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Comment by kingkawn | Hacker News Reader

We censor hate speech. They regard images of Mohammed to be hate speech.

It's not hate speech. It's sin. It's religiously forbidden to depict Mohammed, neither pejoratively nor complimentarily, the teaching is that one shall not depict the prophet anyhow.

Its a sin for Muslims. Why would it apply to non-muslims ?

In Islam, Muslims are to obey what the prophet says and follow how he behaves and lives (Qoran, Hashr 7, Nejm 3-5, Maaide 99, Neesa 13-14 [1]). So, sometimes some religious rules in modern Islam are rooted in hadiths, not directly the Qoran itself. There are hadiths that forbid depiction of the quick [2]. Also, some consider depiction and other forms of art to be sheerk[1], which means pretending or comparing oneself to God, trying to be godlike, which is sin (Hashr 24, Araph 11 can be interpreted to tell that creating and shaping are attributes of the God).

Thus there are various interpretations of Islam's allowance and tolerance of depiction of the things, the quick, the people, the prophecy and its particular prophet Mohammed. Sunnis, which are Turks and majority of Arabs as far as I know, loathe and are averse to depictions to some extent. More religious older people in Turkey refrain from being depicted anyhow, while some are fine with memorial pictures of themselves and relatives. Majority of the community is though, do not oppose any sort of picturing apart from Mohammed's, and they are taking and publishing pictures of themselves and other people and objects, animate or not, as everybody does. I have heard that Shiites are also lax regarding prophetical depictions, but I have not encountered personally the shiite culture, so, I do not really know.

So, it all boils down to the fact that when someone, Muslim or not, publishes visual material regarding Mohammed, and the God in an islamic context, they should be ready to face different reactions from different parts of the Islamic community. And, as we are living in the internet age, where information goes from Alaska to Iraq in the speed of light (figuratively), its no surprise that living in a non-muslim community does not matter at all in this context.

One would be offended when somebody tries to hurt or offend someone who he considers to be more worthy to him than himself, right? Well, the verse Ahzab 6 [1] says that Mohammed is more worthy to a Muslim than himself.

[1] I have tried to phonetically reproduce names of soorahs and religious terms, I do not guarantee they are correct.

[2] Now, I am not that familiar with hadiths and how these are really cited, but here are some citations nevertheless: Müslim 2107/96; Müslim 2107/90, 94; Buhari 5957, 5958; Müslim 2107/87, and others.

And once you decide that being offended > killing those who offend you, we see how truly horrible certain mindsets can be. It is disgusting in my opinion.

Religion holds the power to make people horrible. Yes, killings are horrible, but I also behold that hating people is similarly horrible, and not being tolerant is also similarly horrible. I'm an irreligious atheist, for I think that transcendent dogmas of faith make people horrible. And these dogmas made people horrible before the Charlie Hebdo incident and these dogmas will continue to make people horrible also after it. In the grandparent comment I sought to explain the phenomenon, not to justify it.

Citation please. Is this sin specified anywhere in the Koran?

Sure, they might think that.

But I think it is highly relevant to distinguish "speech that offends" and "speech that incites hatred"

It might be useful to censor the latter and not the former. The purpose of a "hate speech" law might be to avoid/reduce the social breakdown of having a part of society discriminate against the other. In that sense, saying (for example) that "all arabs are terrorrists" is much worse than drawing mohhamad. The drawing offends muslins, but does not try to persuade me to treat them differently/believe they are different

(tl;dr you say they say 'it's relative'. I say it might not be relative, regardless of what people say.)

I'd agree with your distinction, but I think it's beyond dispute that an effect of mass posting cartoons of Muhammad has been the incitement of hatred, on both sides, and that a significant proportion of the people posting said cartoons are doing so purposefully to achieve that effect.

This is mistaken though. It's perfectly permissible under the first amendment. Just because it annoys Moslems in Turkey and other places doesn't mean it must be censored elsewhere.

I think when he says "we," he is probably from Europe, where hate speech laws are much stronger than in America, where they basically don't exist.

Fair point.

And it's a fairly reasonable argument. The main purpose of publishing these images is to say "fuck you" to Islam. Sure, it's done to protest blasphemy laws and such, but Muslims don't see it as "fuck censorship". They see it as "we hate you".

>The main purpose of publishing these images is to say "fuck you" to Islam. //

If that were true it would still be entirely lawful (in USA) wouldn't it?

I'd certainly argue it's more about criticism of Islam than intention to offend. If you want to silence criticism that uses visualisation then proclaiming the central figures in your ideology to be unlawful to represent in imagery is a perfect way forward.

Muslim here. I do think the people who draw pictures of Muhammad do so fully knowing that it will offend Muslims. The only message they're trying to get across is "we don't like you".

This is actually a pretty good argument, I think.

I don't agree with this kind of coddling censorship because people don't have the right to not be offended, but it's undeniable that people who publish images of Mohammed are doing so with the full knowledge that it will (stupidly, immaturely) deeply offend Muslims, and that many will use this to intentionally target Muslims.

Yeah, but that's a really stupid attitude. In what way are images of a person inciting hatred or calling people to violence?

Denying the Holocaust is a hell of a lot different than saying, "Hey! Look! Here's a picture of a person!"

To you. They are not you.

No "hurtful" words or images can ever be equivalent to killing another human being.

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