Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
No one here is blaming "muslims and Islam" for this. People here are blaming radical Islamic terrorists. The same way we'd be blaming radical right-wing Christian terrorists if they shot up the place or any other group. Pretending this attack isn't connected to *some offshoot* of Islam is silly.

In fact, I have deleted multiple posts that blamed the attacks on Islam. I simply will not stand for that sort of post and remove them if/when I see them.

In response to the query as to why I posted the religion of the Muslim police officer and didn't post about the other two police officers, it is because I am completely prejudiced in favor of Muslims and don't give a shit about anyone else. No, that's actually not it, though it appears to be what was being suggested. The explanation is much more simple. I saw in my Twitter feed that the officer was Muslim. I didn't see anything about either other officer until I read it here. Despite all my efforts, I am still not able to post things I don't know.

Yet we're supposed to know about deleted posts. Okay. Interesting.

Calm down. I didn't suggest you should know. I was informing you because I assumed that you didn't know.

I don't need to be told to calm down. I'm very calm. It's condescending and unwarranted.

I apologize. I should have said, "Don't be so sensitive."

Not sensitive either. If you read my other comments in this thread, you'll see I'm quite rational. I noted an apparent contradiction in your statements. That implies nothing about my emotional state. I do object to men frequently characterizing women who disagree with them as needing to "calm down" or being "too sensitive", though. I don't know if you personally do that regularly or not, but I'll note it when I see it.

You are not doing a particularly good job of demonstrating your lack of sensitivity. By the way, I had no idea whether you are male or female and actually had assumed you were male. Had I known you were female, I would have told you to shut up and make me a sandwich (joking, joking, joking, I swear I am joking). A need to be calm and less sensitive is not something that I attribute to one sex over the other. Members of both sexes can stand to do both.

OK, I get pissed at Jeff too, but this is funny

I don't get pissed at Jeff, and I snickered under my pretend snarl.

I'm the person he's responding to and I wasn't actually pissed. But I don't find his "pretend sexism" funny either. He should keep his day job.

Interesting. Humor is in the eye of the beholder. Same as what some find offensive and others find satirical/funny.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A couple of you here would have hated and despised George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, and Richard Pryor who could be totally irreverent.

Good examples. When Bruce and Carlin were arrested, do you think the Washington Post rushed to publish their unedited jokes in solidarity? Doubt it. If the network news had run unedited clips, they would have ended up with FCC fines.

Examples of what, exactly? Bruce and Carlin were arrested for obscenity (the obscene words in question seem almost quaint today), not for using media to make statements about political threats. Or, are you arguing that these different freedom of speech issues (obscenity, terrorist violence)!are on the same plane, and the Post should be in solidarity with them all? Did anybody get so offended they tried to kill Bruce or Carlin, or were they arrested for breaking actual laws on the books?

Anonymous wrote:
I'm the person he's responding to and I wasn't actually pissed. But I don't find his "pretend sexism" funny either. He should keep his day job.

Making bad jokes is my day job.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
No one here is blaming "muslims and Islam" for this. People here are blaming radical Islamic terrorists. The same way we'd be blaming radical right-wing Christian terrorists if they shot up the place or any other group. Pretending this attack isn't connected to *some offshoot* of Islam is silly.

In fact, I have deleted multiple posts that blamed the attacks on Islam. I simply will not stand for that sort of post and remove them if/when I see them.

In response to the query as to why I posted the religion of the Muslim police officer and didn't post about the other two police officers, it is because I am completely prejudiced in favor of Muslims and don't give a shit about anyone else. No, that's actually not it, though it appears to be what was being suggested. The explanation is much more simple. I saw in my Twitter feed that the officer was Muslim. I didn't see anything about either other officer until I read it here. Despite all my efforts, I am still not able to post things I don't know.

Yet we're supposed to know about deleted posts. Okay. Interesting.

Calm down. I didn't suggest you should know. I was informing you because I assumed that you didn't know.

I don't need to be told to calm down. I'm very calm. It's condescending and unwarranted.

I apologize. I should have said, "Don't be so sensitive."

Not sensitive either. If you read my other comments in this thread, you'll see I'm quite rational. I noted an apparent contradiction in your statements. That implies nothing about my emotional state. I do object to men frequently characterizing women who disagree with them as needing to "calm down" or being "too sensitive", though. I don't know if you personally do that regularly or not, but I'll note it when I see it.

You are not doing a particularly good job of demonstrating your lack of sensitivity. By the way, I had no idea whether you are male or female and actually had assumed you were male. Had I known you were female, I would have told you to shut up and make me a sandwich (joking, joking, joking, I swear I am joking). A need to be calm and less sensitive is not something that I attribute to one sex over the other. Members of both sexes can stand to do both.

