experienced is western imperialism.

What I would argue is the viewpoint that the Muslim world or any other region that isn't us, needing to inherit or adhere to our viewpoint, as being short sighted.

I think I'm finally starting to see jacquesm was saying (I feel like a dumbass now). I just reread his original comment on the world not moving in lockstep. It will take time, hopefully some economic development, infrastructure & some super connected smart people who are part of the local & global community. I interpreted his comment to be a slight against an entire culture, which, thanks your comment I am able to see past now.

My view is that Ataturk was trying to declare victory for western ideals while not actually holding them. His policies include fining people who speak languages other than Turkish, forcing people to have Turkish surnames, confiscating property from Armenians and so on. (I don't believe that he was directly responsible for the Armenian genocide, but there is nothing in his policies that would suggest he was opposed to it either.)

I agree that he was an improvement over the state of affairs in most muslim countries in the Middle East, but can't go so far as to say that he had the right idea.

He was far from perfect and the Armenian genocide will forever mar his legacy (and to this day can't be talked about in a reasonable way in Turkey, or even with quite a few Turks outside of Turkey).

But he did move Turkey from the state it was in to the next step. Keep in mind that most of the things that you add there were compromises, he was walking a very fine line between unification and all out civil war.

I doubt he could have done much more in one lifetime, I agree he probably could have done a better job but then again I wasn't in his shoes so it is hard to judge.

But putting Turkey ca. 1980 next to the countries surrounding it and you'd have to agree that his legacy had the potential to pay off.

Kemal Ataturk is like a lot of other historical figures. What he accomplished is great. If he did 1/100th of that in America today, any state would reintroduce the death penalty just for him. He was a massacring bastard, created institutions that codified racism, attacked and stole from innocent people. He is a monster.

But he ended 1500 years of war between islam and

The wast

Christianity

India

China

Africa

...

But yeah today it seems maybe he didn't so much end it as interrupt it for 100 years.

I find the best person to compare him to historically is Tito.

Erm... Islam was what kept most of the world out of the Dark Ages. They didn't need to experience enlightenment when they were busy experiencing Algebra and the number zero.

The Middle-east is such a hellhole because the Ottoman Empire got royally F'''ed up in World War 1. And its iddy-bitty pieces were redrawn by the Allies.

Whereas Germany remained strong and rebelled against the Allied rule by basically starting World War 2... the Ottomans were cut up piece by piece and distributed across the Allied powers. The clusterf'''ed map today was drawn by military commanders with no rhyme or reason to cultural unity, which leads us to how screwed up the Middle East is today.

Granted, the Ottomans were in decline by that point, which contributed to why they lost the Great War. But lets not forget the basis of history here. World War 1 screwed things up, quite severely, in this region.

In fact, the former map of the Ottoman Empire basically reads for where things are screwed up today.

http://www.zonu.com/images/0X0/2010-01-02-11578/The-Ottoman-...

Ignoring the major geo-political changes between 1850 through 1920 seems frankly insane. The current state of the Middle East can be easily explained by WW1 and the collapse of the Ottomans. Furthermore, the history and culture of the region _remembers_ when they were a great world power.

There's probably a bit of jealousy and pride in there, as the Persians / Ottomans were a great empire only ~150 years ago.

That certainly didn't help. But Islam still has to see its Erasmus and until then this madness will likely persist.

Religion is a personal thing.

Can you name an attack on the Western world in the last 30 years that didn't involve the Wahabist / Salafi extremist sect of Muslim?

There's one sect kinda-sorta preaching violence. And that is the Wahhabi Islam that followed Osama Bin Laden. Beyond that, your mainstream Shiite / Shia Muslims are rather peaceful folk within the Western World.

Frances 7%+ Muslim Population is a testament to that. Its pretty much those who get converted to the extremist violent sect that we have to worry about.

And as I stated in another thread: geo-political issues prevent the US from calling out the sect specifically. Saudi Arabia has a relatively large number of Salafists.

Even then... Wahhabi / Salafi aren't the same. But since they're more closely related (same geo-political area and a shared history)... I'll keep the terms close to each other. But honestly, these sorts of things are important to see.

You can't just paint Islam with a broad brush and make generalizations. At best, I'd say the attacks (Sept. 11, Anwar Al Awalki, Bin Laden, etc. etc.) are all derived from Wahhabi Islam at best.

The most accurate is probably "Violently Motivated Extremist Wahhabi Islam"... which is a rather small subset of Muslims. (Basically just ISIS and Al Qaeda)

Agreed with all you wrote, however that's the way the debate to date has been framed. Just like the anti-abortionists spoil it for the Christians, the ultra-orthodox Jews spoil it for Israel (and the rest of the Jews) and so on. So fanatics of all sects spoil it for Islam in the aggregate.

> And as I stated in another thread: geo-political issues prevent the US from calling out the sect specifically. Saudi Arabia has a relatively large number of Salafists.

We're in violent agreement here, as long as our dependency on oil continues this likely will not change. That's one of the factors holding back meaningful progress on a quite a large number of stages.

Yes, I can. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah#Alleged_suicide_and_t... for a list of attacks attributed to Hezbollah, which is a Shi'ah organization.

Furthermore support of violence to suppress freedom of religion is by no means limited to a small splinter sect in the islamic world. For example in a Pew survey, 88% of muslims in Egypt support the death penalty for converting away from islam. When you consider that about 95% of Egyptians are muslim, that's a pretty mainstream view.

If you want to know more about muslim views, I highly recommend reading through http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religio... for perspective. Coming from a Western view you might encounter a lot of, "No, you think you are tolerant but what you think of as tolerance really isn't." And it is important to understand that.

The item I pointed to is kind of canonical. A muslim who lets others practice their religion believes that he is tolerant of those religions. And continues believing that even while saying that if a member of one of those religions convinces some other muslim that that religion is correct, then they need to be killed for the attack on the one TRUE religion, islam!

> Can you name an attack on the Western world in the last 30 years that didn't involve the Wahabist / Salafi extremist sect of Muslim?

The first example that came to mind was the Unabomber - last attack was 1995, and he was explicitly opposing the technology-rich western world.

A simple google search for "terrorist attacks not muslim" brought up: http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/01/terrorism-in-europe/

"only 6% of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from 1980 to 2005 were carried out by Islamic extremists."

"In fact, a whopping 99.6% of terrorist attacks in Europe were by non-Muslim groups; a good 84.8% of attacks were from separatist groups completely unrelated to Islam. Leftist groups accounted for over sixteen times as much terrorism as radical Islamic groups. Only a measly 0.4% of terrorist attacks from 2006 to 2008 could be attributed to extremist Muslims."

I think he meant attacks on the Western world by Islamists not Wahabist/Salafi affiliated.

If you look at the century centered on 1500: Just finishing 400 years of named-as-such Crusades, conquering much of the world in the name of Christ, violently repressing non-Christians in the areas it controlled, and getting started with religious wars between various factions of western Christianity which would be particularly prominent through the 17th Century.

Indeed. It is almost like it is a political tool used to mould and shape the actions of people to the whim of those who have the ability to control the message

Why would you do that?

Don't misinterpret me - regardless of whether you post 10000 Mohammed cartoons or 10, Islamists are not going to change their attitudes overnight.

If you're gonna denounce a religion, can you at least get the sects done correctly?

Wahhabism / Salafist Islam, which is a very small minority of Muslims, is the one preaching the extremist reaction.

The majority of mainstream Shia / Shiite Muslims are actually peaceful. They kinda don't like the cartoons, but I don't know of any attack from "mainstream" Muslims. They all come from the Al Quaeda-inspired Salafist sect preached by Osama Bin Laden.

Let's see ... Freedom of speech ... the answer is "No".

Every other religion, and atheism, and every government party, and ... Don't get this treatment. Just on page two of the newspaper in front of me is a depiction of green party voters as idiots. Apparently they're all women, ugly, fat and insane. This depiction is done to denounce what boils down to the actions of a city official.

Should I write the paper complaining that there are multiple branches, men, and a great variety of ideas while complaining of racism ?

An attitude like this will kill all humor.

Btw what do you make of the primary source material ? Like that list of people muhammad had executed ? Is that somehow excluded from "mainstream" islam ? It seems to me a very well established point that islamic literature is not exactly peaceful, and "the prophet" is at best a warlord ... At worst ...

As far as Freedom of speech... yeah, he can have it. As can I, and I'm using my freedom of speech to call out ignorance. Denouncing all Muslims is utterly Bigoted, especially when you consider how much in the minority the violent Wahhabist are in the great scheme of Islam.

Denounce Muslims all you want... I'm not going to stop you. Yeah, you have freedom of speech. But instead, I'll use _my_ freedom of speech to counter-argue a point.

>>> Every other religion, and atheism, and every government party, and ... Don't get this treatment.

Erm... thats not what I'm talking about. When Irish Catholics Gasoline Bomb British cities, people don't use the actions of the violent IRA as a denunciation of Christianity as a whole.

What do the Irish Catholic IRA have to do with Mormans? Nothing. Or Protestants? I'm asking you to understand basic Islam here. There are many Muslims.

The violent sect is called Wahhabism, and most mainstream Muslims denounce that sect (Shiite and Shia are mainstream IIRC). And much like how Irish Catholics don't represent Catholics as a whole (IRA violence was not condoned by the Pope), Osama Bin Laden's specific philosophy on extremely violent Wahhabism is only a minority opinion of that minority sect.

> Erm... thats not what I'm talking about. When Irish Catholics Gasoline Bomb British cities, people don't use the actions of the violent IRA as a denunciation of Christianity as a whole.

Firstly I would argue that other people in this thread doing just that. Well usually not the actions of the IRA, though the terrorist attacks against abortion clinics are mentioned (they were against buildings, of course, not people), and things like the crusades or the founding of America. Usually to advance the case of atheism by implying moral equivalence of all religions, and of course neglecting that atheists, specifically 20th century communist state atheists are by far the biggest terrorists and warmongers in history, certainly where death toll is considered. Christianity is in fact pretty far down the list when it comes to deadly ideologies. Certainly far below atheism.

Examples from just this thread:

> Don't forget Islam and Christianity along with many other religions also actively promotes violence. In the west we tend to whitewash things, but for a less controversial example if you look at say Peter Pain or fairy tales there very different pre Disneyfication.

> If you look at the century centered on 1500: Just finishing 400 years of named-as-such Crusades, conquering much of the world in the name of Christ, violently repressing non-Christians in the areas it controlled, and getting started with religious wars between various factions of western Christianity which would be particularly prominent through the 17th Century.

> Western christianity didn't leave all violence behind, see for example anti-abortion violence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence#United_S....

And so on ...

Secondly, an answer to that I often hear is that that's because making the case that Jesus was a terrorist is utterly impossible. An annoyance to the government, sure. A rebel ... if you seriously stretch the truth, you can probably make him a rebel. Making the case that muhammad was a terrorist (leader), sending out assassins, raiding parties and the like ... doesn't seem very hard at all. Not sure if he ever sent out suicide attackers though.

This is also the story you keep hearing about terrorist recruiters. There's a reason terrorist recruitment amongst muslims works much better than among, say, christians or hindus or buddhists or ..., and that reason is differences in the ideology.

But all of these facts are beside the point. Our society cannot possibly tolerate even a tiny minority of terrorists (and it will get worse over time : just think of what might happen if we discover portable and easy fusion power while having a small minority of terrorists among ourselves). Right now we still have margin, but it's blatantly obvious that that margin is eroding over time.

Equally plain is that there is a breaking point where moral, social and political arguments are completely beside the point. Given the public reaction to this attack, I don't think we're that close yet, but we're getting closer. People would not respond at all if they didn't think it a threat, so in that view the demonstration is an escalation, even though I doubt Al Qaeda sees it as such. Also I'd be willing to bet that the French police, whether the agent is muslim or not, will effectively treat muslims worse because of what happened to Ahmed Merabet. It is no different from what happens if the mafia kills a police agent, but of course it will be felt by innocents just the same.

But when demonstrating fails to stop terrorism and new attacks occur, public opinion will shift to include other solutions to terrorism. It seems to me we are maybe half a dozen shifts away from attacking groups ... Of course there are 4-5 terror attacks by muslims per week (thursday ... Charlie Hebdo, friday ... massive attack and massacre against a Nigerian town, Saturday ... suicide bombings one in a public market in Nigeria and one in Lebanon (Tripoli), Sunday ... two people beheaded on tape in Zuweid, Egypt). At that rate it could happen suddenly and really, really quickly.

If you think about WWII and later the cold war, it would absolutely not be the first time that even America's state turns against minority ideologies that exist in their population, and the same is true in other countries. It's not like more than a tiny minority of US-Japanese would kill for the emperor, for instance.

>>> This is also the story you keep hearing about terrorist recruiters. There's a reason terrorist recruitment amongst muslims works much better than among, say, christians or hindus or buddhists or ..., and that reason is differences in the ideology.

You're so blinded by bigotry I bet you can't even tell the difference from an extremist Wahhabist Muslim and my Shiite next-door neighbor.

And you can't even admit to me that these two people have vastly differing philosophies and vastly different interpretations of the Koran. Quit denouncing Islam in general and start seeing the world for the complicated mess that it is.

I'm telling you the difference in ideology. Its called Extremist Wahhabist Islam. Again though, even this is a bit of an oversimplification as a good chunk of US allies in the middle east are in fact Wahhabists as well, and they're not violently attacking us. (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc. etc.)

Denouncing all of Islam is ridiculously ignorant. Denouncing all of Christianity is also ignorant (because the many sects of Christianity basically have nothing to do with each other outside of an event that happened 2015 years ago). You are defending bigotry and ignorance.

>>> Our society cannot possibly tolerate even a tiny minority of terrorists

Why don't you google American history? I mean, 1960s has an assassinated President.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...

The majority of Terrorist attacks within the US is... surprise... not Muslim related. This is a historical fact.

The last hostage situation in my town was by a Neo-Nazi, no joke. He got a few shots, killed a few security guards and had to be gunned down by the Police. Leftist Eco-terrorists have bombed labs. Anti-abortionists are shooting doctors and also bombing clinics.

Even if you Genocided all Muslims, the US will continue to have terrorists try to make points. The issue of terrorism is completely independent of Islam.

So stop being a Bigot, open your eyes to the facts. If you're gonna denounce Islam, do it correctly. Extreme Wahhabist Islam is a bad philosophy... growing in popularity. (ISIS, Al Qaeda).

But outside of ISIS / Al Qaeda inspired Wahhabists, Muslims are actually quite peaceful within the US.

You are attempting to conflate individuals versus ideology. Mustlims are individuals. Islam is an ideology.

Islam is evil. No question.

> Denouncing all of Islam is ridiculously ignorant. Denouncing all of Christianity is also ignorant (because the many sects of Christianity basically have nothing to do with each other outside of an event that happened 2015 years ago). You are defending bigotry and ignorance.

And what do all Christians have in common ? Well, easy : Jesus. That's what you're referring to.

What do all muslims have in common : "the prophet". This prophet :

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

Of note : "Ten people were ordered to be killed:[14] Ikrimah ibn Abi-Jahl, Abdullah ibn Saad ibn Abi Sarh, Habbar bin Aswad, Miqyas Subabah Laythi, Huwairath bin Nuqayd, Abdullah Hilal and four women who had been guilty of murder or criticising Mohammed or had sparked off the war and disrupted the peace."

(note also the fact that the prophet violated the terms of the peace treaty he signed beforehand, real peace of work this prophet)

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

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

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

...

The list goes on and all in all "the prophet" directly ordered the deaths of at least 1200 people, some sources say 18000 is closer to the real figure.

And let's just not mention that the guy did this to a 6 year old (don't worry, some muslim sources claim she was 8) (plenty of muslim countries realize that this is not moral, but always muslim clerics are fighting the state on this) :

http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/0... (search for "fondle", and yes, that's not a mistranslation. For a modern view google "thighing" for how this is translated into modern law and ... into modern ways to do something to female toddlers (which is both legal and done in Saudi Arabia))

There is no gray area here. There is also no sane argument that "some" islamic sects don't include this. Every moral human being would consider islam's central figure a complete abomination. The rest (the large majority) is either ignorant or (some of them) malevolent.

So why is islam evil ? Simple. If you read the primary sources, there is no escaping the conclusion that the terrorirsts are right. If you consider massacring people for insults/criticism wrong, then the prophet is a monster, because he did that.

