Only if anyone who takes “great offense” at something is “no good” and equivalent to a murderous psychopath. Who, exactly, is saying that?
Were the 9/11 hijackers “poor, angry and disenfranchised”?
Most people think that terrorism comes from poverty, broken families, ignorance, immaturity, lack of family or occupational responsibilities, weak minds susceptible to brainwashing - the sociopath, the criminals, the religious fanatic, or, in this country, some believe they’re just plain evil.
Taking these perceived root causes in turn, three quarters of my sample came from the upper or middle class. The vast majority—90 percent—came from caring, intact families. Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that’s usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways.
I do not have the time to go through every post of this thread. I quoted a post in which you said we shouldn’t do or say anything that might radicalise the “not yet bad” Islamic guys. Yet I now find out that you earlier stated it someones right to cause offense to Muslims. I would like to know the distinction is here because I sure as hell don’t see one. At least I see a problem that will cause your stance a whole load of nuanced mess if it were to be followed. And no, your Mark Furman example is not good enough, at least it’s not distinguishable enough from the drawings of Mohammed - an act that is seen as blasphemous by too many Muslims to make it much distinguishable from any radicalisation consequences of the Furman quote.
Do you r*eally *believe the Furman quote is radicalising but the Mohammed cartoons are not?
Sounds like you want to export parochial Western ideas of gender politics. Off to the re-education camp with you, colonialist.
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Were the 9/11 hijackers “poor, angry and disenfranchised”?
https://books.google.com/books?id=-3…page&q&f=false
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Not even remotely antithetical. Quoting **Spoke **from this GD thread, who speaketh the historical truth :
[QUOTE=Fuzzy_Wuzzy]
I quoted a post in which you said we shouldn’t do or say anything that might radicalise the “not yet bad” Islamic guys. Yet I now find out that you earlier stated it someones right to cause offense to Muslims. I would like to know the distinction is here because I sure as hell don’t see one.
[/QUOTE]
There’s no necessary contradiction here either. I don’t wish to speak for crow, but I for one don’t deny the absolute right of Charlie Hebdo (or anyone else) to say or print whatever they like no matter how rabidly idiotic, mean, pointlessly inflammatory and unhelpful.
I also really wish they wouldn’t. Because it’d be idiotic, mean, pointlessly inflammatory and unhelpful.
On a pure sociological level, they’re equally silly, i.e. beleiving in Zeus or that the island in front of your house a a protective spirit.
However, once you accept that people believe silly shit you can classify the shit into more silly or less silly. It’s like complainig that a movie/book character “wouldn’t have done that”. The character does not exist and complaining about what it did is complaining about imaginary things, but if in the movie Lord of the Rings we see in the final scence Merry, Pippin, Sam, Frodo gangbanging Rosie we would say it really is out of character even if they are imaginary.
The three cases you mention are different to religion because they (try to) make testable, scientific claims and we can validate they hypothesis/claims. At least in my religión, we don’t make the testable claims on purely religious issues.
You’re right on the prominent role of old religions, but even in non-religious stuff we accept not treating everyone the same. Obama calls the Superbowl champions to the White HOuse, and not the US rock-paper-scissors champions.
There is a school of thought, particularly in Cahtolicism, that, even if it costs us some “ratings”, that being so much in contact with power actually ends up hurting religión and that fighting for keeps strengthens us.
SenorBeef certainly seemed to be. If he does not see taking offense this way, I don’t know why he mentioned it at all.
Fair point. You don’t have to actually be poor angry and disenfranchised to get caught up in poor angry disenfranchised religion. Or music. It sounds like a lot of terrorists are into rap. It’s the music of the poor angry and disenfranchised, but you don’t have to actually be that, to get caught up in it.
Yes, and no doubt folk with mindsets similar to yours will jump on twitter moaning about any future offense causing infraction. This leads to calls for a ban on such infractions, people get called bigots, we then risk commentators/authors/journalists retreating into their anti fundamentalist shell on the Islam issue. We really shouldn’t be apologising for the ability to cause offense(which seems close to the case here) but celebrating it. We should be shouting it from the rooftops. And yes, that includes Mark Furman type comments.
