Cobrat, I’m unshameable as I’ve stated on past boards that I’m a registered Republican. If you don’t find Ross Douthat credible, complain to the NYT, not to me. They employ him. And instead of indulging in ad hominem, try to respond to his argument, if you can.
Frankly I don’t understand the relevance of your historical whataboutery. Are you going to bring up Charles Martel next? The fact is that that Charlie Hebdo attack was an assault on liberal values because it was an attempt to shut people up through violence. Deal with that, please.
That goes without saying as such attacks are only acceptable to sociopaths.
They have the right to employ him and he has the right to write as a pundit. By the same token, I have the same right to treat his views with much skepticism based on past pundit columns by him.
Ross Douhat as characteristic of past columns I’ve read focuses on the surface issues and easy pat answers and misses the more complex, but more important ones.
It’s an effort by Al Qaeda to provoke retaliation from governments and right-wing xenophobic groups in Western society to further isolate the Muslim population in those societies to make a more fertile ground for far more successful terrorist recruitment efforts.
I understand that they are all the French imams speaking in the French media. Please let me know when all the imams in say, Turkey, Saudi Arabia or other nations which are majority-Muslim speak out against this sort of thing and call for action against it.
Do you really believe that the French imams have any influence whatsoever with the types who are committing these atrocities?
Why do you think these two French citizens who killed the Charlie Hebdo staff had such grand ambitions? I’m doing the them the “honor” of believing what they actually said: they are avenging the Prophet and punishing the crime of blasphemy. What I wonder about is why some people are contorting themselves into pretzels to avoid acknowledging the obvious. Sometimes the truth is not complex. Sometimes it’s pretty straightforward.
I don’t think mosques should be bombed or Muslims threatened or harassed. Such actions should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But I find the substitution of these concerns for the gruesome fact of this murder very strange and yes, inappropriate and dangerous. It is a deflection from an appalling truth that is staring us in the face: there are people living in the West, citizens, who occupy a completely different mental universe where death is an appropriate punishment for blasphemy. 50 years ago, there weren’t. Was there bloodshed? Of course, but not of this type.
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Their actions have support on internet forums all over the world. There must be a lot of sociopaths out there.
PS Don’t confuse result with intent. This may very well end up polarizing communities, but that doesn’t mean that it was planned to do so. I imagine the PEGIDA marches in Germany will be quite large next Monday. Unfortunately you can blame the murderers for that, not George Bush or the CIA.
Sheikh Adnan Amama, a member of Lebanon’s Committee of Muslim Scholars, said that while he doesn’t support the attack, it came as a response to “extremism from the other side.” “When freedom of thought oversteps boundaries and legitimizes and encourages the insult of other religions, there will be such consequences,” Amama, a Sunni Muslim, said by phone.
^Yep, that’s precisely the kind of reasoning which must be challenged and rejected in no uncertain terms. This has nothing to do with foreign policy. It has to do with internal practices of liberal democracies. We cannot be held hostage to the violent sensibilities of religious or political minorities. If the world is to be globalized by mass media and mass immigration, I want it to be globalized on our terms, not Sheikh Adnan Amama’s.
I understand the feelings of the poster of #30. I wasn’t exactly crazy about some things Charlie did that attack my own faith, Catholicism. (A cartoon of the pope using a condom instead of a host for the consecration, for example.) However, I can’t stop them from doing such things–and I wouldn’t dream of trying, let alone doing so by force.
And remember the Virgin Mary “art work” with vaginas and elephant dung? (Not created by a Muslim.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Virgin_Mary Catholics were furious–and rightly so, but nobody killed the artist.
After 9/11 I got annoyed by some of my Muslim neighbors–not all, but some. At least one person who died in the attack was Muslim. He the only son of one of my neighbors, a devout Muslim widow. Yet, instead of focusing on the horrors of the attack, many in the Muslim community focused almost entirely on the backlash against them. Yes, the backlash was wrong, but it’s certainly understandable. All this lead to a Muslim American Parade down 5th Avenue with signs like “we won’t be intimidated from practicing our faith, etc.” This was about 6 weeks or so after 9/11 and there were a lot of marchers. I wish half as many had marched down Fifth Avenue with signs condemning 9/11, but that didn’t happen.
From reports so far, it seems they were active enough in Al-Qaeda associated terrorist groups to be known not only by French authorities prior to the attack…including going to Yemen to be trained and being imprisoned for recruiting activities:
but also known by the US intelligence service to be put on the no-fly list…
Doesn’t sound like a trio of lone wolves as you seem to imply…
Only if by the same logic, Muslims, especially Iraqi Sunni Arabs have the same right to hold ALL Americans responsible for what transpired at Abu Ghraib due to the actions of a few depraved US Military personnel and neglectful at best supervision by their superiors…
I don’t agree with this logic from your perspective or the radical Islamic terrorists’…
I find it interesting that the dominant strain of conversation on this thread is on the American perception of free speech considering:
It's not applicable in France.