Such a viewpoint is completely incompatible with anything remotely related to islam, for obvious reasons (for over a millenia, muslims were referred to as mohammedans, because "muslim" means believer, not of any specific religion, and was used to refer to christians)

I fear to think about just how desperate you must be when holding up Saudi Arabia as an example of a "US ally", presumably to indicate the state itself is not extremist ...

Now look here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knjwOWJoY-k&bpctr=1421571560

Heh ... I wonder why anyone would consider that extremist ?

> The majority of Terrorist attacks within the US is... surprise... not Muslim related. This is a historical fact.

And any historical map of the world will tell you exactly why that is. Incidentally, by death toll, islam is by far the largest cause of terrorism. By death toll per decade it's 2 orders of magnitude worse than all other sources combined.

Furthermore there are huge regions where that is not true at all. South Eastern Europe, North and Central Africa, India, and parts of China. Additionally, the largest massacre ever (the invasion of India by the Mughals) was also committed by islam's followers. And it's not like that's islam's only mention in the top-10 massacres by death toll.

While what you said is probably true for obvious reasons, also remember that those cartoons probably offended around 1.5bn people. Seeing that three people decided to react violently after several years of the paper being put out weekly, it is fairly safe to say that this could be described as a clash of the extreme extremists (of whom there are very few).

I am pretty sure the outrage against anti-Semitic jokes would be ridiculous, too (which CH spoke out against and fired over).

I am not defending anybody here, just wanted to describe a slightly different point of view. Obviously it is CH's own choice to put out and condone whatever they want and that choice should be granted.

could have offended, if they even saw them. The issue is, how much offense was their really. If Islam is like any other religion there is a significant number who just don't care. They don't want to be bothered.

What we have here is a bunch of extremist trying to incite violence against their faith in order to create more recruits by demonstrating oppression. It does not matter that their actions caused it, it only matters it exists.

Used to be you could isolate a country to make them come around, restrict access to trade and banking. With these groups your going to have to make sure they have no home. keep them on the move so much they cannot get established. It won't be easy or quick, but the alternative is allowing them a beachhead and being subject to their whims

CH only printed about 30,000 copies a week. It was just a convenient proxy. I actually live in France and I've never read CH. However, tomorrow morning when the new issue hits the newsstands, I will be first in line. I'm buying the paper not because I care about the content, but because I care about the writers' ability to express their ideas freely and without fear of being shot in the face.

I tend to agree with you. There are very few "extreme extremists" and muslims aren't terrorist.

But I don't know if we should conclude that everything is fine, and it's just a matter of a few unavoidable lunatics.

For instance, it is known that there are currently hundreds (thousands) of French people murdering people in Syria in the name of Daesh. Still a small number wrt the number of French muslims... But there are also a lot of people that support the killings at CH (including French kids or teenagers at school that didn't want to observe the minute of silence, probably reflecting their parents idea). Moreover, antisemitic agressions are also common place. And so on...

Concerning CH, let's not forget that they were bombed soon after their controversial drawing a few years ago. Without the police surveillance, I don't know how long it would have taken before other attacks.

Besides, CH has always been equally virulent against all religions. Probably less against Islam actually.

I wouldn't call someone drawing pictures an 'extreme extremist'. I would call someone who murders people with an assault rifle an 'extreme extremist'.

It's the equivalent of me saying something insulting about your mother, and you responding by beating me to death. There is no useful comparison to be made.

All irrelevant. How is any of this relevant? The extrapolation of your logic is that we should legislate against offending Muslims. That is the only outcome of your thought process.

> Insurers wouldn't accept standard policies.

No insurance policy I know will pay out for events of terrorism unless specifically negotiated (and i have done a few).

> All irrelevant. How is any of this relevant? The extrapolation of your logic is that we should legislate against offending Muslims. That is the only outcome of your thought process.

For what it's worth, I don't see that as the only outcome of the logic in the GP's post. I read the point as: due to self-censorship, we essentially reinforce the notion that terrorism works to silence speech.

Not to put any words in the poster's mouth, but it seems to me that the solution to this problem is to accept the risk and generate more speech, and to prove that murder is not an effective way to stop such speech.

The official response by the LDS church to the Book of Mormon was this: "The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ." [1]

Not exactly what you would call "backlash." Then the church took out an ad in the playbill. [2]

[1] http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-statement-regar... [2] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/06/entertainment/la-et-...

> And I'm sure people openly mock the temple ceremony somewhere -- that would cause any Mormons to kill two dozen people.

Didn't you mean 'wouldn't' ?

Yes, I did. I was kind of editing it as I went, and ended up cutting that part out. My apologies.

I'm as much for risking your life for a principle as the next guy. But I don't know which principle we're risking our life for. The message the others hate our freedom? (Seriously?)

Are we trying to "teach" these "uneducated and backwards" Muslims what freedom and freedom of speech are? Are we teaching comedy?

Sadly, in many cases those standing for "principles" are being defiant against the authorities in their own countries (as in who the hell is my Editor/Producer/Government to tell me what I can't say) whom the extremists have beef with and are getting caught in the crossfire. Yes, the extremists are wrong. I agree with the government not being able to tell me what I can and can't say. But to ignore reality is a whole different thing.

Let's extrapolate... Publish more content meant to offend so either they get used to it... or some fringe elements in the Muslim world commit terrorist attacks pretending to be the "defenders"... Then our government steps in and bombs said country back to the stone age (which incidentally is where these guys are most comfortable & can grab power the easiest). Think terror victims are pissed off/disturbed? I'm sure some kids in post war Afghanistan are a lot more ruthless than some of the meanest gangsters on our streets.

When I was on the streets, I recall being punched. The first thing that came to my mind was to kill the asshole that punched me, but I was able to catch myself before doing that. I realized that me punching back would eventually not just lead to one of us dying, but possibly his and my friends dying. He was astonished when I didn't punch pack, given I had a size advantage on him. I thought it through and made sure he, or anyone else there wouldn't punch me again, without anyone getting killed. We eventually became friends and started volunteering to feed the homeless.

If we're supposedly intellectually superior, and we're obviously in a superior position when it comes to the exchange of ideas in our society. If we can't stop and think a little more critically, then that's a shame. Principles are great. I know a gang member who is paralyzed from the waist down who really wished he's rethought that decision to fight. Sure the other guy ended up dead. The fight was about the principle of "respect". In the end they both lost.

It's stupid to jump on the bandwagon and stupid to complete forget. This is a good opportunity for us to think... There may be a better solution and machismo isn't necessary noble.

I take your point and agree with it but another factor you can't ignore is that there are 1.7 billion Muslims, compared to 15 million (wikipedia'd that) Mormons. Plus, I can't source it right but I have read editorials where broadsheet editors say they've been asked by the government not to print something in the interests of "national security" (IOW they don't want to cause problems with the Saudis or whoever.

I'm not Mormon, but I shudder when I see the mainstream media ripping on Mormons or Scientologists. This isn't us. I think this is one of the biggest things we've lost to 9/11, decency and restraint. It was first OK to talk shit about Muslims, Towelheads (sadly many more peaceful Sikhs were victimized by actual violence than Muslims), then Scientologists, then Mormons. What the hell happened to our ideals?

I recall receiving an e-mail from a KKK affiliate. It was a rational argument that a significantly larger proportion of the black population was incarcerated as compared to whites. The e-mail stated that see it on TV shows like cops who perpetrate heinous crimes. It then went to state that it's not about being racist. It's about taking a stand... I replied with a long rant countering every point and was obviously unsubscribed from the list.

Now let's apply that template to other minorities. Hmmm, skin color is too obvious, let's do religion instead. "Did you see how most scientologists are crazy? They jump on couches..." It's not racism since you're not targeting a race. But it's the same fucking thing. You're singling out a minority group. While you might not personally like a minority group, one not as powerful as the group you belong to, our society did not publicly attack minorities (I'm talking about the 90's).

It seems the only things that still haven't crept in are outright racism against a different race (probably because racial minorities are more powerful now). But we are now taking pride in offending and trying to decimate the views that aren't mainstream. WTF is that? Did we forget what that type of vitriol led to the last time around?

Can you seriously compare the socioeconomic conditions of the average Mormon to a Muslim from Iraq or Afghanistan?

I'm amazed that I'm reading comments on HN comparing 1.7B Muslims and trying to judge them as a whole. Yes, it's not technically racism, but it's not any less shallow or ignorant.

Is Islam more violent than Christianity? (WTF kind of a question is that)

Are American blacks more criminal than whites?

Both of these questions should make anyone with intelligence shudder. If you just tell yourself that you're asking yourself these questions "scientifically" an "rationally", let's not forget the Nazi Scientists who were measuring how Jews were scientifically different or even earlier when scientists in a slave owning american were trying to prove that blacks people were less evolved than whites.

> Is Islam more violent than Christianity? (WTF kind of a question is that)

> Are American blacks more criminal than whites?

Aren't these questions fundamentally different? One is about a belief system, the other is about someone's physical appearance caused by their genes. Given a belief system is at least partly made by choice (assuming you have that choice), you could ask this question without being "racist".

"Are communists more violent in their pursuit of ideals than socialists?" -- a similar and valid question. Perhaps communism requires a strangehold on the state that socialism doesn't, so more violence has occurred in the name of communism. Maybe not. But it's a valid question.

> Given that a belief system is at least partly made by choice

An interesting point. On a purely rational and logical level, yes, they're fundamentally different, and your'e a racist if you're bashing another race.

But in reality, people's beliefs closely reflect the beliefs and values of the society they live in. While two people living in the same community might have different religions, most noticeable differences are slight.

So, in some way, for most people, religion is inherited part of one's identity. If you happen to have the luxury of being able to reflect on your life, then you might adopt another religion or develop your own set of beliefs. A majority of the world does not have that opportunity or luxury.

So, yes, while it's technically not racism, but it effectively is bigotry in most cases. I think one of the coolest things in western culture is to question authority and be willing to be introspective. I have personally learned a great deal, thru introspection and being open to at lease listening to ideas that are very different than my own. This, to me, is an awesome opportunity that freedom of speech and not silencing dissenting opinion offers us as a society.

But what has become commonplace through the umbrella "free" speech is not the introspective discussions, but it's basically now our right to attack others whose opinions, beliefs (even inherited labels like religion) differ from us. Sure we have the right to free speech, even to offend.

I deleted the rest of the comment before posting it. I realized that the analogy I was making could have sounded like blaming the victims of Charlie Hebdo for what happened. That's wrong, so I chose not to express it. I technically would have been OK, but it's not the right thing to do.

Expressing views that will obviously polarize an entire section of population, and knowingly doing so for clicks, views, ads, or whatever, is short sighted and leave us with more negativity and intellectually worse off as a society.

Religion is a collection of ideas.

And bad ideas deserve to be criticized.

It's as simple as that.

Mormons don't live with the same fear for their lives as muslims. I guess if mormonism had originated in a more violent country it would be encouraging a little more violence. So I don't think the difference is just the ideology but also the cultural background. And western civilization has some blame (some, not all) for the instability and violence lived in middle east.

They don't anymore, but they certainly used to. The reason Salt Lake City is the home of the LDS church today is because they were forced out of Missouri and Illinois, and their extermination was officially authorized by the government. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Executive_Order_44

Wow, didn't know about that =). Although, it does say that:

> no one is known to have been killed by the militia or anyone else specifically because of it. There were, however, other associated deaths: the militia and other state authorities used Boggs' Executive Order as a pretext to expel the Mormons from their lands in the state, and force them to migrate to Illinois.

I'm pretty sure many muslims countries suffer much worse violence than that, over many more years.

No one is known to have been killed as a direct result of that order; that was the last straw after a lot of other stuff had gone down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haun's_Mill_massacre#Massacre

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

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

Don't forget about the Mountain Meadows Massacre which occurred in the larger context of the "Utah War" about 20 years after your referenced events. http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_War

Before we all jump on our high horses about Islam, remember than many doctors and clinics who perform abortion in the U.S. have regularly and repeatedly been subjected to harassment, intimidation, threats of physical violence, actual violence, and in a few cases, death, by self-professed Christians.

Abortion is obviously not the same thing as a cartoon, but it is a safe, routine, and legal elective medical procedure in the U.S.

Also realize that the vast (i.e. many orders of magnitude) majority of Muslims, while offended by satirical depictions of Muhammed, do NOT resort to violence.

It is the violence, and threats of violence--not the offense--that is the problem. Plenty of people take strong offense at things that seem silly to other people; for example, over software libraries to initialize Linux-based operating systems (init.d vs systemd). Or mobile device app store rules.

And finally before we all jump on our high horse about religion, remember that there are plenty of examples of violent threats within our own industry--say, for tweeting about a sex joke at a software conference, or complaining about videogame reviews.

> "...real satire of Islam can't be done without significant risk of violent reprisal..."

Thought experiment: Can the same really be done for (say) Judaism without fear of being labelled anti-semite, losing your job, or worse? Could they have done it for Christianity and shown it in Bible-belt? (Maybe they already have and I don't know about it).

Also, there's a sense of 'no true scotsman' about your comment where you state no 'real' satire is possible. As though it only counts if there's 'significant risk of violent reprisal'.

from: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/09/solidarity-cha...

"When we originally discussed publishing this article to make these points, our intention was to commission two or three cartoonists to create cartoons that mock Judaism and malign sacred figures to Jews the way Charlie Hebdo did to Muslims. But that idea was thwarted by the fact that no mainstream western cartoonist would dare put their name on an anti-Jewish cartoon, even if done for satire purposes, because doing so would instantly and permanently destroy their career, at least. Anti-Islam and anti-Muslim commentary (and cartoons) are a dime a dozen in western media outlets; the taboo that is at least as strong, if not more so, are anti-Jewish images and words."

This would suggest that there is plenty of commentary that does not result in reprisals.

> Warning: this article contains the image of the magazine cover, which some may find offensive.

It's the first time I've seen something like this on Guardian; I don't even remember it on articles discussing rape, murder or such, which is usually where "trigger warning" applies.

Personally, I find such trigger warnings, and especially "you might be offended" warnings, totally ridiculous. What about me? I find such warnings an insult to my intelligence and a trivialization of people's personal responsibility, where is my warning?

And it makes things worse. The idea that you have to tiptoe and thought police yourself around some group of people is sure way to antagonize part of the society against that group.

Makes you think about their motives for adding such an exceptional warning.

Ball gripping fear?

Very likely. I heard an two-way interview on NPR with the editor of the Washington Post, another editor from a prominent UK paper (either the Observer or Guardian, can't remember and can't find the episode, but both are members of the same media group) and the anchor.

The editor of the Observer(?) and WaPo were duking it out because the editor of the Observer admitted that he and his staff were frankly terrified of reprisals, and that it was important to admit that publicly, especially if a paper makes the decision not to republish, and that appealing to "sensitivity" as a reason for not republishing the cartoons was a cop-out. The WaPo editor stood by the "sensitivity" excuses. I obviously completely agree with the former.

You do have to do that, at all times. It's called "being a functioning member of society" – and that means being considerate of other people's views and feelings, as ridiculous as they may be. Everybody does this, all of the time (well, maybe some people don't. Those people are usually dicks.)

Remember The Guardian isn't a satirical magazine, but a newspaper. It doesn't have the defence against purposeful offence that comes with the former.

And how facts could be offensive or hurtful?

If you are a newspaper you have to write news. If you care about peoples feelings, they should create a tumblr blog instead.

If the article had images that would cause offense or distress then yes it would carry such a warning. Normal practice, I have seen it many times, mainly for scenes depicting the aftermath of violence. Or even scenes of the meat industry.

> Personally, I find such trigger warnings, and especially "you might be offended" warnings, totally ridiculous. What about me? I find such warnings an insult to my intelligence and a trivialization of people's personal responsibility, where is my warning?

I agree wholeheartedly.

They may have decided to preface their article with this message because they feared retaliation by zealous Muslims who would not otherwise expect to see a depiction of Muhammad in the Guardian.

I don't think it detracts any from the content of the reporting, though.

# On topic #

There are two possible extremes to consider:

1. A world in which any idea or custom is subject to criticism. Nothing is sacred. We can criticize, laugh at, depict, and mock anything that anyone believes. Publicly. Without fear of violence.

2. A world in which NO idea or custom is subject to criticism. Everything is sacred. Do not criticize, laugh at, depict, or mock anything that anyone believes.

My problem with religious extremists is that they, in general, seem to want World #2 for themselves and World #1 for everyone else. I'm more of a "World #1 for everyone" sort of person, and you're free to mock me for that if you'd like.

