Blaming the beheaded
How the pro-murder for “blasphemy” side sees things:
Salih is the editor of 5 Pillars. It’s fascinating to see his anxiety about oppression and brutalization of Muslims in France as a response to the murder of a teacher by an engraged Muslim. Obviously Muslims in France should not be oppressed or brutalized, because no one should, but if we’re going to talk about “terrible violence” what about that teacher?
Not his problem, it seems.
The teacher didn’t show his pupils “blasphemous caricatures” because “blasphemy” is a word that doesn’t mean much to people who don’t share the religion in question. It’s not “blasphemy” for me to say Jesus is not sitting at God’s right hand, because I don’t adhere to the religion that says Jesus is too so sitting at God’s right hand. Believers may see it as “blasphemy” but that’s their problem. Some people think it’s a form of blasphemy to tell the truth about Donald Trump, but that’s their problem. Some people think it’s a form of blasphemy to say that men are not women, but that’s their problem.
This is a guy who fancies himself a news editor.
That’s easy for you to say when you practice a religion that allows no freedoms outside its narrow worldview.
To the rest of us, freedom of speech is the one freedom that comes before all others. Without it we can have no science lest it offends religion, no political debates in case they offend those who hold opposing views. Without freedom of speech, you would not have the freedom to worship your god, or to tell the rest of us that Freedom of speech isn’t worth civil war.
All other freedoms flow from freedom of speech. Deny us that right and you have denied us all other rights, denied us our humanity, and made us slaves to our basest instincts.
Free speech is not a politcal or religious right; it is a moral duty.
Thank you, Roj Blake, for making that point far more elegantly than I would. My gut reaction to that “Freedom of speech isn’t worth civil war” declaration was something along the lines of “oh, heck no, freedom of speech is worth a civil war and then some”
The NYT headline on the story was “French Police Shoot and Kill Man After a Fatal Knife Attack on the Street”.
At least it originally was. Seems it was altered post hoc so as to not be so stunningly Orwellian, but Google still has the original line cached.
Remember a few years ago when the in meme was the paradox of tolerance?
The paradox of tolerance is that pure tolerance doesn’t produce a tolerant society because there comes a point at which tolerating the intolerant means that the intolerant dominate the more reasonable people.
The solution to the paradox is that tolerance isn’t an absolute virtue. There is a line beyond which you don’t tolerate any longer. That line, according to the original argument, was drawn at the use of violence for political ends. You don’t tolerate terrorism.
Unfortunately, this same argument was used to endorse violence against bigots.
The problem is that violence is habit forming, and the habit generally expands beyond the initial target. It is difficult to deny that there is a misogyny problem on the left right now, and a part of that I think is the Nazi puncher movement. It didn’t take long at all for the Karens and “Terfs” to become the new Nazis.
Learning from this, we can conclude that it is thus very important to be very hesitant at the use of violence, and yet, the base argument the paradox is founded on is sound.
We saw this in the days of unmoderated comment threads, this is why so few news vendors even allow comments anymore because they can descend into such utter toxicity so easily due to a small number of highly intolerant, basically shitty people, who crowd out the decent majority.
It is all about where you draw the line, where you decide that freedom of speech dies. Personally, I draw it at the endorsement of violence for the aforementioned reasons.
For example, Dana Nawzar Jaf:
https://twitter.com/DanaNawzar/status/1317424128119496705
https://twitter.com/DanaNawzar/status/1317706456704143360
Is this in the realms of tolerable intolerance?
#NotallMuslims, but the ones who are pushing this shit matter. #Notallmen, does not excuse those men who abuse women, and does not solve the problem of those men who do. What I am talking about here isn’t all Muslims, it is the specific Muslims who push this line.
And this man is mainstream enough to have written for the New Statesman, at least according to the Daily Mail.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8851689/Anger-writer-condemns-brutal-police-murder-Islamist-terrorist-beheaded-French-teacher.html
Of course he claims this article is full of lies, yet his tweets speak for themselves.
Caricatures of Mohammed do not constitute calls for violence, can the same really be said for Jaf’s tweets? I’m not sure. I don’t think equating showing children caricatures in a lesson about free speech to child abuse after the teacher who did that was beheaded, can be said to be anything less than an active endorsement of the beheading.
