Index ⇒ General Topics ⇒ Killing cartoonists won't bring people to your cause.

[Scaryfun]

[oldman]

we have a big problem in the u.k. as well.
i can't see a resolution anytime soon

it's just a sickening waste of life.
completely pointless.

certain people are being easily "groomed" and it will probably continue for a good while yet.

[mr.editor]

I don't understand what those shooters were thinking?! Didn't they foresee that they were making martyrs out of cartoonists?! Their action backfired quite a bit considering their hated magazine's popularity rose through the roof. How much the magazine's circulation increased, about 100x times? From about 70 000 to 7 million? At the end it just made some people richer and gave big brother more power, and on the plus side from western perspective put extra heat on terrorists' backs.
I have personally never seen any Charlie Hebdo issue, so I can't judge their approach. I also deeply equally dislike Christianity and Islam.

[oldman]

Christianity had its reformation and has tried as best as it can to move with the times.
and a lot of people in the west are not so "religious" anymore.
islam needs to change in some way ,which atmo ,i don't see happening ,if ever.

[mr.editor]

I agree.
I'm also afraid that it takes generations before Islam gets an "official update/upgrade/patch" to level its standards.

[Scaryfun]

All religions deserve to be mocked. If you want to believe in a higher power, go ahead. But organized religions are there to give power to whoever is leading them and to control the populations who believe in them. They are the cause of most conflicts/wars on the planet and end up causing more harm than good.

[mr.editor]

Amen to that! I have pretty much same convictions. Belief set has to be personal and thought through, not dictated.

[Molitor]

As a mate of mine said, "no point in finding a reason when there's not any reason". The attackers got ideologically brainwashed by a bunch of sick f*cks who use Islam as a way to serve their political & financial interests among their sect.
This accident shows the limits and breaches in the fundamentals of the secularity laws in France (and likely in some other countries): these fights, whether violent or not, have to happen, because two opposed ways of thinking are applied in the same set of laws.
On the left hand, you may practice and think any religion you wish, and on the right hand you may blaspheme (publicly of you like, because religion has to stay in a certain private circle). The two elements of the "war recipe" are there and the "cooking" ends up eventually.

What can we do ? Try to pull up the weed at its roots ? We put imams in prisons to ensure the Muslim prisoners not to steer from the "right path", we hope for the teachers to fight obscurantism among their students, we try to arrest the young people going to Syria and co, but the problem doesn't solve by itself. Educate your beloved ones, don't let them forge a wrong version of their religion.

P.S: I add that, despite the laws, France is still deeply [too] Christian. And in some regions, Christian education is given in public schools because of some outdated local law - very wrong imho.
P.S 2: There was an interesting documentary on telly some months back, about young British guys who choose to practice radical Islam. Most of them said it was "because of Bush Jr.". Old problems still have consequences today :/
P.S 3: I haven't heard about any Buddhist extremist yet (except for the burning monks). Is it the next big thing ?

[oldman]

if it wasn't "religion" ,those guys and others like them would probably have found another reason to commit such disgusting acts.
some peeps will tag their warped reasoning onto anything as an excuse.

i think it's more about who has power and who doesn't .

sidenote:
isn't indoctrinating children into religion ,a type of brain washing child abuse?

i mean i see those tv reports showing row upon row of muslim kids rocking back and forth reciting from their book.
scary stuff.

[loki1985]

P.S 3: I haven't heard about any Buddhist extremist yet (except for the burning monks). Is it the next big thing ?

a bit more obscure, but even these exist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashin_Wirathu

Last anti-muslim riots in Mandalay, Myanmar happened in the summer of 2014, a few days after I visited the city. Lucky for me I was gone by then, I sure do not look very Burmese.

[InsaneFury]

I always believe things are much clearer when people look beyond religion, race, gender and ethnicity, and just go about judging individuals' actions. As long as someone doesn't set out to hurt anyone, they're just fine in my book.

In the case of Hebdo, while the attackers were clearly doing hurting beyond measure, the victims may have been hurtful to others in their own right. I'm an advocate of free speech and if their drawings/statements served a point then fine, but provocation just for provoking is just asking for retaliation, one way or another. And sadly, not everyone is capable of even-level retaliating...