Why was this downvoted?!

A handful of HN users with >= 500 karma didn't like either:

- The fact that I don't embrace the concept of trigger warnings.

- The fact that I responded in agreement to another comment.

- The fact that I suggested the warning could have been placed in response to a fear of retaliation.

- Me. Just, in general.

- All of the above.

But since none of the downvoters had enough gumption to actually say what they didn't like about my comment, we'll never know. :)

My pet theory for what motivates these squads of downvoters is a mix of laziness and cowardice.

You should have put a trigger warning - "Point of view disagreeing with the majority media narrative - could cause compulsive downvoting behaviour".

;).

Heh. I don't really think I'm even disagreeing with the majority media narrative here. I do think trigger warnings can be taken to ridiculous extremes (e.g. imagine a trigger warning every 30 seconds of a horror film) and, as a result, am not fond of them as an idea.

Nearly zero content.

I hope the irony of replying with "nearly zero content" isn't lost on on-lookers.

>Nearly zero content

>They may have decided to preface their article with this message because they feared retaliation by zealous Muslims who would not otherwise expect to see a depiction of Muhammad in the Guardian.

Seems like content to me.

It was a two line "me too" when I posted that reply.

No it wasn't, that full sentence that was quoted had been there since before the first edit.

You may not like what was said, but please do not engage in dishonesty.

To the Guardian's credit, they did actually publish the cover. As did Libération in France.

US news outlets, as well as some UK outlets, and certainly many more elsewhere including France, cannot be said to have done as much, e.g.:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/arts/international/charlie...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1134...

Right, I was a bit disappointed that the BBC had two separate articles on the cover, but neither included a picture of it.

Perhaps the role of a public broadcaster makes things different. My understanding was that the CBC's decision not to run cartoons of the prophet Mohammad was based on their institutional duty to be inclusive to all Canadians. Ultimately they deemed they can sufficiently report this news without publishing material that will be offensive to a large portion of Canadians on religious grounds.

Several US news outlets did, the biggest being the WSJ:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/charlie-hebdo-puts-muhammad-on-c...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/01/12/hayat-bo...

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-charlie-hebdo-cove...

http://chicago.suntimes.com/nationworld/7/71/286127/charlie-...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/01/12...

Yep. Big hat to them, and shame on the NYT imho. In the UK, the Independent also published the cover in full.

Edit: it look like Buzzfeed went through a couple of sites:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/austinhunt/heres-who-is-and-isnt-pub...

Oh, please don't take this to such a stupid extreme. Being a deliberate dick to people isn't something to be lauded; be respectful and thoughtful, even when you disagree.

I find "stupid extremes" in the realm of culture much easier to tolerate than those trying to control our behavior through violence. What you label "deliberate dick", most freedom loving people would label defiance.

I believe that this warning here serves as a comic relief.

Furthermore, it could reasonably be that Guardian here follows somewhat common trend not to sit silently and subdue to terrorism threats but to at least display subtle retaliation. Or it was author's take at this while still getting published. Could be flat-out wrong on this one, though.

Unfortunately the concept of having the right to be offended, but not the right not to be offended doesn't seem to have been explained to Muslims.

Every other faith (and other large group of people) seems to have accepted it however.

I'm embarrassed to say that some of my fellow Catholics don't entirely get it. After the attack the Catholic League had a truly stupid editorial of "provocation isn't free speech" flavor.

Religious people will always have a struggle between their notions of the sacred and others' freedom to ignore those notions. Those using their minds will see the necessity of freedom of conscience -- there is no faith without choice -- and accept its implications for speech. But the temptations and ignorances that move people to dictate to others are, I think, common to all religions. Yes, the mainstreams of Christianity and Judaism have gone much further in thinking this through, but we'll always have to guard against this instinct.

> Every other faith (and other large group of people) seems to have accepted it however.

This is obviously false. In England the film "Life of Brian" faced multiple bans from local councils on being shown at cinemas. Glasgow had a 30 year ban that ended in 2009. The comedian Stewart Lee faced legal action and a vicious campaign after his opera "Jerry Springer: the musical"; Jewish groups (rightly) decry Holocaust denying cartoons or cartoons comparing treatment of Palestinians to anything that happened in Nazi Germany; Sikhs in Birmingham (UK) violently protested a play, causing it to be stopped.

Life of Brian: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west...

Stewart Lee: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N9EUe8jNr6o

Sikh protest stops play: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/dec/20/arts.religion1

Fair enough, but I would say the former still holds.

You have no right not to be offended, it just doesn't exist.

Not really. I have some integrists (Catholics) in my family, and they took the trouble to forward e-mails explaining that they didn't really like Charlie Hebdo, because it wasn't respectful towards any religion. In fact, they don't think much of press freedom:

«freedom of expression and freedom of the press don't extend to insulting, showing contempt, blaspheming, trampling, mocking the faith or values of co-citizens». The justification: «insult is violence».

Possibly they are afraid of being mocked. Realizing that people didn't have to take (the idea of) god seriously was transformative for me.

Their email forward about Charlie Hebdo described a cartoon of pope benedict xvi «taking position on pedophilia» (sodomizing children), here's the drawing: http://culturebox.francetvinfo.fr/tendances/evenements/dessi... . The cartoon is not actually related to Charlie Hebdo, which goes to show they don't read it. That said, here's a drawing that's really be Charlie, lampooning the catholics for a hush-hush attitude to pedophilia: http://stripsjournal.canalblog.com/archives/2010/03/31/27376... . It's accurate: those well-to-do catholics I've talked to, including priests, reacted to the scandals strictly by being preoccupied with perception of the catholic church.

And, to make it even worse; the cover is depicted on the side of the article, 140x187px... it's like not printing it at all, because it doesn't look like it's part of the content at all.

The Office 365 ad that is actually inserted inside the article text has three times the screenspace relative to the cover picture.

Everyone has to walk on eggshells around Islam, or risk being labeled racist or "Islamaphobic".

I agree. People need to understand that when almost every terrorist attack and almost every ongoing war, slaughter, massacre, etc., has "radical Islam" on one side of it, it's difficult to see that those elements represent only a tiny fraction of Muslims.

Maybe truly radical elements are in fact the tiniest sliver, but I'd appreciate some leeway for those struggling to understand how that sliver is so intimately involved in just about every major violence and armed conflict across the world.

Beg your pardon. I find the exact opposite as true. People today, are generally careful and sensitive about what they say about Jews or black people, because they don't want to be labelled as anti-semitic or racist. Muslims seems to be the only minority you can criticize and be politically correct.

Consider the following statement :

"Maybe most Jews are peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing zionist cancer they must be held responsible"

Is the above sentence racist? anti-semitic? Blood libel? Incitement to hatred and violence? Possibly prosecutable?

Well here is what Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corporation, the head of one of the largest media organisations in the world tweeted a few days back :

"Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible."

Maybe most Americans are peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing military-industrialist cancer they must be held responsible.

Maybe most Kerbals are safety-conscious, but until they recognize and strut up their growing pile of solid rocket boosters at the launchpad they must be held responsible...

... oh wait, I forgot it's not Reddit.

To be fair, I think you're pretty free to criticize the more extremist aspects of Judaism, such as circumcision (yes, they scream "antisemitism", but nobody takes them seriously), the ultra-orthodox political campaigns in Israel (e.g. that men and women should walk on opposite sidewalks). Also, they don't seem to have as many idiotic rules as Muslims (no depictions of Yahweh? or at least I don't know about them, and they take them much less seriously).

>> I think you're pretty free to criticize the more extremist aspects of Judaism, such as circumcision (yes, they scream "antisemitism", but nobody takes them seriously),

Well I don't think many jews, or muslims for that matter (muslims do it too) would be offended by a reasoned criticism of circumcision. It is usually the hot topics like Israeli actions, or depiction of Prophet Muhammad that seems to trigger passions.

There was quite a scandal in Germany recently, when a court ruled that circumcision was illegal, and both Muslims and Jews threw a fit, saying that Nazism is back.

Well. Then it no longer is criticism, is it?

You are essentially taking away their right to do something.

> You are essentially taking away their right to do something.

Like... harming other people, specifically children? Oh, they are so oppressed /s

And here's the tweet itself. https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/553734788881076225

I'm pretty sure that if he'd said this about Jews, it would not have had 7k retweets and he'd also have been forced to 'apologise'.

Exactly. Glenn Greenwald posted a great article on Intercept about this topic yesterday. Worth reading.

I was going to respond with the same thing. Since you beat me to it, here's the link: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/09/solidarity-cha...

It's a worthwhile effort. If you just go with the first thing that goes through your head, you're probably repeating someone else's meme.

It's a shitty thing to equate islamic terrorists (Al-Qaeda, in this case) with Islam. Al Qaeda kills eight times more muslism than non-muslims: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/surprising-study-o...

And Daeh is killing muslims and blowing up mosques: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/07/isis-s-grue...

The idea that this is a clash of civilisations, rather than terrorists seeking to control co-religionists, is designed to drive both sides to their respective extremists.

Moreso than Jews & Judaism?

Sure, I could extend my statement to all major religions. Why does religious belief get an exception from scrutiny and mockery?

> I find such warnings an insult to my intelligence and a trivialization of people's personal responsibility

How so? If an article says "trigger warning: (rape/Mohammed/spiders/flashing lights)", then people who don't want to be exposed to those things (e.g. due to PTSD, religion, phobias, epilepsy - or simply because it upsets them and they don't particularly want to be upset right now) can choose not to read it.

How does it erode someone's personal responsibility to give them the information they need to make that choice?

> where is my warning?

If there's a largish number of people for whom "trigger warning: trigger warnings" would actually make life less stressful, then I'd endorse people including that warning.

I don't think that population is very large. For that matter, I don't think it includes you.

I think the disparity here is that the "trigger warning" is warning that there's a possibility someone's feelings might be hurt which is ridiculous. If we start down that path, where do we draw the line?

Please edit your post to include a trigger warning: comparing epilepsy and religious belief may insult some people. See? Absurd.

I care about people's feelings. I agree that there's probably a qualitative difference between offending someone and causing them to have a seizure. But I'd still prefer not to offend them, all else being equal, and this would be true even if there was no such thing as epilepsy.

There's no hard line. We use our best judgement, based on what we know of our audience.

However, I will note one counterargument that I find compelling, which is utility monsters. If we reward people for getting upset, that gives them an incentive to get more upset. I don't know the best way to deal with this, but I suspect that "no trigger warnings" is not optimal.

> If there's a largish number of people for whom "trigger warning: trigger warnings" would actually make life less stressful, then I'd endorse people including that warning.

Good point. However people keep saying that it's all about extremists, not the general population of Islamists, therefore I would also think that (by definition) that population of extremists (who would be offended by such pictures) is not very large.

Extremists have an extreme response, but that doesn't mean they're the only ones who get offended.

The reaction of committing murder is all about extremists. I think there are plenty of Moslems who would find the iconography uncomfortable viewing. It just goes against the grain.

For epilepsy we have well-justified reason for warnings. For all the other things you mentioned, trigger warnings are wrong approach. What people tasked to cure PTSD will tell you, is that you want constant exposure to the stimuli until your brain starts to ignore it, and not constant evasion.

Trigger warnings are also harmful because they legitimize the idea that you can be offended about pretty much anything you like and therefore such content should not be published. It enables people to behave like children, instead of grownups. Mature people don't get offended because someone says something they don't agree with.

EDIT: What I mean is the danger of those utility monsters you just referred to downthread.

> What people tasked to cure PTSD will tell you, is that you want constant exposure to the stimuli until your brain starts to ignore it, and not constant evasion.

From http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/30/the-wonderful-thing-abo... :

YOU DO NOT GIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY TO PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT.

I somehow missed that article. After skimming the first few paragraphs I still sort of disagree with Scott, but I'm going to read it carefully. Scott has really good arguments and reasoning in his writings, so I expect it to influence my opinion on the subject.

Big thanks for the link.

> If there's a largish number of people for whom ... make life less stressful...

This kind of thinking, that society should accommodate a populations likes and dislikes, is why we get groups that want to forbid Mohammad cartoons and others in the same country that want to forbid religious clothes like Burqa. No matter the combination, forbid one, forbid both or neither, you will always end up with one or both groups being offended and wanting government to intervene.

The alternative as I see it is to not acknowledge the problem, making it a point that what ever people like or dislike is their own problem.

Who is talking about forbidding anything? That's a total non sequitur.

I couldn't agree more! Socialism and equality are among THE most dis-empowering and evil ideas to come out of humanity. Unfortunately, these ideas have taken over reason so completely that they are now universally hailed as virtues.

Your proposition makes no sense, simple warning someone would offend them that way.

I relate to the OP that trigger warnings are an insult to my intelligence. If such a thing offends me, I should be able to judge it by myself or stop reading. The title is explicit enough to assume the "triggering" content is present.

Trite response: if trigger warnings offend you, you can choose to stop reading when you encounter them. Or just skip them, they take up one line in any given article. Problem solved!

Longer response:

I accept that you, and others like you, don't like trigger warnings. What concrete action would you like me to take in response to this?

If the answer is "stop posting this thing that I don't like", well... sorry, but I'm not going to do that. I think there's a lot of good that comes from trigger warnings, and I don't think the harm they do to you outweighs that.

Meanwhile, other people are saying "I don't like when you post things like this. Please warn me when you're going to post them." That costs a lot less to comply with.

I understand that it doesn't cost much to warn people, I was just stating my disliking of it, not asking for them to be removed. I believe humans should be able to judge things on their own and to handle their emotions at the very least.

>That costs a lot less to comply with.

You think it does, but you couldn't be further from the truth. The very concept of trigger warnings are costly: Anytime you want to voice an opinion, you're forced to enumerate all the possible ways every reader might be offended or triggered or upset by what you're saying. It's an unscalable solipsistic self-centered notion that implies people are not in control of their own feelings and emotions and how things affect them (I say this as someone who has dealt with mild PTSD). Trigger warnings on banal content trivialize the whole thing, and encourage people not to help themselves.

Getting triggered sucks and is painful and throws everything off balance and is just a horrible thing to experience. But only a fool feels those things and blames the stimulus that brought up the associations. The last time I felt those feelings, I realized that I needed to get help or I was always going to be a broken, unhappy, scared person.

The problem as I see it comes from the fact that a bunch of teenagers on tumblr co-opted trigger warnings from legitimate uses (like on PTSD and abuse forums) and started applying them to idiotic things like fat shaming and otherkin.

Nobody's forcing me to use trigger warnings. I choose to use them for some things. I don't choose to enumerate all the possible ways that anyone might be upset by my writing, and nobody's asking me to do that. There is a potential slippery slope, but even if I go a little too far down it, I'm not worried about going all the way to the bottom.

(I don't read tumblr, or any blogs where I think trigger warnings have gotten out of hand. It's possible such blogs exist. That doesn't mean my own use of trigger warnings is excessive.)

Not everyone can easily get help. If you want a therapist for example, that costs time, possibly money, and depending on your social circle you might fear being made fun of or cast out if they discover.

(Actually, as it happens, I approximately never write anything that needs trigger warnings. I'm mostly speaking in the first person for simplicity, and as a hypothetical "this is what I think I would do if I wrote about such things". I don't recall ever issuing a trigger warning though, so it's possible that I'm being somewhat hypocritical here.)

See this comment [1] for some cites to articles discussing research showing that trigger warnings probably cause more harm than good to the people they are trying to help.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801995

What are the costs of trigger warnings, compared to the benefits? It seems like a blatantly worthwhile tradeoff to me.

Trigger warnings are a form of censorship because it makes it much more expensive to talk about certain tropics (mentally) because you have to take sides (whoes concerns are worth putting a trigger warning on?) and because you weaken society to accept that other peoples actions are your responsibility - in effect you are saying that the terrorist actions are in some small part justified.

Not directly related to Charlie Hebdo, but related to the Guardian and their "offending" people - they've always been at the top of the list in the UK for being willing to use swear words rather than filtering them out, considering their audience mature enough to see "fuck" without being scared.

There was a good piece in the Guardian about their own use of swear words within the last week which I read on my mobile and can't find (I'm pretty sure it was a column in some section, Culture or G2 or something - it wasn't an official statement), but they had a great example of how every other newspaper reported on the John Terry racism case (football/soccer in the UK) by quoting him as saying "F@@@@@g black c@@t" or equivalent, ironically leaving unfiltered the one word that actually offended the player he said it to.

