Extremists open fire at Paris satirical newspaper, kill 12

[youarenotimmune]

Most people are championing freedom of expression in a secular society. There are obviously clear legal limits to that but freedom of expression most certainly DOES NOT stop where your religiously based offence starts. That's preposterous.

I for one am tired of special allowances being afforded to religion that we would not afford to anyone else. If there is a cartoon of Muhammad making out with a guy or of Piss Christ painting, who the hell cares?

If you'd bothered to properly read what I wrote, you'd realize you're responding to things I neither said nor implied.

I won't comment on the absurdity of your "they are morons or Muslim-haters" because that's really beneath any sort of rational discourse.

Fantastic, since I have no interest in engaging your straw man either.

 

[Babydoll]

Not entirely related to the topic at hand, but somewhat:

One Tweet Perfectly Sums Up the Big Problem With How We Talk About Terrorism - Mic

 

[DaveC]

Not entirely related to the topic at hand, but somewhat:



One Tweet Perfectly Sums Up the Big Problem With How We Talk About Terrorism - Mic

That's a ridiculous article.

You can't compare someone dropping a pipe bomb outside a building that did no damage and didn't hurt anybody to a professional massacre of 12 people in the middle of one of the worlds biggest cities. OF COURSE the stories were covered differently because they aren't the same at all.


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[mama cass]

oh fuck another new siege under way in Paris, 5 hostages held in a kosher store by the gunman suspected as having killed the policewoman in yesterday's attack (which has now been confirmed as related to the Charlie Hebdo attack)

meanwhile French security/military services have surrounded the Charlie Hebdo gunmen, who have at least one hostage, on the premises of a business a few miles outside of Paris

 

[Bad Exit]

Arab newspapers around the world react to Charlie Hebdo attack

 

[anitram]

The best article I have read so far can be found here:

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/the-blasphemy-we-need/?_r=2

Some excerpts:

I disagree slightly with Jonathan Chait’s formulation today that “one cannot defend the right [to blaspheme] without defending the practice.” If I devoted my next blog post to a scabrous, profanity-laced satire of the Buddha, I would not expect Chait or anyone else to immediately leap to my defense if the Times decided to delete the post and dismiss me from its ranks of columnists. If I ran a reactionary website that devoted itself to recycling pre-modern calumnies against Jewish law and ritual, my rights as an American would not be traduced if people picketed my offices and other journalists told me I had a moral obligation to desist. And similarly, in a cultural and political vacuum, it would be okay to think that some of the images (anti-Islamic and otherwise) that Charlie Hebdo regularly published, especially those chosen entirely for their shock value, contributed little enough to public discussion that the world would not suffer from their absence.

But we are not in a vacuum. We are in a situation where my third point applies, because the kind of blasphemy that Charlie Hebdo engaged in had deadly consequences, as everyone knew it could … and that kind of blasphemy is precisely the kind that needs to be defended, because it’s the kind that clearly serves a free society’s greater good. If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn’t really a liberal civilization any more. Again, liberalism doesn’t depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and it’s okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, that’s when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed.

 

[mama cass]

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Not entirely related to the topic at hand, but somewhat:

One Tweet Perfectly Sums Up the Big Problem With How We Talk About Terrorism - Mic

They're covered differently because one was an attempt and one was an actual attack.

But there's no doubt that anyone, white, brown or green, who used religion as an excuse for violence is committing a terrorist act.

 

[iron yuppie]

"But when offenses are policed by murder, that’s when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed."

Here's my problem with this type of reasoning: it's awfully easy to be super principled when you're writing from the safety of a home office or whatever. It's quite a different thing for people who are put in the line of danger for the sake of incendiary rhetoric.

 

[BEAL]

The two brothers are dead. As is the gal who was holding hostages.

I prefer we take these people alive, if only to learn from them. They can't speak when they're dead. Instead we'll fill in their words for them (on both sides)

 

[Hewson]

Don't think these folks were going to allow themselves to be taken alive.

 

[Diemen]

The two brothers are dead. As is the gal who was holding hostages.

There are conflicting reports saying that a male hostage taker was killed, but that the woman (responsible for the shooting death of the female police officer yesterday) got away in the confusion as hostages escaped.

 

[mama cass]

There are conflicting reports saying that a male hostage taker was killed, but that the woman (responsible for the shooting death of the female police officer yesterday) got away in the confusion as hostages escaped.

according to French reports, the male hostage taker in the store today was suspected as being the gunman who shot the policewoman in Montrouge yesterday, and he has been killed by police (he had already said to police today "you know who i am" which seemed to confirm his involvement in yesterday's shooting... i haven't seen any more info on the woman yet though, but she was apparently his former(?) partner and accomplice... the police have issued an appeal for information on both suspects (although one is now dead)...

 

[Galeongirl]

I haven't heard much on the woman yet either, though the other situations were covered thoroughly on the news.