Many European countries including France and especially Germany don't agree with what they perceive as the American absolutist understanding of free speech because it covers the very bigoted sensationalistic mass media and public hate speech which amplified the already widespread antisemitism and xenophobic attitudes during the 30s and before which lead to Fascist rule, discriminatory laws sanctioning bigotry....with increasing levels of violence, genocide, and played a critical part in fomenting a sizable war leaving much destruction on the landscape of the European continent and beyond.
Consequently, free speech rights in European countries including France are much more restricted than in the US. In their historical context, they’ve seen what happens when hate speech and bigoted mass media sensationalism are allowed to go unchecked. Not surprisingly, they don’t want to repeat that horrific period in their history.
Even the American understanding of free speech originated with the intent to prevent American governments from censoring or persecuting individuals for exercising it.
It wasn’t originally applicable outside of that context though popular discourse and understanding has expanded that right to apply nearly everywhere…even when it’s not applicable.
For instance, try telling off your supervisor…especially in the private sector or while in uniform as a service member and see how far that gets you.
Try the same if you start publicly proclaiming your political views when they happen to be in complete opposition to the intended mission of one’s employer…especially if it’s a political party or religious group.
Try the same in someone’s private home or personal property…including a mall as demonstrated in recent events:
There are also limits as shown in cases of libel/defamation or when one’s speech could reasonably be proved to creating an imminent danger to public safety.
I think USA Today made an interesting decision to publish the Muslim cleric’s opinion. It ticked off a lot of people but also reinforced that people are allowed to have differing opinions, but in civilized countries we debate them, we don’t go killing off their authors.
Let me begin by once again emphasizing that I abhor the attack itself as much as anyone on this list, I only wish that other paramount values did not prevent us from adequately punishing the gunmen.
But at the same time I want to once again point out the rank hypocrisy of those who are deifying Charley Hedbo and particularly those who media outlets that are republishing the cartoons that are grossly offensive to Muslims by design. A little more than two years ago, when Pastor Terry Jones was loudly supporting an equally offensive anti-Islamic film and threatening to publicly burn a Koran, no one was talking about how brave he was or bleating about the importance of First Amendment values. Instead, he was (rightly) being roundly condemned. Indeed, even the representatives of the White House itself was pleading for him to back off
The difference, of course, was that Jones was himself the kind of ultraconservative Christian who is reviled by by the chattering classes while the people at Charlie Hedbo are among the intellectual (or pseudointellectual) cool kids. Of course, he fact that they are self-centered jerks does not justify violence against them. But they we should not be supporting or defending the cartoons either.
Paris has a really messed up underclass. Several years ago when I was waiting in line for a train ticket at CDG Airport, there was a french youth standing behind me proudly wearing a Tshirt w a big picture of Osama bin Laden’s face. Sickening. It was hard not to punch his smug face.
“Alittle more than two years ago, when Pastor Terry Jones was loudly supporting an equally offensive anti-Islamic film and threatening to publicly burn a Koran, no one was talking about how brave he was or bleating about the importance of First Amendment values. Instead, he was (rightly) being roundly condemned. Indeed, even the representatives of the White House itself was pleading for him to back off”
Yes, he was being publicly condemned and asked to back off. But he wasn’t being SHOT at and even the most vociferous opponents weren’t advocating he be killed. See the difference? No one is saying that free speech can’t have consequences, including strong disagreement.
Pizzagirl, if you actually read what I said, you would see that I began be condemning the attack in the strongest terms. What I object to is a) lionizing the people at Charlie Hedbo and b) showing disrespect to Muslims generally by reprinting and widely disseminating widely a bunch of cartoons that show contempt for their beliefs and in many cases are nothing more than the equivalent of a teen-aged girl who likes to loudly say “f*ck” in order to shock her parents. see http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/charlie_hebdo_the_french_satirical_magazine_is_heroic_it_is_also_racist.html
People of other faiths may get upset over “offensive” remarks and cartoons about their faith, but they don’t have extreme members routinely shooting people or executing people as a result. The reasonable Muslims need to make THEIR voices heard that members of their faith should not be behaving as if this is the 8th century.
The murders took place in France, a country which while having more limited free speech rights than the US, does have them nonetheless and is considered a civilized country in the world.
The real issue is that Charlie Hebdo and other victims were murdered by 3 individual terrorists with known affiliations with Al-Qaeda, a terrorist group which has no respect for anyone or anything which doesn’t conform to their narrow twisted sociopathic espoused interpretation of being a Muslim.
And it’s disturbing many here feel all Muslims should share collective guilt for the actions of a radical Muslim terrorist group. One may want to carefully consider the points of the following:
One is also supporting and defending freedom of speech and press by condemning the murders and also criticizing part/all of what Charlie Hedbo and his magazine was doing/about.
To say otherwise would, ironically, be a form of attempting to suppress the right of those who disagree from exercising their free speech rights.
Saying otherwise is also a bit narrow-minded as that implies there can only be two diametrically opposing positions as opposed to the more nuanced other views which may not agree with either side’s positions and which is equally valid in the marketplace of ideas.