Like I said, I can't find the piece from the last week, but here's a 2010 article showing how much more willing the Guardian is to risk offense when it comes to swear words: http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2010/apr...

Like I said, a bit off-topic but I think interesting in the discussion of the Guardian's warning of offending people.

Have you ever considered it is theatre? Have you ever considered that it may be directed at the minds of the non-Muslims?

I am a Muslim and frankly find these attempts at "satire" pathetic. Apparently those who find Islam a hair in their globalization ointment can't argue from a position of reason and have to resort to calumny and provocation.

It's definitely not ironic or "theatre" for non-muslins. It's taking "politically correct" to the whole new level of "please don't kill me".

Warning: This article contains revelations about the deity known as "Santa Claus" which may be disturbing to those who maintain a belief in "Santa Claus" even into adulthood.

> Personally, I find such trigger warnings, and especially "you might be offended" warnings, totally ridiculous.

Iromically, The Guardian is based on the UK, which has laws that prohibit sending "by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character"[1].

Here is an example of a successful prosecution under said law: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-19883828

1: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127

If you get offended so easily by other people who get offended so easily, do you have a leg to stand on?

I'm sure the Wednesday issue will sell out in no time, despite its edition of 3 million, and become a "collector's piece" for those opposing terrorism and violence (as well as for those who want to resell it on Ebay for a profit ;)).

I really admire the courage of the Charlie Hebdo staff, who, just one week after the attack, publish a new issue of their journal.

For me, the main problem now is how we deal with the political consequences of this tragedy: Many politicians already bring themselves in position to create new laws that will allow them even more wiretapping and surveillance. British prime minister David Cameron was arguably one of the first here, as in his recent speech he even puts in question the right of anyone (terrorists included) to communicate in private [1]. Other politicians from (mostly) right-wing parties all over Europe are seizing this opportunity as well and demand stricter anti-terror laws and more government surveillance. I think we need to be very watchful now if we don't wanna loose even more of our democratic freedoms for the sake (or the illusion) of more security.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/12/david-cameron...

I live in Greece and I would buy one, if I could. I guess whatever the number (even 10 mil copies) will be (or better say) should be sold.

Here's a great interview with Luz, whose signature you can see on the cover drawing. The interesting thing is that Charlie was at heart an iconoclastic magazine, and yet ironically has now become an icon of free speech - something the staff aren't particularly happy about.

http://www.lesinrocks.com/2015/01/10/actualite/luz-eyes-us-w...

That interview should be read by everyone who cares about the attack on Charlie Hebdo and subsequent "Je suis Charlie" worldwide movement. Many people, for all kinds of reasons (many good) are trying to make Charlie Hebdo into what it is not, and never will be, some kind of reluctant messiah of free speech.

I used to think society would, at some point, grow up and leave religion behind.

But lately, it just feels like a far 'lower' form of religion is just taking over. I think that western christianity has made some big strides. For example, by leaving all the violence behind.

Now the violent ones are winning. This makes me sad for the future of Europe.

Orthodox folk - Christians, Jews, and Muslims - generally believe that secular folk aren't religious at all. I know a whole bunch of Christians who's idea of god is 'life and family' and, despite attending church and believing that Jesus was real, don't believe in an all-powerful creator with human characteristics.

Secularism is now so secular that the only religious people you hear about are the orthodox ones.

Winning, how?

I think the French people and most of the world has reacted in an admirable way after this attacks. Showing no fear and Charlie, showing that they are going to keep up, doing what they do, because it's right.

The world has to be very careful with how many governments are going to use this attacks as an opportunity to empower mass surveillance and other policies that will affect general people privacy.

Still, I'm happy about how the French people have handled this horrible situation.

Western Christianity certainly haven't left violence behind. Just take the christian terrorist Anders Brevik who killed 80 people in Norway.

Breivik isn't a Christian terrorist. He described himself as not being overly religious. He is also very critical of modern (I think that's what's meant by Western here) Christianity, both in the Church of Norway and Catholicism.

I've read somewhere that the Charlie Hebdo attackers weren't actually very religious either. Didn't visit mosques or read the Quran, but felt separated from society, and looking for some meaning to their life, some way to have impact, they found this. The article claimed they had more in common with Breivik and the Unabomber, or maybe even the Sandy Hook shooter and similar lone gunmen.

It wouldn't surprise me if the same is true for many extremists. ISIS also apparently gets a surprising number of recruits from Europe. People not fitting in looking for a place where they can be appreciated.

Muslim terrorists in general are also in opposition to mainstream Islam. They are extremists, just as Breivik is an extremist.

Wahhabism and other extremist versions of Islam have a significant following. Polls regularly indicate support or acceptance towards extremist views within Muslim communities. It's therefore not as simple.

I don't think one Christian terrorist is enough to say that Western Christianity "certainly" is violent. I wouldn't even say that about Islam even though I think Islam has some problems with violence that Western Christianity doesn't have.

I'm not saying western Christianity in general is violent! Certainly Breivik is a lone extremist with absolutely no support by any mainstream church. But it doesn't change the fact that he was a christian and what he considered christian values (in his own eccentric interpretation) is part of what he believed he fought for. That makes him a christian terrorist, unless you apply some kind of "no true scotscman" filter, which could just as well be used to argue that no muslim terrorists are actually muslim terrorists.

Another example would be the IRA.

You're right and I agree that he was a Christian terrorist in that sense. I was mostly commenting the use of "certainly".

The religious instinct hasn't gone from the secular western world, it's just been re-expressed in different more modern ways, variously consumerism, string theory, celebrity, and so on.

I'm pretty sure personally that it's built into our biology. In the words of Charlie Brooker:

"Imagine! Nothing to kill or die for! And no religion too! It's amazing, literally no one's ever had that thought before.

Okay, so there's always the possibility that the same part of the brain that handles fuzzy spiritual feelings is the same part that handles love and sorrow and pity and joy; the same part that makes us create songs and jokes and books and art and brightly coloured computer games in which an animated weasel collects starfish in a fountain; so once we wipe it out we might all be left scampering around the planet like thick, bipedal, cultureless mice - rutting, foraging, scratching behind our ears and doing very little else. But look on the bright side. No more religious conflict AND no more novelty ringtones. Two almighty evils erased for the price of one. Bargain."

I'd like to point out that Far East cultures (China and Japan) do not have the same religious instincts. For them an almighty human-like God who wrote a sacred book is not conceivable. I don't think they can understand what religion and faith represent in the lives of Christian, Jews and Muslims. And unsurprisingly, religious wars have been quite marginal in this part of the world. One could also trace this important cultural difference to the figure of Confucius, who was not atheist, but refused to speak about what he called the Sky.

A very good point. I would argue that these cultures are simply expressing these religious instincts in ways that don't look like abrahamic religions, in the same way that football or rock music don't look like abrahamic religions either.

Also, once you blur out the technical theological details, is Confucius not effectively treated as a prophet? (This is a genuine question.)

Not as a prophet, he wasn't said to have spoken the words of a divine force/entity.

Those are theological details.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven suggests some religious thinking

Well, for me there is a discontinuity between religion in abrahamic sense and football, rock music, and even buddhism. While the former obviously covers what might be a kind of universal religious instinct, it does much much more. For instance, I don't think believing in God is the same as believing in the existence of ghosts, or in immaterial spirits. It should even be the same verb. A man of faith is not only believing in the existence of God, and that His words are in a Book, he is also his whole life a consequence of this belief. If you really believe in God, you should be working very hard to be a Saint. Every second of your life you are not climbing this path is a misstep.

In the Far East religions, you have most pieces of the jigsaw present: mysticism, the Sacred, priests, monks, prayers, meditation, afterlife, etc. But I think the central piece of a unique almighty exclusive God is missing, and then the result is completely different.

There is also this theory that the Far East did not have a powerful scientific revolution because of this missing piece: Without a God who created everything, there is less incentive to believe in a unique ordering of things (the Law of physics) and to try to discover it.

And no, Confucius is not a prophet, he made no miracles, he did not announce anything. He was just a failed political advisor who became the teacher of a few disciples. However, he proposed a very rational and revolutionary way of life, under the disguise of restoring the ancient Way. He also happen to be (along with Jesus and maybe Mohammad) the man who influenced the most the lives of most other humans.

Confucianism is a religion. No blurring out of technical theological details is required. Confucianism has a holy city, temples where people pray to him, miracles attributed to him, unquestionable holy books and an organization to promote itself. It doesn't lack anything that other religions have so it makes sense to call it a religion.

I think that the situation is a bit more complicated than you depict. Perhaps monotheism was difficult for Japanese to conceive of, but Shinto and Buddhism have played a large role in Japanese history, including that of violence.

Zen and World War 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War

Warrior Monks burning down other sects' temples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dhei

Persecution and martyrdom of Christians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_of_Japan

As to where these religious tendencies go in modern Japan, there are a number of things to think about (consider their celebrities are literally called "idols").

Confucius might not have said much about the Sky, but he constantly emphasized the importance of the Rites.

They had deification of leaders and ancestor worship.

The Japanese did some horrific things in the name of their Emperor, so I don't buy your assertion.

You could argue that the Far East are simply religiously backwards, using polytheism instead of monotheism, so your argument actually makes no sense, they simply haven't caught the monotheistic religious bug (yet).

This is basically the argument that Raymond Tallis[1] makes in his books. Whilst starting from an atheist/humanist origin, he posits that whilst science (in particular neuroscience) has brought humanity so far, the stockpile of knowledge gathered thus far is not enough to satisfactorily describe and understand the human experience, conciousness etc, and certainly not enough to justify the smug, dismissive and combative sects of atheism practised by Dawkins, Hitchens et al.

He's also has a wonderful playful style of writing, well worth a read.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Tallis

Who's smug and dismissive?

“Tallis indulges in refutation by caricature,” says Dennett, a professor of philosophy and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. “He’s not taking his opponents seriously. He’s sneering instead of arguing. He’s ignoring the complexities of the arguments. So he’s not really doing philosophy. He’s doing propaganda.”

Nothing wrong with "spiritual feelings". Atheists have them too. Clearly a mostly secular society is possible even with our biology/instincts, just look at Sweden or Denmark. No need to erase love, sorrow, pity, jokes or art to largely erase religious conflict. It's culture, and we can evolve culturally beyond our current primitivism. I'm with neals; I used to think we'd leave religion behind. Maybe some day "believers" will be a small minority. I hope so. I'm sad to say most of us will not see that day.

Western christianity didn't leave all violence behind, see for example anti-abortion violence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence#United_S...

I think neals meant "modern" Christianity, as in what has become of Christianity thanks to the age of reason. This excludes some Western (especially US) branches of Christianity.

Christianity was pacifist from the beginning. Jesus was all about non-violence:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. - Matthew 5:38-39 ESV

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. This was also my understanding. I highly recommend Mark Kurlansky's Nonviolence: History of a Dangerous Idea, which discusses non-violence in the history of early Christianity:

http://www.amazon.com/Nonviolence-History-Dangerous-Mark-Kur...

Violent acts against those who disagree with you is not a Christian principal and goes directly against the teaching of our faith. Period. Anyone who supports or performs acts of violence as you are referencing are sinning and blaspheming when using a reference to God for their actions. No excuses, those are evil acts.

Hmmm, that's interesting. I got downvoted for saying that violent acts on abortion clinics are evil and go against a religious principal? Would the downvoter care to actually engage in a conversation about why they thought I an deemed worthy of a downvote? Is it because I identified myself with a religious belief? Please, please do engage with me.

That is a little bit different, at least they are pissed or what they consider murders of human beings whereas these terrorists were pissed over writings.

Coverage of these events, with or without anti-Muslim sentiment, almost never takes the point of view that it is the fact that people are brought up to really believe that there are invisible, magic beings in the ether who care about the state of affairs on earth that is at least in part the root cause here.

And that is a terrible shame because not drawing attention to that fact is a tacit endorsement of extremist beliefs, as Harris, Hitchens, et al. have pointed out many times. You can't have it both ways. You either believe there are invisible, magic beings or you don't. There is no "tolerance" in between. If you think they exist, then you can hardly be surprised when someone takes this ludicrous proposition and bends it to their own political, social, or economic goals -- because you can bend it any way you want, by definition, since it's all made up.

I don't think it is at all obvious that if there were not implicit endorsement of religious beliefs of all kind all over earth, that it wasn't OK for grown-ups to walk around saying they actually believe this nonsense, that this violence would manifest itself in some other way. It's important to at least consider the possibility that religion itself is the problem here.

I wish Hitchens was still with us.

People should read his books - especially God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

RIP, we miss your tact, witty jabs and awesome accent.

If you go deeper, most of culture is made up. There are no states, and there are no companies, not without people making them up. It is what makes us cooperate and ultimatively function as a society. Some beliefs are (to some people at least) more obviously, hm, hard to falsify, but they're all beliefs in something.

I'm not trying to make a real point for the argument here, just pointing out that things might be deeper and more complicated than obvious on the first layer. It's up to us to decide which ideas we want to use, or it should be, but they're all ideas.

(I might have read idea on lesswrong or similar some time ago and am still digesting. Thus, I'm very open for arguments and ideas here.)

You can't have it both ways. You either believe there are invisible, magic beings or you don't.

Well, yes and no. A lot of people (most?) kinda-sorta believe, but have doubts about the weirdness of some of the more unlikely and/or extreme beliefs. The vast people don't have enough faith to strap on a suicide vest or behead someone, even in Islam.

For most "believers", religion is a consolation when you think about Grandma in heaven or a way to be socially connected to your community.

This is exactly the sort of wishy-washy point of view that is as culpable as the extremist one.

Here is a fact: there is no reason -- none -- to think that there exists an invisible, magic being in the sky that concerns itself with things going on here on earth.

Unfortunately, for reasons that are hard for me to understand, it has become pro forma to pretend that it's just fine if adults talk and act as if it is, even if they only "kinda-sorta" believe it.

Well I say that it's time to start saying out loud that it's not fine, and that the judgement of anyone who says they believe it in any sense at all might need to be questioned. Just like you would question the judgement of someone who "kinda-sorta" believed anything that's obviously nonsense, like astrology or numerology or fairy tales.

And the reason that it's important to question the judgement of people who believe things that are obviously false is because they might have guns, and they might decide that it's time for someone to be shot in the head because they have offended their magic deity in the sky. And there are worse possibilities that I don't need to enumerate here.

These absurd, magical points of view won't go away until they are laughed out of the room, so let's start. Comfort and community don't trump safety.

> Unfortunately, for reasons that are hard for me to understand, it has become pro forma to pretend that it's just fine if adults talk and act as if it is, even if they only "kinda-sorta" believe it.

We act like it's just fine to believe in make-belief things because our society is built upon the concept that it is; you're free to believe in anything you like, be it a God, Santa Claus, or pixie-dust unicorns. Our society functions as well as it does because of the presumption that you're free to think and feel whatever you like. Otherwise, trying to prevent people from believing in magical sky fairies quickly transforms into preventing them from believing in forms of government other than democracy, to creation theories other than the big bang, to the political ideologies of any party other than the one in power- and the progress and betterment of society in all areas grinds to a halt.

We've built a society predicated on the notion that you can't prevent people from having stupid ideas without preventing them from having brilliant ones as well- and it's proven an overall good approach so far.

The problem isn't with ideas, it's with the way you apply those ideas to your behavior in the physical world. You're free to believe in unicorns as long as you don't try to stab an aluminium horn into a horse's snout in an attempt to coax them out of hiding, just as you're free to believe in Jesus as long as you don't use it to force me to denounce the teachings of Buddha.

You're free to mock silly ideas people have -- including the concept of an omnipotent deity, if you find that idea silly; but the reason we pretend it's fine for those people to hold those ideas is because it IS.

I agree that it's "fine." I wasn't questioning the right to hold any particular view. I'm just arguing that it would be better if we held belief in fairy tales and belief in traditional god(s) to the same standard.

It would be disingenuous to say that you would be willing to hand over the keys to a nuclear reactor or have brain surgery performed by a person who claims to genuinely believe in fairy tales, without pause. Religion should be no different. It is equally ludicrous, no more, no less.

My point is that religion is held to a very different standard, in a sociological sense.

Don't think for a moment that Western Christianity has 'left the violence behind' - its just being exported over the horizon to the Middle East, as modern crusades, beyond the view of the modern consumer. The difference between Christian terrorism and Islamic terrorism is that in the former, mass organizations exist to hide the results of Christian-fundamentalist violence, whereas in the latter the only chance they have is to expose their violence to the world.