Honestly? I'm glad these guys are dead. I doubt we could learn from them as they would not be willing to teach, while in prison they could be teaching future extremists or plot escape and hurt even more people. This way at least we can be sure that these nutjobs won't cause more fatalities. Shame there are probably thousands of extremists with similar thoughts we can't protect ourselves from though.

 

[DaveC]

Shame there are probably thousands of extremists with similar thoughts we can't protect ourselves from though.

Trying to learn the reasons why they did it and how they got to that point in their lives certainly could have been very helpful in preventing future attacks, couldn't it? Can't do that now that they're dead.

 

[BEAL]

Yep. And to show those who continue to turn a blind eye to the role of religion plays in this.

When our leaders state this isn't about Islam, and these guys continue to state they do this for Allah or for Islam....

But no voice and we can assign our own ideas for them


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[anitram]

Also, the late Hitchens was quoted in that NYT article and I think it's worth repeating:

When Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988, he did so in the hope of forwarding a discussion that was already opening in the Muslim world, between extreme Quranic literalists and those who hoped that the text could be interpreted. We know what his own reward was, and we sometimes forget that the fatwa was directed not just against him but against “all those involved in its publication,” which led to the murder of the book’s Japanese translator and the near-deaths of another translator and one publisher. I went on Crossfire at one point, to debate some spokesman for outraged faith, and said that we on our side would happily debate the propriety of using holy writ for literary and artistic purposes. But that we would not exchange a word until the person on the other side of the podium had put away his gun.

 

[Galeongirl]

I don't think we'd have gotten much information out of these guys. Why would they cooperate if they wanted a martyr's death and hate us so deeply?

 

[Irvine511]

Trying to learn the reasons why they did it and how they got to that point in their lives certainly could have been very helpful in preventing future attacks, couldn't it? Can't do that now that they're dead.

likely they were killed because they didn't want any more dead hostages.

 

[Vincent Vega]

If you insult an Arab by making a derogatory remark about his race versus disrespecting his prophet, 10 out of 10 Arabs would be offended a great deal more by the latter.

He'd probably have the same race as you.
Two would ask why you insult Jesus and the third would say his prophet has yet to come. The eleventh would love to answer he doesn't have a prophet, if only he could.

That's a ridiculous article.

You can't compare someone dropping a pipe bomb outside a building that did no damage and didn't hurt anybody to a professional massacre of 12 people in the middle of one of the worlds biggest cities. OF COURSE the stories were covered differently because they aren't the same at all.


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The first one wasn't covered at all, even though it happened well before the other. Different scale of reporting is naturally the case, but the argument here is that for the first incident there was no coverage whatsoever.

Doesn't matter how professional such an attack seemingly was carried out, it was a bomb attack with apparent racist motives. Only newsworthy if people die? Ridiculous. There have been more amateur failed or foiled attempts by Muslims which the media seemed very well newsworthy, and the government found serious enough to increase security for years to come.

 

[DaveC]

likely they were killed because they didn't want any more dead hostages.

Well, yes. I do understand why in reality the shooters ended up dead. In this kind of situation the assault team has to first and foremost protect the hostages and themselves.

I was responding to the sentiment of "I'm glad they're dead, it's better that way".


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[DaveC]

The first one wasn't covered at all, even though it happened well before the other. Different scale of reporting is naturally the case, but the argument here is that for the first incident there was no coverage whatsoever.



Doesn't matter how professional such an attack seemingly was carried out, it was a bomb attack with apparent racist motives. Only newsworthy if people die? Ridiculous. There have been more amateur failed or foiled attempts by Muslims which the media seemed very well newsworthy, and the government found serious enough to increase security for years to come.

I didn't say anything about whether I felt the CO bombing was "newsworthy". In fact, I do agree that that attack probably should have gotten more coverage than it did, I didn't even hear about it until the events in Paris. The article compares the two incidents though as if they are directly comparable and should have received comparable news coverage, which I feel is an inane argument to make.


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[Irvine511]

I also get mildly irritated when I hear some of my lefter friends say "we hear about this all day but what about the 12 Pakistanis who were killed at a wedding by a drone?"

On the surface it might seem unfair, but this is an unbalanced world, and an attack on a news room in a storied, beloved city at the heart of the heart of Western culture is simply a bigger story. The lives lost aren't bigger, or more worthy, but it's just not the same story.

Likewise, I'm irritated with people who think the solution is to arm every Frenchman because more guns always.


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[Teta040]

Someone sent me a link to these articles today, shocked that it isn't getting more Western media attention. Egypt's president al-Sisi calling for major reform, or "a revolution" in Islam. Take this with a huge grain of salt--the writers are calling this a "95 Thesis" moment for Islam, but Vatican II is more of what I think he has in mind. Maybe not even that. And coming from *al-Sisi* of all people? Pot, meet kettle? But whatever political hay he's expecting to make from this, it's still interesting. And a paradox. All we've heard about Egypt recently is its vicious treatment of gays.