By “Mark Furman(sic) type comments” do you mean openly calling for exterminating large numbers of “niggers”(to use his preferred term)?
If not, what did you mean by “Mark firman(sic) type comments”?
BTW, if you’re going to endorse the guy, please learn to spell his name.
There is a difference between defending the freedom to cause offense, and celebrating and reveling in the offense itself, especially in certain contexts. I will quote the late, great, Molly Ivins on this:
My bold.
The powerless are perfectly capable of contemptible beliefs and practices.
And what the fuck is that even supposed to mean, anyway? Only countries where a religion is the majority religion can mock it?
They have a track record of making fun of all religions. Is it only valid when they pick on Christianity because they’re French, and everything else is cruel and vulgar?
Fuck that. Superstitious peasant belief systems should be mocked regardless of where they’re powerful and where they’re fringe.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared Saturday that France was at war with radical Islam after the harrowing sieges that led to the deaths of three gunmen and four hostages the day before. New details emerged about the bloody final confrontations, and security forces remained on high alert.
“It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity,” Mr. Valls said during a speech in Évry, south of Paris.
Empty words. “War against radical Islam” - but Europeans just dropped the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization, and the French continue to kiss Hezbollah’s ass (while hypocritically designating its military wing as a terrorist organization, like there is any difference between its “political wing” and “military wing”).
Europeans keep hoping that if they just appease Islamists, they will direct their terrorism towards others, not Europe. Didn’t work, did it, France? Won’t work in the future either, but I am sure Europe will keep trying.
Yup, only Yazidis in Syria, Coptes in Egypt, Bahais in Iran, Hindus in the Gult & such are allowed to mock Islam.
So, the only people allowed to mock Islam are people who can expect prison/violence for it.
Who is saying anything about “allowed”? Of course it is allowed. It’s just going to be less successful as satire. Comedy is hard to pull off (as your post illustrates). Satire particularly so. If it comes off as the powerful punching down to the powerless, it will be seen as cheap and vulgar.
I will defend your right to be an asshole, okay? But I’m not going to pretend there are pearls coming out of your ass.
Is Islam powerless? A quarter of the Earth’s population is Islam. In societies that are predominantly Islamic, the power of Islam is stronger than in countries similarly dominated by other religions.
Are you asserting that Charlie Hedbo is simply cowardly, only mocking those who are powerless in France? That’s demonstrably false, since as has been stated many times, they went after everyone. And quite frankly, knowing that Islam is the only religion with followers that will kill you over a cartoon, they clearly aren’t cowardly for not being willing to pull their punches with Islam.
They went after everyone, including entities that are powerful both in their own backyard and in the world. They did not single out Islam for criticism at all. And in fact, deliberately making a choice not to make fun if Islam would’ve been the cowardly, powerless act.
So bullshit to your whole sentiment.
First, where did I “assert Charlie Hebdo is simply cowardly”? Don’t put words in my mouth, asshole. Try to reply to what is actually being said.
Have you really never heard these sentiments about comedy and satire? It’s really tedious to have to explain the rules of comedy to the obviously humor impaired. In case you missed it earlier in the thread, here’s something that might help:
Islam isn’t powerless. I encourage people to satirize all religion. Part of their power comes from their sacrosanct nature, as I detailed earlier in the thread. Am I allowed only to satirize Christianity because it’s the dominant religion of my culture? But if I moved to Saudi Arabia, then I’d only be allowed to criticize Islam? Which of course would get me killed, but you get my point. What kind of fucked up belief system would I have to have wherein satirizing Christianity for silly religious beliefs was okay, but doing the same to Islam isn’t?
Apparently in this comic, if you crop it so that only the top third is visible, it’s satire. Take the rest of the image and it’s not.
I think the confusion, camille and MrBeef, is that fanatical Islamists THINK they are powerful, and behave as such. Of course, a real war between Muslims and the West, for all the marbles, has only one possible outcome. The crazies don’t know that, though, through a combination of mental illness and ignorance of Western culture. They don’t seem to know that Western culture produced the two things that kill most efficiently, the nuke and the concentration camp…and also seem to be unaware of the fact that the West used both within living memory. And would do so again, if truly threatened.