Christians society has not left violence behind, we are just less likely to rationalise it with religion. Although it is not unheard of; just listen to some of the nonesense that George Bush spouted. But is is very naive to believe that violence wouldn't exist if we were all atheists and identified as skeptics.

Humans have an intrinsic capacity for violence. History is littered with examples of groups attacking someone for rape, murder and plunder and then describing it as "gods work". Probably the desire to murder and rape came before the sanctification. Why should we care what the excuse is?

What society has to do with this? Two terrorists are not society. If anything 'leaving all violence' behind is responsible. It could look very differently if those victims could defend themselves.

>Now the violent ones are winning.

Not so much in Europe. In the middle east the extremists have been winning though. The guys doing the Hedbo killings were largely inspired by Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Salman Rushdie was arguing that the goings on are not really about the west but power struggles in the Islamic world, somewhat plausibly I think. I dare say the west may have played a significant role in destabilising the middle east with the various wars we've sponsored there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvgdPAEu8vA&feature=youtu.be...

Charlie Hebdos fight is not a fight for freedom of expression but against self-censorship. I think a lot media and politicians forget that.

We all deal with self-censorship every day as we live amongst each other. Some people have more courage than others and dare take it "behind enemy lines" where other rules apply.

Freedom of expression is a legal right to express yourself without fearing those in power is going to shut you down or prosecute you. We mostly have that and the only people who can threaten it is the politicians which unfortunately is exactly what some of them are going to do.

We already see the first reactions like this http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

And all over Europe there are people taking advantage of the situation and proposing laws that will actually threaten freedom of expression.

There are already plenty of laws in France and most (perhaps all) other countries that restrict freedom of speech.

Examples of censured expression include but are not limited to: Holocaust denial, hate speech, some forms of pornography, leaking state secrets, harassing communication, copyright infringement, libel and slander.

I don't think that freedom of expression is absolutely permitted anywhere. There are so many exceptions to it - many of which are necessary for a cohesive society - that it's pretty much an invalid concept in real terms.

I agree. My primary point is just that it's not "the others" that threaten our freedom of expression its ourselves.

My apologies, I misread your comment as saying that freedom of expression was only just beginning to be under threat. I do agree with your primary point.

I'm rather curious why this depiction is considered to be that of the prophet Muhammad. Is it said so somewhere in their paper, or do we all just accept whatever interpretation is handed down to us by the fundamentalists?

Because the character is depicted similarly as in a previous cartoon by the same cartoonist: https://i.imgur.com/Lm4p71F.jpg

I don't get why you're being downvoted though. Have an upvote.

And another.

Thank you for the upvote. If the downvotes were due to religious reasons, then I have to admit it is rather sad to see them on HN. On the other hand, if they were due to perceived ignorance or stupidity, then I accept them.

From the link and history of the cartoons, I've reached the rather odd conclusion that anyone named "Mahomet" or "Muhammad" in a cartoon is automatically assumed to be the prophet Muhammad.

>if they were due to perceived ignorance or stupidity, then I accept them

You were just asking an earnest question. What's actually stupid is the downvote feature itself. Upvotes can help promote good content and flags can call attention to inappropriate or problematic content. Likewise, comments can be used to express disagreement.

So, what's the purpose of downvotes? Are we in preschool?

If users should be trusted to push comments up, then why not down also? A down vote doesn't have to mean "this comment should not be on HN", it can be "I disagree with this comment" or "I think this comment should be lower down".

> I think this comment should be lower down

You actually get two downvotes: if you think a comment should be lower down you can (but shouldn't) upvote all the other comments and downvote the one you think should be lower.

Downvotes are an optimization.

Good point - and I think while you're right in saying "but you shouldn't" there are exceptions. I've done this a couple of times, only if two users made the exact same point, one a while before another. Maybe you'd argue I shouldn't have upvoted one and downvoted another as unfair karma wise to the later poster, but my decision to do so was based on improving where the comments are positioned (readers don't need to see the same view twice high up), not based on rewarding or punishing users.

Users do push comments down by pushing others up. If we are trying to surface interesting content, then what more do we need?

And, why should your simple personal disagreement result in a comment being pushed down unless what we want is groupthink instead of earnest discussion?

The proper thing to do, if one cares enough to express disagreement, is to explain why he/she disagrees.

Then, there's the fact that downvotes negate one's "karma score", as if to say, "I disagree. I will take one of your gold-star stickers".

It's really stupid and juvenile. But, I hope you will continue downvoting me here. The irony is just too delicious.

I can't down vote this particular comment of yours as it is a reply to me, but wouldn't if I could. But I've no problem if others wish to. Or if they want to up vote you, also fine by me.

Other than caring about other users' scores, which I don't, I see no reason a user's view of "this comment is too high" is any less valid than the opposite.

And bringing in the concept of "groupthink".. Surely showing us the up vote has the exact same affect in that regard?

>And bringing in the concept of "groupthink".. Surely showing us the up vote has the exact same affect in that regard?

It's not the same. Firstly, and most obviously, upvotes cannot lead to a comment being grayed out or barely legible and, thus, overlooked.

Secondly, for those who do actually care about Magic Karma Beans for some reason, venturing from the herd runs the risk of earning downvotes, since they are used to express mere disagreement. If there was no risk of that "loss", then those people would be more willing to take a chance on expressing alternative or unpopular views.

So, there's a downside to differing with the group sentiment and downvotes explicitly encourage people to post more when their views are in alignment with the group.

Fair point, but I'd suggest if you dislike the system it would be better to change how downvoted comments are formatted rather than prevent downvoting. The minimum karma requirement already slightly limits downvoting, perhaps it should more?

To users worried about losing karma I say... grow up. I might be worried about people thinking me stupid, or something else about me, but not the number at the top right.

And overall I think allowing downvotes is better than not. But this is subjective, neither of us has to be right or wrong. If you feel really strongly you could drop a mail to hn@ycombinator.com and give them reasoned argument and maybe some day they'll change more towards you're liking. I feel strongly enough to use time discussing with you, but not enough to contact HN if downvotes were disabled, personally.

>To users worried about losing karma I say... grow up.

So, you agree with me, in part, that downvoting is childish. Because downvotes are obviously a big part of that number at the top right, and the very notion that commenters would be "punished" and lose a gold-star sticker over a comment (vs. just submerging the comment) is what I find most childish.

So, perhaps I should be more nuanced: Downvotes are childish primarily when it comes to the karma score; whereas they are more ineffectual and promote groupthink when it comes to actual discussion.

So, actually, it looks like we are somewhat in agrement on both fronts.

But, like you, I don't think I actually care enough to send an email, nor do I thik it would matter if I did.

I think the purpose of downvotes is a mild correction, less than a flag. Not every comment here is gold to be honest. They don't need to be eliminated but they should be grey as a signal to new readers. At least that is how I view the ones I receive.

As has been pointed out by many sometimes it is hard to figure out why you have been downvoted. I'd like to test the idea of mandatory comment before downvote.

Also I have a feeling some people who definitely don't understand HN culture has got downvote privilege over the last 6-18 months. But I don't have data for that. Comment before downvote would expose those.

>I think the purpose of downvotes is a mild correction

Unfortunately, I just don't think people are generally that nuanced with it. But that may not be their fault, and instead may be in part due to what I mentioned previously: flags are for inappropriate content, comments should be for disagreement, so where does that leave downvoting? What is a "mild correction"?

>I'd like to test the idea of mandatory comment before downvote

I have thought this too. I really just think downvotes are childish and counterproductive, but if there must be downvoting, then the downvoter should at least be required to provide a cogent rationale that is subject to the same public scrutiny and potential for discussion.

It just seems a perverted incentive to "punish" those who take their time to contribute to the discussion, while allowing the "punisher" to remain anonymous and lazy.

- and, of course you received some anonymous downvotes, -have my upvote while we wait for dang and the rest of the team to come up with a good solution.

As for your question: What is a "mild correction"?

Here is my take on corrections in forums without private messages:

1. Polite follow up question along the lines of: "this doesn't sound right to me, do you have sources for x?"/"did you consider y?" etc - this is the least unoffensive method I know that can be applied without knowing the person you are replying to.

2. Polite explanation of why something is wrong - all while giving the poster a way out: "this is a common misconception ...". Combine with downvotes if necessary.

3. Downvote while pointing out the stupidity of the poster: "This is wrong for reasons x, y and z and you should know better. Check your facts next time." "HN has a long history of civilized discussion and this is not something I would expect to see here and I have downvoted you." "Posts like this makes you look like a tool" etc

4. Report/flag etc

Also: "A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool."

>and, of course you received some anonymous downvotes, -have my upvote while we wait for dang and the rest of the team to come up with a good solution.

LOL! That's truly funny, and thanks for your upvote. Yeah, it seems that someone(s) are randomly going about and downvoting my comments everywhere. They apparently have no sense of irony and are consuming their own valuable (or, apparently not-so-valuable) time hunting down a random, anonymous person's comments (mine) to (I suppose) "punish" me for some transgression known only to them. Apparently, they take themselves (along with their little mouse-clicks and my meaningless karma score) very seriously. That this is happening on a site called Hacker News (full of conformist hackers?) is even more ironic.

In any case, I think all of your definitions of "mild correction" are as effective and more constructive without the downvotes, and they further encourage discussion on what is effectively a venue for exactly that. But, again, I'll also agree that the supplementary comments with the downvotes are 100% better than downvotes alone.

> I'd like to test the idea of mandatory comment before downvote.

I'm not sure there is much to be gained from that, but if explanation is viewed as necessary I'd prefer a comment attached to the downvote that is hidden from the main discussion but visible on a link from the title line of the downvoted comment (with a link title like "5 downvotes"), so that downvotes don't increase the screen real-estate associated with the downvoted comment and its associated subthread in "normal" view, but the rationale for any downvotes is kept.

I think requiring normal comments associated with downvotes, and thus increasing the prominence of downvoted comments, is directly contrary to the whole purpose of community moderation.

But, in any case, I don't really see a problem with the impact of downvotes under the current system that warrants the increase in downvoting cost that requiring comment would involve.

> Also I have a feeling some people who definitely don't understand HN culture has got downvote privilege over the last 6-18 months.

I think the culture is continuously evolving (both from the ground up and from the admin side), but I don't see anything particularly surprising recently. I occasionally see a few downvotes that seem unwarranted -- either on my own comments or others where that's evident by graying -- but they tend to get neutralized by upvotes over a little time, and that's pretty much not a change from the past.

The changes you propose are valid if we start with the premise that we need downvotes to begin with. But, I just don't believe they're helpful. Clearly, I'm in the minority here, but it's certainly not the first time.

Anyway, given that flags are a mechanism for problematic content, you seem to be saying that some comments merit disagreement and discussion, while others should just be cast aside, though they are not "fully problematic" so as to warrant a flag. Still, they are not even deserving of "normal" comments or discussion? Why not? As a function of others expressing more rigorous disagreement? So, if I disagree then we should discuss. But, if I disagree strongly, then we should torpedo your comment altogether?

These are earnest questions, because I don't get that approach in a place that is presumably aimed at thoughtful discussion. I've seen too many cases wherein someone expresses a thoughtful idea, but gets downvoted because people disagree. Look at the comment that started this little sub-thread. The commenter was downvoted without explanation and assumed it might've been because people thought his question stupid, as if that's completely cool.

Agreed with you. If a comment is utterly useless, it can always be flagged. Downvoting shouldn't be implemented the way it is, as it does not explain why the comment is downvoted and as it hides the comment by graying it, hiding unpopular opinions most often.

It takes a great deal to stand up against the advance of political correctness on free speech. Other countries haven't nearly done as well as France.

At the end of the day the situation was tragic but the defence of free speech against prevailing winds is incredibly important.

As for religious extremism... I don't think we will see an end until enlightenment spreads and religion fades into historic irrelevancy.

This is happening faster than people think, especially religious people as they can't see out of their bubble. At least here in Australia the vast majority of people may "identify" as Christian but they don't actually practice any semblance of faith. That being said the Christian lobby parties still have an unreasonably large amount of sway due to being a very vocal minority that leverages this weak "identity" of Australians to further their conservative agenda.

Nevertheless there is less and less children becoming indoctrinated into this nonsense and gaining access to real information sooner through the Internet that by the end of my lifetime I expect religion (in it's current form) in developed countries to be all but extinct.

I think extremism will still be around, it will just be over more real issues and less fairy tale beliefs.

I don't think that the religion is the issue, I think that desperate people with desperate lives will always find something irrational to fill their life with and kill for.

As an example on a smaller scale (smaller as in less desperate) in Italy we have people whose life revolves around going to the stadium on Sunday to watch their football team and getting into fights with the fans of the opponent team. That's the only thing that keeps their life together. And they are ready to kill other teams' fans, we have people killed every year.

Likewise we have extreme right or extreme left groups who fight and kill each other... desperate people filling their life.

Religion, political faith, football team, doesn't really matter, the issue is the people, not the ideas.

True, which is why I went to to explain that I don't think all extremism would go away - just religious extremism.

I just think it's harder to incite organised extreme violence without some highly charged agenda and removing religion goes a long way to making our world a better place.

I wouldn't consider France the vanguard of free Speech - For example holocaust denial is a punishable offense there.

So free speech hasn't taken precedence over political correctness. It's just that criticizing or offending muslims is considered politically correct.

Correct. Also, it should be noted that Charlie Hebdo recently fired a contributor for mildly criticizing a powerful Jew:

"Below is the full text which got the cartoonist Siné fired and brought before a court on charges of anti-Semitism. He was acquitted and later won a wrongful termination suit against Charlie Hebdo.

"The back story was that Jean Sarkozy rear-ended a BMW driven by some random Arab guy. Instead of stopping, he fled the scene. The police were not interested, but the BMW owner’s insurance company tracked down the scooter driver and it ended up being the younger Sarkozy. He was eventually acquitted of all charges and walked away scot-free. He married an heiress to the Darty fortune (Darty is a chain of electronic stores in France similar to Circuit City in the US). It was rumoured he would convert to Judaism (his great grandfather was Jewish) for the marriage but he denies he did this.

"So in response Siné wrote the following in Charlie Hebdo: Jean Sarkozy, a son worthy of his paternity and already a general counselor for the UMP, was set free –almost with applause — from his criminal proceedings for the offense of on his scooter. The prosecutor actually requested his release! It must be said that the complainant is an Arab! But that’s not all: he [Sarkozy] just declared his intention to convert to Judaism before marrying his fiancée, who is Jewish and the heiress to the founders of Darty. He’ll go far in life, this lad!"

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/01/the-cultural-na...

For context, Siné had said a few years before, on the radio, just after a bomb against a Jewish restaurant, in substance, « I am an antisemit, and I am not afraid to say it [...] I want every Jew to live in fear, unless he's pro-Palestinian [...] Let them die! [...] They should be put to death. »

He later claimed to have been drunk.

Source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_Sin%C3%A9#Radio_Carbone...

> This is happening faster than people think, especially religious people as they can't see out of their bubble.

I'm no psychologist but I think it might be pretty hard to break yourself out of a religion that makes you perform a ritual 5 times a day where you take yourself to a self-hypnotic state and repeat affirmations.

Islam seems to be the only remaining major religion were you can convince people to override their sense of self-preservation. That's some crazy powerful vudu there.

The meaning of satire has lost its edge. People today think satire = political humor, but satire is supposed to be daring, edgy, and in its highest form be:

a) virtually indistinguishable from reality

b) expose the author to real danger and reprisal

c) nearly impossible to reverse on the satirist

Satire has very often been very dangerous to produce, and I think we're being reminded of this right now. It's why satirists take their work so seriously, because it exposes malformed thinking by people who've built their power bases on such thoughts.

In my opinion satire is one of the highest forms of free speech and one of the most powerful tools available for parsing people capable of rational thought and those who aren't.

It's a kind of gom jabbar test and is not for the faint of heart. It's almost a true battle of the pen vs. the sword.

I'm nervous about the response that these attacks will conjure from the far right. There have already been a good deal of attempts on the lives of innocent Muslims [1] since the attack on Charlie Hebdo, and I find it very concerning that I have heard none of this from the national/international news media. Would these not as well be considered acts of terrorism? Why not report on them? Doing so would seem to unfairly advance the anti-Islam sentiment in France by effectively silencing the acts of terrorism from non-Muslims.

[1] http://mic.com/articles/108206/how-bad-is-france-s-anti-musl...