I've asked my friend if he could find me the complete speech, but that may take a while. Nevertheless, both articles are a must-read:

from the Toronto Sun: http://www.torontosun.com./2015/01/05/in-need-of-a-revolution
EDIT: this link isn't working for some reason, but in the mailing list it worked fine for me. Next link works fine though.

YNet News (more in-depth, taken from AP sources):
"From Egypt's Leader, An Ambitious Call For Reform In Islam"
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4612771,00.html

 

[Vincent Vega]

I didn't say anything about whether I felt the CO bombing was "newsworthy". In fact, I do agree that that attack probably should have gotten more coverage than it did, I didn't even hear about it until the events in Paris. The article compares the two incidents though as if they are directly comparable and should have received comparable news coverage, which I feel is an inane argument to make.


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Don't want to digress from the topic, so trying to be short:
To me the argument in the article is a different one: One incident is immediately seen for what it is, terrorism, in the other the media and public is cautious and deliberating whether this might be just a disturbed person. The Paris attacks lead to yet another debate about Muslims in general, whereas the NAACP attack is met with a nuanced "Probably just a disturbed lunatic, nothing much to report about." And that creates an imbalance when talking about terrorism in general. And it leads to stereotyping.
Take England for example: In the 70s to 90s, if you came across Irish you had to expect people looking weird at you or becoming uncomfortable around you. The term terrorism was mentally linked to the IRA. Nowadays, terrorism can only be bearded, darker skinned guys. Case in point, Fox News: Fox Host: How Do We Spot 'Bad Guys' If We Don't Know 'Tone Of Their Skin'?

That's not really the same argument as saying, if you mention this, you also have to say this, that and that. Each is their own story. But both are a story.

 

[mama cass]

This is the most nuanced and intelligent exchange I've read in FYM in at least a year. A low bar these days, but true.

Thank you both. I feel as if I understand the issue better now because I've read two thoughtful takes.


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i'm still waiting for the punchline hehe

thanks irvine... i'm glad you found it helpful in some way

 

[mama cass]

Trying to learn the reasons why they did it and how they got to that point in their lives certainly could have been very helpful in preventing future attacks, couldn't it? Can't do that now that they're dead.

i think their deaths were pretty much inevitable as during the siege negotiations the two Charlie Hebdo killers claimed they wanted to die as martyrs

quite a lot was known about them already though...

Profiles: key suspects in Paris attacks | World news | The Guardian

 

[mama cass]

Charlie Hebdo: what the cartoons mean to one French academic | Higher Education Network | The Guardian

 

[mama cass]

great little article by Ian McEwan

Murderous and self-sanctifying, radical Islam has become a global attractor for psychopaths. It has never been embarrassed to proclaim its list of hatreds: education, tolerance, plurality, pleasure and, above all, freedom of expression – the freedom that underpins all others. Even more important than the abstractions are the people that jihadists hate and have killed: children, schoolgirls, gays, women, atheists, non-Muslims, and many, many Muslims. To that list we must now add the brave and lively staff of Charlie Hebdo, who hoped to face down hatred with laughter. The slaughter in Paris is a tragedy for the open society. On a dark night for mental freedom, a few fragile points of light: the calm, determined crowds gathered in cities across France; the hope that the general revulsion at these murders might have a unifying effect; the fact that a cult rooted in hate is a frail thing and cannot last; the fact that the psychopaths are vastly outnumbered.

Those blackest hearts of the Pegida or Front National persuasion who are thinking of fire-bombing a mosque should consider that the most effective way of oppressing or murdering Muslims would be to join Isis or one of its affiliates. After the disappointed hopes of the Arab spring, much of the Arab world finds itself crushed between state tyrannies and religious fanaticism. General Sisi or Isis – the palindrome is apt. One marginal but relevant development, particularly in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, is the growth in the number of internet sites for those who, disgusted by jihadist violence, reject political Islam or Islam itself (see Black Ducks, Arab Atheists Network, freearabs.com). The apostates communicate in fear and at great risk, for turning away from their religion can bring down harsh punishment. Post Charlie Hebdo, the free speech debate must revive. Sadly for free thought in the west, mainstream Islam’s attitude to apostasy remains cloudy at best. There’s a civilised conversation to be had.

Ian McEwan on Charlie Hebdo – facing down hatred with laughter | Books | The Guardian

 

[Irvine511]

i'm still waiting for the punchline hehe



thanks irvine... i'm glad you found it helpful in some way

I really did.

It reminds us that we are always on them outside looking in at another culture, and it takes a long time to appreciate the nuances and textures of any culture. This isn't to say that one of you is right and one of you is wrong, but that you both worked together to give us a reasoned critique about Charlie, that you then took issue with and expanded upon and gave us context and a glimpse inside of a culture that, as familiar as it might seem, there are spaces and understandings that you really can't have access to unless you've really lived and breathed that culture.

We can all be exposed to culture, but we can't really understand it until it's been lived in.


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