There is a deep hypocrisy within the Islamist mind, whereby we are supposed to tolerate those who endorse the killings of cartoonists, teachers, authors, artists, and people who happen to work near the former offices of any of the prior individuals, and yet not tolerate the drawing of pictures of a certain long dead Middle Eastern pedophilic warlord.
We are supposed to place respect for the feelings of people who are fundamentally not respectable (And again, that’s #NotallMuslims, but certainly is those who agree with Jaf), ahead of the value we place on human lives. Is this a tolerable state of affairs?
If we are going to talk about freedom of speech, and whose speech should be banned, I do not think it is the speech of the cartoonist, but rather the speech of groups like 5 Pillars, of individuals like Jaf. If we are to restrict freedoms, we should restrict the freedoms of those who have demonstrated that they cannot handle living in a free society.
Gee, if he’d just called them TERFs he’d have the Grauniad and co. lining up to support him.
I simply cannot get past the way in which this statement holds an implicit threat. Another, ruder way to say the same thing is:
Isn’t it already a war? One could say that Samuel Paty was killed as a defender of the French nation and its values. This is the country where the first universal declaration of the rights of man was written, and among those rights the following:
This right is not just enumerated among other rights, it is a foundational right of the French state. To act against this right, as the murderer did, is, as the education minister said, “an attack on the French nation as a whole.” To justify action against this right is also to act against the French nation as a whole. To die defending this right is to die a martyr to the nation. Samuel Paty should be buried with state honors.
There may appear to be no civil war in France now, but this was an act of war. When one side is fighting a murderous war and the other is not, but only responding with police arrests and stern speeches, one calls it asymmetric warfare. In this case, France is already in an asymmetric civil war, with combatants like Abdoulakh A and the multiple villains involved in Charlie Hebdo attacks.
Roshan M Salih is also a combatant in this war, in the propaganda division. France should revoke his permission to visit, as he has declared himself an enemy of the laws and values of the French nation. Of course, France should welcome people of all religions to live peacefully in France, but if one cannot respect the laws and values of France, why should they be welcomed?
France must recognize that it is already in a state of war, whether it likes it or not, and stirring speeches will not end this war.
[…] a comment by Papito on Blaming the […]
Yes it is. It very definitely is. Many, perhaps most, wars have been fought over things far less important than that principle – religious differences, vain rulers, greed, hatred… all vastly less worth of defence than freedom of speech.
And having framed this as a war between ‘free speech no matter the offence caused’ and ‘offending religious should be met with death’, look at the side Roshan chooses. Fuck him.
[…] a comment by Bruce Gorton on Blaming the […]
A friend posted an article about the beheading and used it as a spur to criticize religion and religious zealotry. Someone else commented about a Christian who murdered an abortion doctor, and said that this Muslim murderer was as bad as the Christian one. I’m not sure I agree with equating the two – the teacher did nothing more than show cartoons, after all – although I agree both were religiously motivated murders. I also question bringing up the Christian; it felt a bit like “Maybe we shouldn’t criticize Muslims, because Christians do these things, too.”
What’s wrong with criticizing both?
Of all the Abrahamic religions, Judaism is the least horrible because it doesn’t proselytize.
I’ve just been reading about the 1848 revolutions in Europe. Some of them were violent, amounting to civil war. Some of the main aims were abolishing censorship, along with extension of the franchise, removing absolute monarchies, religious freedom, abolishing serfdom – ie a checklist of liberties. The participants did think they were worth at least starting off the process that led to civil war.
Salih’s tweet is illiterate both in thought and word. The French authorities would find it just about impossible to shut down Charlie Hebdo, and credit to them for not being cowed into attempting it. It’s the murderous reaction to CH that causes “community relations” to break down, including his own tweet. He doesn’t know what “literally” means nor what the fire in a crowded theatre example means. And really, who the hell does he think he is? And if he is employed by the New Statesman, what were they thinking of?
Oh sorry – I see that Salih is the 5 Pillars guy, not the New Statesman guy. 5 Pillars is a rank hellhole of Islamists anyway.