Yeah, thats the really big one here. Frankly i see the shooters and the "far right" as pretty much two variants of the same. Swap around a few words on various slogans and you would not know if it came from jihadists or skinheads.

In almost all cases we are seeing young men with no apparent future being scooped up by some "recruiter" and indoctrinated. Street gangs, cults, terrorists, all the same once you boil away whatever "makeup" they apply...

How do you know those attacks were done by the 'right'? What you have done is no different than people saying all "Muslims are terrorists".. Yet you get upvotes.

People that harm people have one thing in common. It is not the 'right' or religion. They are loony and mis-guided, and have their priorities severely out of place. Plain and simple.

Such polarization will never lead to any kind of peace.

That's a fair point, the article I quoted does not mention if these people were on the 'right' or not. However, by saying "far right", I was trying to imply that extremists from that side would carry out acts on Muslims, much like extremist Muslims attacking the Hebdo.

I assumed these attacks would come from the right because of a culture of Islamophobia that I've seen on places like Fox news, which I consider to be a far right media outlet. For example:

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/12/7533159/fox-news-pirro-rant http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/muslims-are... http://www.salon.com/2014/08/20/foxs_andrea_tantaros_you_sol...

If only the governments wouldn't use this "attack on free speech" to umm...restrict free speech. If the terrorists change your way of life, they've won. I thought the whole point of the march was to say that "We are not afraid! And we'll continue to be just as free as ever! Your violence will not scare us!" - and so on.

But nope. Apparently what it meant is that we need more censorship and self-censorship caused by increased and more intrusive mass surveillance:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/europes-answer-to-terror-attack...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-it-means-to-stan...

If the alternative to once in a while terrorist attacks is turning every democracy into Russia or China, then I'd rather stick with the risk of terrorism.

As the article points out, this is essentially the only viable move for Charlie Hebdo. To have so often depicted Muhammad in the past, have most of their staff killed for it, become the focus of a worldwide movement that promises not to be intimidated or cowed by terrorism, and then not publish Muhammad in the next issue? An admission of complete defeat.

That said, bravo.

First of all.. certainly as a Muslim, I condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo. This is not Islam.

But, if I were to take the liberty to express my own opinion, I would say honestly, I think both parties were at wrong here. First that their have been many instances in the life of our prophet, when he faced not just harsh but inhuman treatment, specially in his hometown of Mecca. Yet he never lifted a finger or even wished for those people to get hurt (there is specific mention of this in Islam). It is against the moral of our religion to engage in such "eye for an eye" notions. Yet people (like the 4 suspects) who are not aware of their own religion and the finer lines tend to do these things when agitated or pushed in a corner.

On the other hand, Religion is a personal affair. People are serious about it, be it any religion. People live and die by the religion, it is the very guide of majority of the people in this world. And if someone portrays something so closely associated to people, it is a kin to playing with their feelings. And that is where things start to get ugly, and such mishaps happen.

Satire is accepted in Islam, as evident from the semi-fictional writings about Mullah Nasruddin.

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

But the level of Satire in question here, was perhaps too much. Besides the additional fact, that impersonation/impersonification of Prophet Muhammad is highly condemned in Islam. Even if we are to write a play on factual things about him, it is prohibited to have someone portray him (even for a good/just reason). To say that in other words, to Muslims, a graphical satire is acceptable on anyone except the prophets, which includes Moses, Jesus, Abraham, etc. Yet, if someone does want to amuse himself or exercise his liberty knowing that it is something that hurts us, we simply have to ignore him. Things should not go further than that.

People in the west have indeed respected this, as seen in the movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074896/

Let us understand each others liberties as well as sensitivities, so that by standing firm together, we will all make a better society, both in France and the World.

>First that their have been many instances in the life of our prophet, when he faced not just harsh but inhuman treatment, specially in his hometown of Mecca. Yet he never lifted an finger or even wished for those people to get hurt. It is against the moral of our religion to engage in such "eye for an eye" notions.

that just a blatant lie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Badr among the others fights against Meccans that the paedophilic Muhammad led the Muslims into.

If you read the content of that wiki yourself (Carefully), or watch the movie "The Message", you will find out yourself that you are wrong.

"both parties were at wrong here"..."it is a kin to playing with their feelings"..."such mishaps happen"..."the level of satire in question here, was perhaps too much".

Honestly, I can't help but come away feeling that what you're saying is that what Hebdo did was so wrong on their part that they should have seen it coming and it is their own fault.

did I not condemn the attack, and clearly said that at max they should have been ignored, it was after all only satire.

> did I not condemn the attack, and clearly said that at max they should have been ignored, it was after all only satire.

Yes, and if you had left it at that your stance would be commendable. But you chose to significantly dilute your position in what followed.

Dear Jacques, your opinion is not the only one that matters, I hope you remember that. No opinion got diluted, nor yours or mine or whatever you meant by that.

I will say this clearly to you, Muslim people have faith in Prophet Muhammad and his teachings. What are they? You neither have complete knowledge nor intention to get it.

It in-fact, includes the same liberties and rights you seem to be are defending at the moment. Yet from the intensity with which you are responding to my replies to other people as well, makes you look like rather driven by emotions here.

If you could only find out for yourself, and spend the proper effort in finding out what Islam really is (from a genuine Quran) you will realize that what you are simply brushing off as another religion is not what you think it is.

Is it possible for you to be wrong about Islam? Yes or No?

The Muslims in my cirle make no attempt to apologize for what happened here and are not adding weaselwords to their condemnations. They realize that actions like these make all muslims look bad, even those that would have nothing to do with any of this.

You are unable for some reason to see that you are indirectly blaming the victim here and you are qualifying your condemnation.

And you are unable to see that you are simply starting to touch the line of madly imposing your opinion upon others. and Also doing both side of a conversation.

It is very easy to sit at home and be a arm-chair philosopher, and hope that the people in your circle are the all-there-is of the world.

In your opinion it is not possible for Muslims to have sensitivity about certain topics, that they would not like to be toyed around with. Cause that is against the concept of liberty perhaps?

> In your opinion it is not possible for Muslims to have sensitivity about certain topics, that they would not like to be toyed around with.

You can have all the sensitivity you want but that stops at the point where you export your sensitivities to others in the form of either bodily harm or threats to do so.

> Cause that is against the concept of liberty perhaps?

Exactly so.

The liberty to express ones opinion even if that is uncomfortable for the recipient is a very strong right and religion is not exempt from this in France.

In some countries there are laws on the books that will get you punished severely if you should insult some religious entity but France is not one of those and those that chose to live in France should abide by its laws first, and not whatever code their religion imposes on them.

And you think that Islam promotes this "bodily harm/threats" ? You sure are a delusional one. I leave you at that, I should have known that you are not here to listen to opinions, or engage in a fair debate.

> And you think that Islam promotes this "bodily harm/threats" ?

Classic strawman.

> You sure are a delusional one.

Of course I am, since, obviously I think that Islam promotes 'bodily harm/threats'.

In case you did not understand that paragraph, it was directed at the people who perpetrate those acts, not towards Islam.

Note how you changed what I said by adding your own interpretation and then took issue with the modified version.

That said, just like there are plenty of passages in the bible that call for violence and the most heinous acts to be perpetrated against others so there are such passages in the Qu'ran.

Note that I'm equally upset with those that would use either book (or any other book for that matter) to impose their view of what the world should look like on others. Religious fanatics - fanatics of any kind, really - will use such texts or any other that they can lay their hands on to try to find excuses to act in whatever way they think will further their cause, including threats and violence.

I'm just one shade less upset with those that are apologists for such fanatics.

Islam is definitely not the only religion that has been hijacked in this way, every other religion has its own share of problematic characters. But it is up to those that subscribe to those religions to deal with that and to condemn it in the strongest words possible - without caveats like you have done - to make sure that the would-be fanatics hear loud and clear that they are no longer part of the religion or group they profess to serve.

As long as we have a process of so called radicalization where creepy old men acting in the name of religions to try to brainwash impressionable kids into committing acts of violence we will see more of this.

It's the "but" part which makes me think you really don't.

>> "But the level of Satire in question here, was perhaps too much."

There are NO excuses for what happened. None. Just because a certain group of people (no matter who they are) believe something doesn't mean the rest of the world should not offend that belief because some people might not like it. It doesn't matter if that belief is Islam, Judaism, Scientology, or a belief in pigs that fly. I have the right to make fun of it, you have the right to make fun of my beliefs, and no amount of satire justifies violence. We can't live our lives trying not to offend because some people take their beliefs too seriously. I'm Catholic. There are plenty of people who think that's nuts and I understand that. I would never think of hurting them because of it and I would never try to justify anyone who did.

The liberty to express yourself is not the only liberty in the world. I, You and All of Us have the liberty to be offended as well.

The point is: -what to do if you are offended? To which I say simply ignore it happened.

-why offend someone in the first place?

> why offend someone in the first place?

Why this insistence on feeling offended? The prophet is the one being mocked, not you.

To offend him is to offend me. The same way, someone would offend you by offending your family.

> To offend him is to offend me.

You can't really offend that which does not currently exist. I can't offend Genghis Khan any more than I can offend the prophet or Jesus.

> The same way, someone would offend you by offending your family.

No, that's not the same way.

>> The same way, someone would offend you by offending your family. >No, that's not the same way.

Maybe for those offended it might be? It can explain a lot of the anger.

Religious people tend to identify strongly with their religion, that is why this can happen.

But they fail to recognize that their religion, its rules and customs apply to them, the subscribers to that religion and not to the rest of the world.

Why was this down voted ?

Because being outspoken in a thread that touches on religion will get you downvoted. Don't sweat it.

One reason would be that the very idea of religion is offensive to me. That someone else, without evidence, says not only that they know how the universe came to be but that they have direct contact with the divine creator who tells them how all people should live their lives, is an offensive idea to me!

How do we resolve this? The only solution is for at least one of us to ignore the offense caused by the other, or we cannot live together in society.

> -why offend someone in the first place?

To this, there is a simple historical explanation: because that's, in practice, how France gained its freedom. Sure, there was the French Revolution, but it took more than one century before the Catholic Church stopped being the main power in France, before it became acceptable to be agnostic, atheist, protestant, muslim or jew in France. The main fight took place in the written press, largely through caricatures, by showing irreverence to the Catholic Church. It is only through this that France eventually became a non-religious republic, in 1905.

In other words, this kind of Free Speech and irreverence is deeply ingrained in French history, political correctness be damned. Charlie was created in part in defiance to the hero worship towards General De Gaulle, and has been irreverent towards every power figure ever since.

Honestly, and it kinda hurts me to say it, but the belief that blasphemers should be punished is unfortunately a very reasonable interpretation of the Quran. It doesn't take any interpretation at all, it says directly that they should be slain in 33:57-61 for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_blasphemy

Don't get me wrong, the Bible commands the death penalty for a lot of things too, like working on a Sunday for example.

Can I point, that one of the central tenants of Islam is that the only source of Quran is Quran itself. Wikipedia is not a accurate source. But you knew that right?

Yeah, of course. All the English translations say the same thing, so it's not a translation issue:

33:57: http://www.internetmosque.net/read/english_translation_of_th...

33:58: http://www.internetmosque.net/read/english_translation_of_th...

33:59: http://www.internetmosque.net/read/english_translation_of_th...

33:60: http://www.internetmosque.net/read/english_translation_of_th...

33:61: http://www.internetmosque.net/read/english_translation_of_th...

there you go quoting random things from the internet. This is really not worth my time anymore.

Should I say two things clearly?

1. I condemn the attack on charlie hebdo. Do you?

2. I condemn the over-the-top carricatures of Muhammad. Do you?

Whether your answer is Yes or No, that is your opinion, and this is mine.

For the record, any Quran you find over the internet is most likely to be not genuine.For example, there are only 30 chapters in Quran. so no.33 is just not possible.

> For example, there are only 30 chapters in Quran. so no.33 is just not possible.

You're confused: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran#Text_and_arrangement

The Quran has 114 chapters called sura's, but the book can also be divided into 30 parts called juz'. The 33th chapter is in the 22th juz' of your book.

okay, since you are insisting this much. Let us hear what your copy says? What are you quoting exactly, and what is your point? You seem to claim that you are not rigid in your opinion and are open for debate.

> But the level of Satire in question here, was perhaps too much.

Who cares about sensitivities once you cross into satire.

You're effectively arguing that the people that got shot were murdered because 'the level of satire' was too high.

What hurts you is imaginary, killing people is real.

Identifying with a religion to the point that someone insulting your imaginary friend causes a person to commit acts in the real world or to be supportive of such acts is insanity.

If you want a better society then learn that not everybody believes as you do and that the rules governing a religion ONLY applies to those that subscribe to that religion.

I'm effectively arguing that Muslims are highly offended because we have the liberty to be so for this case.

Yet that doesn't qualify as enough to hurt someone, and that is why I said both.

> I'm effectively arguing that Muslims are highly offended because we have the liberty to be so for this case.

Muslims are highly offended because they choose to identify with their religion in a way that is not considered normal by non-muslims.

> Yet that doesn't qualify as enough to hurt someone, and that is why I said both.

Then stop saying things like 'the satire was perhaps too much'. There will always be people for who the satire was too much so your position would put an end to satire.

In my view the satire was still way too little.

Muslims being offended at stuff like this is bad for Islam as a religion.

You make prophet Muhammed sound like some innocent Saint.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_expeditions_of_Muhammad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Muhammad

I am a national of a country with 90% muslim while being a minority and to have the freedom to express my opinion.

Islam has bought nothing but hate and insecurity to most people around me. I think its YOUR problem if you are offended if I do not have any respect for your YOUR prophet.

Most american in HN are disgusted by the "pledge of aligence". They would be shocked at the type of behaviour that Islam forces onto its followers.

And Please do not bring up your book and what It says. No ones cares what someone wrote in some book 1000s of year ago. Netwon's laws are not respectable because newton wrote a book but because what he wrote was ACTUALLY something that worked !. Islam's ideas has brought nothing but misery to billions of people now and throught time bought to its followers and the people who had the misfortune of being neighbours to them.

END RANT

From my personal understanding of the issue , the law forbidding depictions of Mohammed applies ONLY TO MUSLIMS. The purpose was that Islam is dead against the idea of idol worship as that was one of the chief causes of disunity and warring among the various tribal factions of Mecca.

So if somebody else makes a cartoon depiction of Mohammed , Islam doesn't have anything to say about that.

Every other religion has been subjected to a lot of ridicule and hate ever since the enlightenment. European societies have accepted that religion should play no role in public life but Islamic societies are only slowly coming around to this idea.

The chief stumbling block to the progress of muslims is the regressive ideologies of the Saudi royals who use their oil billions to export their intolerant nonsense all over the world. It is they who are most interested in strengthening the notion that Islam and Democracy are fundamentally incompatible with each other because otherwise their subjects would question their own authority.

They justify their repression by conflating their authority with the rule of Islam , a trick which their subjects are increasingly realising because of which , they recently declared atheism as a crime equivalent to terrorism.

I live as a Muslim here in India and I'm glad I was born in India and not in some back-asswards country like Saudi Arabia. It is only in a democratic country like India are ALL muslims safe. Try being a Shia in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.

We don't have absolute freedom of speech here , but we do have the power to question authority. Until the muslim world wakes up to the necessity of this , they won't enter the 21st century.

I'm a closet atheist but this rising tide of Islamophobia is making life difficult for all of us. Both sides need to work something out or else it's going to be a wild ride.

Islam starts at Tauheed, which is to believe in "One God".

As a Muslim I have only 2 things to say to you:

Do you condemn the attacks? I do.

Do you condemn over-the-top caricatures of our Prophet? I do.

>Do you condemn over-the-top caricatures of our Prophet? I do.

I don't. I like the ones of Jesus a little more though.

Then we simply have different opinions. Nothing more.

What I meant in my original post is that, out of the millions of ways to be amused, if you can simply write off "insulting prophets of Islam", I your Muslim friend would be very happy.

> Yet, if someone does want to amuse himself or exercise his liberty knowing that it is something that hurts us, we simply have to ignore him. Things should not go further than that.

I have heard this a few time since the attacks on Charlie, and that's very nice to hear. I believe that this was also the point made by Charlie with their first cover on Muhamad (which shows Muhamad saying, roughly « Having stupid followers is harsh. » in reaction to attacks on another newspaper) I wonder how it happens that some Muslems apparently are not aware of this. I thought that, for a Muslim, learning High Arabic and reading Al'Quran was a religious duty. Am I wrong? Or is it that the text of Al'Quran is so complex that it takes a sufficient degree of intelligence to process it? Or is it that there are completely different branches and interpretations in Islam that just happen to share the same name?