OK, I get pissed at Jeff too, but this is funny

I don't get pissed at Jeff, and I snickered under my pretend snarl.

I'm the person he's responding to and I wasn't actually pissed. But I don't find his "pretend sexism" funny either. He should keep his day job.

His day job is deleting posts that contain observations about Islam and it's impact on the modern world.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
No one here is blaming "muslims and Islam" for this. People here are blaming radical Islamic terrorists. The same way we'd be blaming radical right-wing Christian terrorists if they shot up the place or any other group. Pretending this attack isn't connected to *some offshoot* of Islam is silly.

In fact, I have deleted multiple posts that blamed the attacks on Islam. I simply will not stand for that sort of post and remove them if/when I see them.

In response to the query as to why I posted the religion of the Muslim police officer and didn't post about the other two police officers, it is because I am completely prejudiced in favor of Muslims and don't give a shit about anyone else. No, that's actually not it, though it appears to be what was being suggested. The explanation is much more simple. I saw in my Twitter feed that the officer was Muslim. I didn't see anything about either other officer until I read it here. Despite all my efforts, I am still not able to post things I don't know.

Yet we're supposed to know about deleted posts. Okay. Interesting.

Calm down. I didn't suggest you should know. I was informing you because I assumed that you didn't know.

I don't need to be told to calm down. I'm very calm. It's condescending and unwarranted.

I apologize. I should have said, "Don't be so sensitive."

Not sensitive either. If you read my other comments in this thread, you'll see I'm quite rational. I noted an apparent contradiction in your statements. That implies nothing about my emotional state. I do object to men frequently characterizing women who disagree with them as needing to "calm down" or being "too sensitive", though. I don't know if you personally do that regularly or not, but I'll note it when I see it.

You are not doing a particularly good job of demonstrating your lack of sensitivity. By the way, I had no idea whether you are male or female and actually had assumed you were male. Had I known you were female, I would have told you to shut up and make me a sandwich (joking, joking, joking, I swear I am joking). A need to be calm and less sensitive is not something that I attribute to one sex over the other. Members of both sexes can stand to do both.

OK, I get pissed at Jeff too, but this is funny

I don't get pissed at Jeff, and I snickered under my pretend snarl.

I'm the person he's responding to and I wasn't actually pissed. But I don't find his "pretend sexism" funny either. He should keep his day job.

jsteele wrote:This Wikipedia page on hate speech laws in France is interesting:

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

In particular, this part under "Freedom of the press":

"Articles 32 and 33 prohibit anyone from publicly defaming or insulting a person or group for belonging or not belonging, in fact or in fancy, to an ethnicity, a nation, a race, a religion, a sex, or a sexual orientation, or for having a handicap. The penalty for defamation is up to a year of imprisonment and a fine of up to €45,000, or either one of those punishments. The penalty for insult is up to six months of imprisonment and a fine of up to €22,500, or either one of those punishments."

France appears to be far more restrictive than the US.

Most of Europe is. Perhaps all of it. They don't understand our tolerance of hate speech and we don't understand their criminalization of it.

This Wikipedia page on hate speech laws in France is interesting:

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

In particular, this part under "Freedom of the press":

"Articles 32 and 33 prohibit anyone from publicly defaming or insulting a person or group for belonging or not belonging, in fact or in fancy, to an ethnicity, a nation, a race, a religion, a sex, or a sexual orientation, or for having a handicap. The penalty for defamation is up to a year of imprisonment and a fine of up to €45,000, or either one of those punishments. The penalty for insult is up to six months of imprisonment and a fine of up to €22,500, or either one of those punishments."

France appears to be far more restrictive than the US.

People Know the Consequences

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/01/07/islam-allah-muslims-shariah-anjem-choudary-editorials-debates/21417461/


OPINION
People know the consequences: Opposing view

Anjem Choudary
1 hour ago
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Joel Saget, AFP/Getty Images, 2006
The weekly tabloid office in 2006.

Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people's desires.

Although Muslims may not agree about the idea of freedom of expression, even non-Muslims who espouse it say it comes with responsibilities. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Muslima wrote:
No, that is not what I said. I said: You can not call for freedom of speech for cartoonist when you ban the freedom of a part of your population to dress and practice their religion as they see fit. The reasonings behind the niqab, the number of women forced to wear it, ex-muslim feminists are quiet frankly irrelevant since we are talking about freedom here. Why do states have the right to dictate how people dress and then come around and say we are a free open democracy, that is hypocritical. KSA and the so called "Muslim" countries you talk about do not go around labeling themselves as Free Open democracies and nobody sees them as such.

You're missing the point. CH may be a pure issue of freedom of speech, but niqab-wearing is more complicated. The niqab debate is NOT just about freedom of speech. It is VERY relevant to bring the reasons women wear the niqab into the conversation, and whether they are in fact wearing it freely, as well as issues of national mores.