[Delacroix]

I myself thought a long time before replying.

On one hand, I absolutely oppose religion-based extremism or any kind of extremism. I myself am an atheist but I believe if someone wishes to believe in a God or many Gods, that is their right entirely.

But I also think we have to clarify something here: freedom of speech DOES NOT equal freedom to do whatever you please no matter the end result without consequences. If one purposefully does something that they full well know will hurt the feelings of an entire community following a given religion, they must know they'll face the music. I'm not talking about being shot but some kind of compensation is definitely due. This is a common misconception about the rule of freedom of speech. It was coined to combat governmental oppresion and not to allow wholesale insulting and defamation of entire communities of people.

Everyone should follow one simple rule: MY freedom ends where another one's freedom begins. It's about being considerate. A journalist is free to write whatever they wish but a Christian or a Muslim is free to practice their religion without the sacred elements of that religion facing mudslinging. I may be a complete and utter atheist and I think that they're completely crazy to believe whatever they believe but I'm not going to churches and mosques telling them that to their faces. I just don't join them in what I believe is their madness.

That's why I never put a Je Suis Charlie designation anywhere on any of my profiles after the incident despite the sheer monstrosity of what happened because I believe quite honestly that both these fundamentalistic crazies and the cartoonists were at fault as to what happened. I don't support religious fundamentalism, I don't support religion in the first place but I also don't support spitting in people's faces.

[Scaryfun]

Satire is the art of ridiculing anything and everything and using comedy to criticize serious topics. When one faith reacts with violence while others don't, that shows that something needs changing in that faith. Demeaning women to be second-class citizens is also not ok. Writing something in a blog that the state doesn't like resulting in the writer getting punished by lashings in a public square also is not ok. They need to move out of the middle ages state of mind their faith and society is stuck in.

[Delacroix]

When one faith reacts with violence while others don't, that shows that something needs changing in that faith.

I definitely wholeheartedly agree and to such violent reactions there must be a proper answer. It must have a proper balance between painful punishment and patient explanation so that it doesn't make EVERYONE from that religion flip a shit but starts scaring them about proceeding to their doom if their violent outbursts continue.

Demeaning women to be second-class citizens is also not ok.

Yeah, and factual supporting pedophilia isn't either and they do that too by advocating the idea to follow the example of Muhammad who had an underage wife. This must be rectified, no exceptions.

Writing something in a blog that the state doesn't like resulting in the writer getting punished by lashings in a public square also is not ok.

That actually transcends religion as perfectly secular non-democratic regimes pull off even worse stunts like wholesale massacre of a perfectly peaceful demonstration just because it's politically inconvenient for the current govt... see the still open wound of Tienanmen Square which neither Chinese citizens nor the entire world will ever forget.

They need to move out of the middle ages state of mind their faith and society is stuck in.

I'm having doubts this can be accelerated in any way, Christianity pulled off just as bad stunts back in the day and it took'em centuries to abandon such practices.

[InsaneFury]

If one purposefully does something that they full well know will hurt the feelings of an entire community following a given religion, they must know they'll face the music.
(...)
I think that they're completely crazy to believe whatever they believe but I'm not going to churches and mosques telling them that to their faces. I just don't join them in what I believe is their madness.

You exercise your right of free speech in the confines of this forum and not a church/mosque. Yet, there may well be religious people on this forum too, whose feelings you full may hurt by deeming them "crazy" and "mad". That's the fine line of freedom of speech, which must go hand in hand with being strong to criticism. Unfortunately, that latter clause is missing from some people.

When one faith reacts with violence while others don't, that shows that something needs changing in that faith.

I think the problem is, faith more and more comes down to an interpretation of a given text/book/lore. Usually when several incarnations of a holy book exist, people should choose the one that doesn't advertise violence that much. Otherwise, if violence is still decreed and people are OK with that, then how come Hitler's Mein Kampf was banned, and holy books aren't? If Mein Kampf is too controversial because 'it really happened', then the holy books' stories probably "didn't happen". So if the holy books contain false truths, why hold on to the violent parts in them altogether?