By the way, I have read the stories of Nasreddin Hoca, and they really don't sound like satire to me, more like children-level not-religious-at-all fun. Did I miss some specifically satiric ones?

No learning Arabic is not compulsory, though reading the Quran is. There are lot of translations of Quran, including in English.

People are not aware as such because of similar reasons, as you may not know the whole of constitution that governs you. It takes time and effort.

Regarding Nasruddin, there are thousands of stories by different authors for all type of audience, if you look a bit more, you will find one with satire.

As a an atheist, who spent nearly all of his life in a country with 99% Muslim population, I do not understand how people who live in such society and got an education defend the religion.

>> First of all.. certainly as a Muslim, I condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo. This is not Islam.

First of all, this is a "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Islam, after Christianity, has the bloodiest history we know. The only reason it is the second biggest religion is because it expanded by violent conquers. Even in the off chance that the host is being decent, they imposed so much regulations on non-Muslims that they would end up converting. So this is exactly what Islam is.

>> On the other hand, Religion is a personal affair.

No one who has laid their eyes on Qur'an can say that. It is very explicit about how you need to treat non-Muslims. I don't know where the entire notion of "personal affair" came from.

>> But the level of Satire in question here, was perhaps too much.

Who says so? Who is the divine power that decides on what satire is too much in the absolute scare?

>> Besides the additional fact, that impersonation/impersonification of Prophet Muhammad is highly condemned in Islam.

It is free in the Western world for women not to wear head scarves, drive and have sex with whoever they want, by extension of this logic would it be okay for woman to go to Saudi Arabia and do any of these things?

>> Let us understand each others liberties as well as sensitivities, so that by standing firm together, we will all make a better society, both in France and the World.

No, you don't get it. Objectively France is the better society here. I am half-french and I can criticise France on various issues for many hours but it is insulting to do a comparison between France and a "serious" Muslim country.

>> Let me put it this way. There are only a couple of hundred thousand/million of people who follow Bahai Religion. Can they have the bloodiest history? Both Christianity and Islam, are among top 3 in terms of people who follow a religion. Of course with nearly half the planet following Islam and Christianity, if people stand up for the right things, they will end up with a bloody history. (In no way I support violence, but what I say is for the sake of the argument).

No one who has laid their eyes on Qur'an can say that. It is very explicit about how you need to treat non-Muslims. I don't know where the entire notion of "personal affair" came from.

>> And I agree with you, Islam specifically says that Non-Muslims are to be treated with respect and dignity. As you say, no man who has laid eyes on Quran can claim that such terrorism is justified.

Who says so? Who is the divine power that decides on what satire is too much in the absolute scare?

>> Who says it is too little? Which Divine power will decide it is too much or too little?

>> Is this in someway becoming, tell me what Islam is? If you have questions, about "What Islam actually says", then go read a genuine English Translation of Quran.

>> You seem to have a delusion about "Serious" Muslim Country. No one can clearly say which country is better. Isn't it peaceful to say all religions are good, all countries are good? Which side are you really on? Of a peaceful mindset or I want to work out my issues about Islam on HN?

Your way of quoting the parent here in reverse is highly confusing, it is as if you are now contradicting yourself.

To sum you up, "this is unfortunate but can we still be friends?"

You are not guaranteed that. Nobody has to be friendly to you and reasserting your "feelings" will make people avoid you further.

>> First of all.. certainly as a Muslim, I condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo. This is not Islam.

Pretending Islam is one single thing seems to be part of the problem.

Are the IS fighters following Islam? Were the Hebdo shooters? Or are you?

All would answer yes but clearly are very different, conflicting philosophies.

If you can't believe either me or them, then you surely can try to find out what Islam is yourself right? Best help is self help! To start looking, pick up a genuine English Translation of Quran.

I'm not really interested TBH, had my fill of Christianity when I was a kid and now don't want anything to do with any religion.

I'm just trying to say that someone saying 'this is not true Islam' is about as useful as the Southern Baptists saying Catholics aren't Christian - it doesn't really mean anything, there is no 'one true way' to any of this stuff.

Mostly because gods are a fantasy.

Or you could read the following chapter from The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. It is quite entertaining.

http://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume2/chap50.htm

>To say that in other words, to Muslims, a graphical satire is acceptable on anyone except the prophets, which includes Moses, Jesus, Abraham, etc.

Disregarding the past, even today Muslims (most) respect only their religious figures. They respect Moses, Jesus, Abraham since they are considered prophet by Islam. Muslims (again, most) have no respect for other religions like Hinduism, Buddhism (You can see this on many occasions when they talk about Muslim tolerance and mention only Jesus, Moses and Abraham). Why being a Hindu or Buddhist, should I respect your prophet?

Much better than expected: It's defiance and almost turning the other cheek at the same time.

Does a fantastic job of threading a very thin needle. I was surprised at how perfectly they pulled that off.

It's forgiveness and turning the other cheek. It's surprisingly Christian for such an anti-religious magazine.

Also check out the beautiful cover they had after the 2011 firebombing: http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/static/world/charlie_...

Edit: actually this is wrong: the Guardian and Independent (left) have published, Sun, Times Telegraph and Mail (right) have not.

Original: it's also worth noting that all the UK newspapers, from both sides of politics, have republished the relevant cover.

The article and many peoples reaction comes across as if these two 'individuals' actually represented the Muslim community. This is quite obviously not the case if it is looked at objectively.

And to say that somehow the Muslim community must bear responsibility for the individuals actions is like saying that all the people of France must bear responsibility for every wrong committed in their neighbourhood, or their city, or by their government, were those wrongs not commit by French men and women.

No, it really doesn't come across as that.

Radical murderous bastards with long toes will use any excuse to ply their trade whether they're anti-abortionists or Islamists doesn't really matter.

What does matter is that:

- this will rub off negatively on all those in Islam that don't distance themselves unconditionally from actions like these

- that it will be used to erode the rights and freedoms of people that had nothing to do with these attacks by railroading laws against the public interest while the anger and the fear are at high tide

- that actions like these make people of all religions look bad, especially those who are more fanatical about their religion.

On the whole, everybody loses.

If your imaginary friend can't be made fun of or you'll flip then you should see a shrink, and if you think there was anything 'ok' about these murders then I'd invite you to join in.

Other than that this is a police matter and politicians trying to use this to push their agenda should be voted out of office by all those who today think they too are 'Charlie'.

It is not about Islam but about a school of thought which is not only 100% certain in its beliefs (Quran is the literal word of God) but also likes to impose it on others under the banner of "don't hurt our feelings". I've seen examples coming from Budhism (Burma-Sri Lanka), Hinduism (India), Sikhism (India), Christianity (UK-middle age Europe-African countries). People from even non-islamic religions regularly kill each other for hurting 'religious feelings'.

When someone 'hurts' your religious sentiments, you can't be sure whether it was done deliberately or for deeper reasons. I can see deep reasons in why those cartoons were published.

Anyone against free expression is kinda against science itself. Certain religions will never grow (the word of god is limited to Quran/Bible/Whatever) but science will keep growing. What happens when science ends up infringing on religious feelings? Will we be allowed to publish potential treatment for HIV found in a pig's liver in a sharia state? Even saying that "Charlie Hebdo" did something wrong is taking a step towards a world where science starts becoming bound. This sentiment can easily go out of hand in a matter of 100 years. A perfect example would be Pakistan. A supposedly liberal place 100 years ago ended up forcing its only nobel prize winning physicist into exile, defacing his grave and making sure more awesome scientists are not created. Because apparently, Dr. Abdus Salam (the nobel laureate) wasn't Muslim enough!! I wouldn't take even one step towards intolerance for the sake of our great-great grandchildren.

I found it quite moving that the theme of the cover was forgiveness. Fighting extremist hate with more hate has a best case of only shifting which people suffer because it, and a worse case that is truly horrible to contemplate.

I know saying you forgive your attackers will almost certainly not make the world a better place. But there were so many reactions that could have added to the fire. It's very hopeful to see people struggling to break the cycle even in the face of such loss.

I agree with you almost completely - except I do think that forgiveness definitely will and does make the world a better place. It just did - you and I and countless other people have been moved and inspired by this gesture of forgiveness. How can that not make the world better?

If they had instead requested vengeance - it would continue the cycle of misery, hate and destruction.

It's difficult to be surprised by this turn of events.

It's in poor taste, in one sense, but overall it's the only appropriate response that a satirist magazine could take in the wake of this tragedy.

Followers of Islam the whole world over will continue to ignore these publications nonviolently, though a few extremists might be further radicalized by this decision.

Meanwhile, David Cameron is trying to outlaw cryptography after these attacks. Surely that deserves more of our attention right now?

We're allowed to talk about this now? I thought all the stories on it were getting flagged off the front page?

These events have really solidified an idea for me that I've been mulling for a while: I don't think I'm in favor of religion as a protected class[1].

Islam believes in inerrancy of the Qur'an. The Qur'an encourages violence. The faces of organized Islam in the west engage in apologetics and argue that this isn't so, but anyone can read this for themselves. Claiming that the Qur'an doesn't encourage violence is just doublethink. Most Muslims believe that the Qur'an espouses peace, only because they haven't read it. But if they actually do read it and realize it espouses violence, then they are faced with a choice: either give up the idea that the Qur'an is inerrant, or begin spreading Islam through violence. All it takes to turn a peaceful Muslim into a violent Muslim is that they actually read and understand their holy book.

Even peaceful Muslims aren't great. Even in its milder incarnations, Islam is sexist and hostile to science.

The interests of Islam are not aligned with my interests. They are, in fact, directly opposed to my interests.

I believe that one of the most powerful ways in which I can act politically is through economics. There is a diner in my town which is well-known for its owners being racist. I don't go there, because I don't want to support racists monetarily. Similarly, I wouldn't hire a person who made racist comments. I believe that there should be significant repercussions for that kind of behavior.

Likewise, I don't want to go to Muslim businesses or hire Muslims. Islam is every bit as harmful as racism, and I believe that there should be significant repercussions for that behavior.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

I'm offended by the fact that there is a warning at the top of this page...

Shouldn't it be there all the time then?

How about, we don't believe in anything anymore, or we don't have any integrity?

Read news about the biggest gathering in paris ever as a tribute to the legendary cartoonist, terrorists are failing in their objectives.

Nope. Terrorist have won again. The aim of Islam terrorism is not to cause direct damage, but to install fear in all of us and reduce our freedom/democracy. Here's one of example that's relevant to people here on HN:

"In wake of Paris shootings, Prime Minister wants to ban encryptions that government can't read in extreme situations"

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

Is there anyone in France willing to take a paypal payment to buy me a couple of copies and mail them to the USA?

I've heard that this issue will be translated in something like 16 languages, I would be surprised if it wasn't officially distributed abroad, especially in the USA.

Offering forgiveness in the face of such brutality is very powerful and meaningful to me. It is moving and inspiring. When something so brutal like this happens, I can get depressed and not understand. It is easy to feel a lot of anger about it.

But then in the face of this brutality, when their co-workers and friends were murdered in cold blood, to offer forgiveness - it really does a lot to restore my faith in humanity.

How do we obtain a copy in the US? Anyone have a good source?

A very interesting cover. I was thinking about drawing a cartoon: a bunch of Muslims sitting around saying "I hate freedom soo much!..."

Note this wouldn't be satirizing Muslims, but rather the fact that we rush to draw these comical worldviews even in the face of such tragedies.

Let's just label it Radical Islam & call anyone that doesn't agree with our definition of "values" a Radical. The Islamic world is in deep shit, not necessarily because of the west. Meaningful change often isnt even a remote possibility in many of these places. The "extremists" are just another group vying for power and legitimacy in a dystopian Muslim world & something like Charlie Hebdo is a PR opportunity.

Religious injunctions aside, what makes criticizing Islam is not just the beliefs that some hold. What makes it dangerous is you're likely painting a target on your back. They won't take on the U.S. army, or the seriously oppressive armies of dictatorships. A journalist, celebrity etc is a great opportunity.

It's not fucking about free speech, unless you believe in a comical worldview where you depict what doesn't match your worldview as I did earlier. The cartoons are funny. I'm all for freedom of speech. But our principles don't make ground realties any different. We should think of the fact that at least we have the luxury of having principles.

In principle, nobody should rob me while I'm going walking down the street. But it's a whole different thing if it's in a rough neighborhood & I'm standing out like a sore thumb.

What happenned was wrong, and my heart goes out to all who are directly involved. And I mean that (A close family friend was recently shot by a deranged lunatic on a shooting spree, leaving him permanently disabled). The violence is senseless and irrational.

Let us them not rationalize it away with a little bias thrown the other way. It's not what I expect on HN. Let's not fool ourselves into thinking it was about freedom of speech. Yes, it has caused fear. Which is why I thought the cover was interesting. It's saying to us: we are not afraid & it's not hurling hate back with a message of forgiveness, which is atypical in the aftermath of a terrorist attack.

Surprisingly Charlie Hebdo's cover is more thoughtful & less comical than the inane chatter of people saying "why do they hate us". And that is Brilliant. Alas this attempt at communication is probably lost on a majority of the Muslim world. In truth, everyone wants freedom. Let's take a second to think about what's really at play here.

For the perpetrators of these acts like to win, it requires us to becomes irrational & start becoming hateful and shortsighted. Let's not give in to that

Speaking on Today, [Omer el-Hamdoon, president of the Muslim Association of Britain] said causing offence “just for the purpose of offending” was not freedom of speech.

Distancing yourself from the extremists [FAIL]

Just because someone doesn't take your side in debate does not necessarily mean they took some other non affiliated point of view.

One could argue that he did, indirectly. Freedom of speech means exactly that - the freedom to say whatever you want, within the margins allowed by the law, regardless of how it could be perceived by some specific group of people. Somebody is always going to be offended, I think el-Hamdoon missed the whole point.

What he could have said instead, but didn't, is this: "While I find the cover disgusting, freedom of speech protects their right to publish this, and they should not fear for their lives because of it."

"Within the margins of law"

So it's not completely free.

There is a hate speech law in France. So there are limits to speech and many people might find them acceptable limits.

Thank you for the excellent example of why hate speech laws are such a terrible idea.

> Freedom of speech means exactly that - the freedom to say whatever you want ... regardless of how it could be perceived by some specific group of people

No. You can't publish porn freely. Why? Because some people find it offensive. It's not that simple.

Or maybe it is. What makes you uncritically accept those restrictions as not violating free speech? Just because the countries that impose them happen to claim they support free speech?

From the article --

Omer el-Hamdoon:"what’s happening here is not that different from what we witnessed back in 2005 with the Danish cartoons when media outlets went into a cycle of just publishing the cartoons just to show defiance. And what that caused is more offence."

It's pretty clear that the likes of Mr. el-Hamdoon want it both ways. They want to sound supportive of free speech, but they want that speech curtailed to their liking.

No, they wouldn't kill anyone themselves. Yes, they are fostering a dangerous notion of "incorrect" speech that is very dangerous to the whole idea of free speech. Those dangers are so obvious that it is very hard to assign good faith to those preaching it.

I have always thought that the offence was in the eye of the offended.

If something drawn by a human can disturb a person's inner world so much - the problem is his and not the artists'

I don't understand how anyone could claim that CH published those comics "just for the purpose of offending". All of the CH comics had messages, very valuable messages in my opinion.

And even if they were crafted to offend it is our choice to be or not to be offended.

A sane, mature person would just shrug and ignore the newspaper in the future.

This guy has an amazingly unhelpful point of view. It's literally freedom of speech to cause offence for the purpose of it. He's just exposed MAB's viewpoint as being opposed to freedom of expression, which is a shockingly stupid thing to do here.

Especially since Charlie Hebdo's goal has never been to offend "just for the purpose of offending".

Their comics are for their readers. For most of their history (before the internet) only the few people who bought it read it and their drawings didn't make the news even if most of them would've been very offensive to some. They try to convey something insightful in an humoristic way, usually in a pretty unflattering way for the depicted. That's what satire means.

If they end up making pictures about islam these days, it's because islam hits the news much more than it did in Hara Kiri's days. Their drawings and articles always followed the news.