Also, you don't get that we're talking about two sides of the same coin: You can't call for burka wearing and muzzling CH in the same breath.

Muslima wrote: your second point about violence, again, stop misquoting me, that is not what I said. The point was it is IDIOTIC to continue reprinting the cartoons just thinking that will make a change. You think people who are willing to kill will just say: "Oh, they are republishing the cartoons, we will stop killing people"? The West will always talk about freedom but are they objective? In the UK, an advert showing a pregnant nun having ice-cream was banned because according to The Advertising Standards Authority, “it mocked Roman Catholic beliefs”. An Australian man was charged with mooning Britain's Queen Elizabeth II . And finally, even if you / Newspapers or any one Mock Islam / Muslims , We and what Yasser has been trying to consistently repeat is that we do not respond to it with violence. So your Entire attempt to debate into violence..is like a senseless argument with yourself Not with some one else. Nobody defended it, in fact we keep trying to tell people not to be provoked, and responding with violence is a hypocrisy because its against the teachings of islam.

Sorry, you never said what you're now claiming you said (that the idiocy involves expecting change). Here is what you actually said: " At the same time, it is also idiotic to continue provoking a group of people who have a long list of their own internal and external political and social grievances that stretch back for many decades (here I mean the N. African Muslim population of France), and then expect that nothing will happen." Your quote is right above, and everybody can check for themselves.

Please, just stop with the nonsense about how the cartoons were designed to "provoke people to violence". The cartoons were a form of expression, no more, no less. But your rephrasing about how they were intended to "provoke violence" once again shifts the blame from the violent people to their victims.

Anonymous wrote:Muslima, I think you generally bring a useful viewpoint ( to which I disagree to varying degrees), but you have know that the pro-Palestinian demonstrations degenerated into numerous attacks to synagogues and other anti-Semitic acts. They were not anti-Israeli-policy -- they were against Jews. People chanting "death to the Jews" in the middle of Paris. People throwing stones to synagogues. You know that that's the reason some of them were banned -- for public safety. Please don't erode your credibility by portraying that banning them were a demonstration of Islamophobia. I agree that there is quite a bit of Islamophobia in France, but this is a bad example.

I doubt that every single person protesting was rioting and throwing stones at synagogues. But you prove my point that France has chosen security over speech previously and so the absoluteness of yesterday's Freedom of Speech disingenuous! We can agree to disagree.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some background info. This might be obvious, but CH is considered to be a leftist / hard leftist publication in France, with a strong secular / non-religious flavor. This is why they have no problem mocking religion. Almost no one in France would say they are "racists", but plenty of people find it of poor taste.

And plenty of people find it to be a cathartic breath of fresh air against the ravages of hypocrisy and magical thinking. It's not like anyone is forced to read it.
And it's definitely not like they're protesting at the funerals of dead soldiers by holding up signs blaming every evil in the world on gay people...

Rose isn’t calling for cartoonists to publish “images of the prophet Muhammad,” he says. But he does urge that people be truthful that self-censorship is occurring.

“I understand that people feel intimidated,” Rose tells us. “I think we should be honest about it. We should not [apologize] it away to be polite. We mock all religions, but we give special treatment to one religion right now. I’m just calling for honesty so we know what we’re talking about.”

Rose draws a comparison to how other religions are depicted in satire. “Look at the cartoons dealing with Christianity,” he tells The Post. ” We do not hesistate to be offensive. … Basically my approach is this: If you give in to intimidation, you will not get less intimidation, you will get more intimidation.”

Rose, the Danish editor, sees one way forward: “I know that from my own life in the Soviet Union: If you want to dilute the fear and the threat, you need more people to challenge it,” he told me last fall. “They [opponents] cannot come after millions.”

Rose is best known as the Danish newspaper editor who — in reaction to what he saw as increasing self-censorship by visual and verbal artists — nearly a decade ago commissioned 12 cartoonists to express their thoughts about Islam and freedom of expression. Rose, then the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, saw this not as a provocative stunt, he says, but rather as an act of journalism.

Reading French newspapers, looks like the French find it incomprehensible that American news sources are hesitant about showing the cartoons.

Cultural difference.

Anonymous wrote:A couple of you here would have hated and despised George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, and Richard Pryor who could be totally irreverent.

Good examples. When Bruce and Carlin were arrested, do you think the Washington Post rushed to publish their unedited jokes in solidarity? Doubt it. If the network news had run unedited clips, they would have ended up with FCC fines.

Muslima, if you're trying to present the moderate Muslim view of how a civil society should work, you're painting a pretty dismal picture. Basically, as you depict them, Islam and Western countries are incompatible.