And when YOU hit the news because some people can't take a joke, you keep following the news and respond in your next issue: "please stop being so stupid" in an humoristic and unflattering way for the depicted.

If you can't depict the world around you in a funny way, usually unflattering to the depicted because the depicted might be offended, then you can't do satire. At least have the guts to say it in plain words: "I'm all for free speech except when stuff I hold dear are being caricatured". Which means you don't want free speech because anyone can then claim they're offended by anything.

This isn't a 'fail'. Being repulsed by Charlie Hebdo's offensive depictions of religious icons does not imply being in favour of the assassination of its editorial staff. You can stand squarely against both, without contradiction.

I didn't quote someone saying he was repulsed; I quoted someone saying it wasn't free speech. The two are very different statements. And I didn't say he's in favor of the assassination, either - just that he failed to distance himself from them.

Why should he have to distance himself? That notion in itself implies that his default position is showing some favour.

It's not the default position; it's - in my opinion - the implication of what he said. Criticizing the cartoonists in a moment like this reveals, if nothing else, a tremendous lack of compassion.

Do you still think Cumberbatch was poorly cast in the Imitation Game?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8777831

A best actor nomination.

Yes I do, but what does this have to do with Charlie Hebdo?

Well, I had no other way to point out that you turned out to be embarrassingly wrong.

Okay but I'm somewhat surprised how much this conversation meant to you, that you've chosen to resurrect it a month later in a completely unrelated thread.

Anyway, his performance in The Imitation Game is just personal taste, it's not a matter of right and wrong, we just happen to hold different opinions - nothing to gloat about!

Yeah, I laughed out loud pretty hard at the time saying "This guy is a clueless idiot". I wondered if we actually saw the same movie. Anyway, it's a waste of time to debate opinions. However, a Best Actor and Best Picture nomination are hard to argue with.

You're an odd one, for sure.

If only everyone would take the time. :-)

http://xkcd.com/386/

I found this for you: http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/causeeffectfactopinion...

Hope it helps!

You were the one who felt the need to bore us with your opinion. I'm just taking the time to show you how off the mark you were.

It amuses me that my boring opinion means so much to you, that you decided to barge in on a completely different topic weeks later, and rub your own boring opinion in.

I appreciate this unexpected attention, but it is kind of weird of you, and a bit stalkerish.

I think I've already explained myself. Can I be done now?

Of course, just stop replying.

Y HN become political?

The face and turban is shaped like a penis

Yesterday the Guardian published the best opinion I've read so far about satire, Charlie Hebdo, the terrorist attacks and our reaction to them. And it's a short comic strip by the cartoonist Joe Sacco: http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/jan/09/...

While I respect Secco and his work as well it's also wrong and out of context in some regards.

Ruben Bolling: http://gocomics.typepad.com/tomthedancingbugblog/2015/01/in-...

I'd never heard of CH a week ago, and Bolling's interpretation of CH's cartooning may be more accurate than Secco's, and it was an interesting perspective.

But I think that Bolling's conclusions are wrong, except perhaps when he rebuts Secco's use of the word "vapid".

Bolling says that the only reasonable reaction to the murders is to defend free speech. No. Defending free speech is necessary, but it's not at all clear that it's sufficient. Freedom of the press isn't the only issue here.

There are also issues of what to do about violence/security, what to do about racism, what to do about freedom of religion, etc. Those issues aren't any more important post-murder, but they were important before and they still are, and this is an opportunity to put some eyes on them.

I don't interpret Sacco's piece as saying "CH is unworthy of our defense". I interpret it as saying "Let's defend CH, but also notice that they were missing the point, here's the point". Bolling argues that CH wasn't missing the point. But Sacco's proposal for where our greatest attention should lie is still a good proposal.

What exactly do you see as Sacco's proposal? Maybe it's over my head, but as far as I can see his comic basically says that in response to the murders we should focus on not offending muslims.

I don't see anything in Sacco that says "we should not offend". I think Sacco's piece as a whole says three things, and I think that Bolling agrees with the first, rebuts the second, and ignores the third. From the tone of your question, I infer that you're asking me about that "third", but I'll just get the first two out of the way first.

First: Of course we should defend free speech! (Okay, good, glad we got that out of the way. We all agree, yay.)

Second: CH is "tweaking the nose of muslims", and that's "vapid". (Bolling says that's not what CH is doing. I have no idea if Bolling is correct, but it seems plausible. So let's assume Bolling has rebutted Sacco on this.)

Third:

Thinking critically about geopolitics would be more interesting and constructive than "tweaking .. noses". There might be geopolitical and sociological reasons why there exist so many more Muslim-affiliated suicide bombers than there are first-world/modern/white/Christian/etc suicide bombers.

Maybe the issue isn't that Islam teaches violence. I mean, there are plenty of exhortations to violence in Christian history, in Western history, in "modernity". And my understanding is that much of the Quran and the Hadith is calls to peace and non-violence. So what's the deal? Maybe the issue is that there's a lot of inequality in the world (and the inequality is actively pursued by the empowered, not just an accident), and this breeds resentment, and breeds tribal thinking, and Muslims as a group have relatively little overlap with the empowered class (House of Saud notwithstanding). Maybe that sort of us-vs-the-West tribal thinking is the only source of empowerment that certain people can find in their lives, and some tiny fraction of them are borderline-insane young men who jump over the cliff into insanity and strap on vests. And if that's all true, sure it's easy and correct to say "no matter what their excuse, suicide bombing is evil". Fine, I agree. So what? Given the choice between labelling a past murderer as "evil", or preventing a future murder, which is more important to you?

If we agree that violence and terrorism are a problem to which we'd like a solution, what forms of solution can you imagine? Can we realistically eradicate a religion? Alternately, can we realistically eradicate the spectrum of extremism within a religion? How about can we build a police state that will actually prevent this kind of thing, and if we can should we? Or can we just wall off all the crazies and not let them into our countries, and if we can, should we (with the collateral effect of maybe walling some innocents in with the crazies)? Personally I think the answer to all four of those is a very obvious "No". So do we have an alternative? I don't know if an alternative exists, but I suggest that if it does exist, then reducing inequality seems likely to be a prerequisite.

The last two paragraphs of mine are an attempt to spell out the last two panels of Sacco's strip. "We can try to think about why the world is the way it is, and what it is about Muslims in this time and place that makes them unable to laugh off a mere image. And if we answer 'because something is deeply wrong with them' - certainly something was deeply wrong with the killers - then let us drive them from their homes and into the sea. For that is going to be far easier than sorting out how we fit in each other's world".

So, in summary, Sacco's third point as I see it: Yeah yeah we all agree in free speech, but maybe if we stop foaming at the mouth about how evil a group is, and cultivate some empathy, we can find a solution that doesn't amount to genocide.

On a personal note, I find it very hard to have empathy with religious people of any stripe. But I am well aware that my position on religion makes me a very very tiny minority.

This Ruben Bolling article, and the links therein (such as http://junkee.com/the-problem-with-jesuischarlie/48456 ) are by far the best explanation of the cartoons I've read in English.

I don't see what's so good about this. It's merely an uninsightful and flawed analogy with a deeply wrong conclusion. He completely misjudges Charlie Hebdo and the cultural context.

>It's merely an uninsightful and flawed analogy with a deeply wrong conclusion.

How so?

Lets count some ways:

- Religion is different than race, because race is something that a person is born with and cannot possibly change.

- He tries to make deliberately offensive panels that are supposed to provoke the same reaction in people as Charlie Hebdo's comics supposedly provoke in muslims, but he falls short by a long shot. The reaction to his deliberately offensive panels is "meh", not outrage, which completely undermines his point.

- He depicts Charlie Hebdo as a magazine that makes fun of certain groups by maximally offending them without any satirical value. This is incorrect. When you place them in their cultural context you see that their comics are actually very left wing and sure they are against religion (any form), but also against racism, islamophobia, classism, xenophobia, etc. When you are outside the culture you may misinterpret the comics if you take them at face value. This isn't a 'lets make fun of muslims' magazine.

- Even if it were true that Charlie Hebdo was just trying to offend people, his implication that it's then not worthy and we should rather appease the offended groups is still wrong. Free speech as long as you like what is said is not free speech.

- His comic is patronising ordinary muslims, as if the average muslim can't handle satire and needs to be protected from it, while people from other religions can handle it.

I could go on...

>Religion is different than race, because race is something that a person is born with and cannot possibly change.

You assume that change is a desired outcome. Mr. Sacco does not.

>He tries to make deliberately offensive panels that are supposed to provoke the same reaction

I don't think Mr. Sacco believed it would invoke the same outrage as much as illustrate his point using imagery that everyone would recognize as offensive, even if they understood that he was making a point and were not actually offended.

>He depicts Charlie Hebdo as a magazine that makes fun of certain groups by maximally offending them without any satirical value.

I don't know the complete history of Charlie Hebdo, but Mr. Sacco provided at least one example of what he perceived as a double-standard. And, he calls into question the low-brow maligning of Muslims from both an artistic perspective, and a cultural one. As has been often pointed out, no other group seems to respond to satire as does a particular subset of Islamists. Mr. Sacco is simply suggesting that perhaps we should be asking why this is the case. This is why he singles out the magazine's attack on Muslims.

>his implication that it's then not worthy and we should rather appease the offended groups is still wrong

I don't think he was saying this. Rather, he's calling for introspection and earnest exploration of whether there is even the possibility that other dynamics are at play here.

There is, perhaps, a thin line between satire and hatefulness, bigotry, or even the simple promulgation of cultural superiority. At a minimum, he's asking us to be aware of that line.

>Free speech as long as you like what is said is not free speech.

He's specifically not condemning free speech (in fact, he "affirms" it in panel eight). He's calling for understanding, purposefulness, introspection, and responsibility in employing free speech. He's also speaking to his fellow artists and, tacitly, asking them to consider their standards.

>His comic is patronising ordinary muslims

Actually, I think your comment patronizes "ordinary muslims" more so than does Mr. Sacco's comic. And, I think you're making the assumption, not him. But, perhaps he could have been clearer in saying "some Muslims" for those who might take him literally.

I think you completely misinterpreted/misunderstood the message here.

I already addressed some of this in my cousin-comment, and I think unclebucknasty addresses a lot of it, but anyway...

1) Yes, he depicts CH as mocking for the sake of mocking. Perhaps islamophobic-specific, perhaps just whoever-we-can-hurt. In a recent comment filoeleven links a Greenwald piece that characterizes CH the same way (I think the Greenwald piece is great overall). I dunno anything about CH's context, but if you and Bolling are correct about CH (and it seems very plausible that you are), then Sacco and Greenwald are wrong about CH. Fine.

1b) What's most-plausible about Bolling's thesis is that some of CH's "jokes", including tomorrow's cover, just do not make as much sense if CH's whole goal is offense. They make a lot more sense if CH is trying to mock the whole dialog (both the islamophobic side, and also the extremist islamist side).

2) "Free speech as long as you like what is said is not free speech." Yes, absolutely. Even if CH is just trying to offend... even if CH is just trying to offend whoever they think is most vulnerable... tough shit, that's free speech. Defend it.

3) I'm not seeing how it's patronising. Again, I don't think Sacco is saying "don't offend", I think Sacco is saying "if all you're doing is offending, that's vapid; there are more constructive things we could do" (see my other comment). But even if someone WERE to say "don't offend", there's room to say that without being patronising. It could look like this: "Hey, hypothetical-CH, you're being a dick. You shouldn't kick people when they're down. Pick on the strong, you asshole. (Though I will defend your right to say these reprehensible things you've been saying.)"

4) I'm not sure what to make of the offend-black-people and offend-jews panels. I'm not sure that the respective communities would find them "meh", though. Personally, I don't understand why blackface performances are so abhorred, but I have well taken note that they are. And I think his point about the jew panel is spot on: maybe everyone can "take the joke" today, but what about in 1933? Anyway, I'm not sure what his point is here. My suspicion is that these panels are not really relevant if you/Bolling are correct about CH's actual intent; this part of the comic is probably, as you say, an "uninsightful and flawed analogy". HOWEVER...

5) EVEN IF YOU ARE 100% CORRECT ABOUT CH..... I hope you don't dispute that CH's cartoons are being seen by everyone else as being tweaking-the-dirty-muslims. Tomorrow's print run of 10x the normal size.... who's gonna buy those up? People who understand CH's nuanced iconoclastic leftist humour? Or people who want to spit in the face of the murderers? Since it's the latter, criticism of this way of thinking is hugely relevant, and the conclusion that I attribute to him (see other comment) is still hugely relevant, without disagreeing with your claim that "He completely misjudges Charlie Hebdo and the cultural context.".

The fact is, CH is now a symbol. Luz said in an interview that this is horrible for CH, because disrupting symbols was a primary mission of CH. Well, I guess the murderers won. Sucks to be you, CH, sucks to be you. Anyway, as a symbol, now we have to fight about what it's a symbol OF, and FOR.

side note: I'm doing a lot of disagreeing with you on details, jules, but I want to note that I appreciate the respectful tone you've brought

Poignant and thought-provoking. Thanks for posting.

The bit about Sinet reminded me of something that I just learned yesterday: that France has a law against denying the Holocaust.

The sentiment behind the law is understandable, but it is difficult not to see a double-standard at work. And, if Hebdo itself really is guilty of invoking that double-standard, then one does have to question the purpose of the "satire".

IMO a policy of good satire encourages the skewering of all ridiculousness, else, it risks becoming nothing more than hateful bigotry directed at a group, and (paraphrasing Sacco) there's really nothing clever or insightful about that. I don't personally know whether this is true of Hebdo, but Sacco seems to be making a thought-worthy point.

Hmn, I agree (about "best I've read so far"). Thank you for the link.

In a related but distinct vein, two thoughts:

Primus. I do not doubt that these murders are a crime and we should grieve and be angry. But why are these murders worth of all this attention, relative to the inattention paid to countless other atrocities? What of children in schools in Palestine (hundreds dead in 2014), or Boko Haram victims in Nigeria (c.f. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/30777607 ), or whatever-whatever-I-don't-know-what-because-I'm-part-of-the-problem. And so far this is all trite and obvious, so here's my point: I think there are two reasons. One, innocent if depressing, is that I know for sure I'm not a Palestinian or Nigerian child, but I can imagine myself a French iconoclast loudmouth. And the second, more sinister, is that nobody powerful benefits from focusing our attention on Boko Haram, whereas my list of beneficiaries of the Charlie Hebdo attack can effortlessly start listing European politicans (e.g. Cameron [re crypto] and Hollande).

Secundus. I read much talk of whether or not Islam is a "more violent" religion than "modern" Christianity. Pshaw. The violence doesn't come from religion, the violence comes from poverty and desperation and ego issues and little-to-lose and tribalism. Very few "Christians" (by which I include the non-religious great-great-grandchildren of Christians) lack for potable water or enough to eat, and most have pretty good security of person and property. It's cheap(er) to buy into civilization when civilization buys into you. As that Sacco cartoon says, "we can think about ... what it is about Muslims that makes them unable to laugh off a mere image".

The Intercept also posted a similar piece, in article form: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/09/solidarity-cha...

An excerpt: But this week’s defense of free speech rights was so spirited that it gave rise to a brand new principle: to defend free speech, one not only defends the right to disseminate the speech, but embraces the content of the speech itself. Numerous writers thus demanded: to show “solidarity” with the murdered cartoonists, one should not merely condemn the attacks and defend the right of the cartoonists to publish, but should publish and even celebrate those cartoons. “The best response to Charlie Hebdo attack,” announced Slate’s editor Jacob Weisberg, “is to escalate blasphemous satire.”

One thing I fail to understand is the general reaction - or, rather, the absence of such - of 'Islamic authorities' on this and other acts of violence in the name of their religion. There are many complaints about those who point fingers at all Muslims when these things happen, something which would be easily defused by a fatwa (a legal opinion) from some high-placed muftis declaring such acts as 'haram' - sinful. I do not know enough about Islam to know whether there is something resembling 'excommunication' in the Roman Catholic church, but if there is it would make sense to apply it to those who commit such acts of violence. If the perpetrators can no longer claim to be defending their religion they might start to realise that their acts of violence are criminal acts, pure and simple, without any religious excuse.

Such a fatwa - or series of fatwas, as there are many currents in Islam - would take away the cause for the general blame which is aimed at Muslims when atrocities are performed in name of their religion.

My one and only question: How can a religion be based mostly on one book? Surely the book isn't wikipedia or google.

This question applies to Christians, Muslims and Jews.

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