Many claims that the attack on Charlie Hebdo was an attack of freedom of speech, but I don’t think so. This seams to have been an attack on a publication that’s launched a vulgar war on Islam. Charlie Hebdo where targeted several years ago by islamists because of their campaign against Islam.
You’re saying one thing but writing another. If killing someone for something they’ve written is not an attack on free speech, what would be an attack on free speech?
No. You don’t get to kill people for things they say. You say things in response.
So let me get this straight. A magazine made fun of certain aspects of the Islamic religion. In print. With words and pictures.
In response, some Muslims decided to attack the magazine’s offices brutally killing the staff (along with several police - including a fellow Muslim).
“Say or print something we don’t like and we’ll kill you.”
How in the hell is that not an attack on freedom of speech?
Careful with your word choice re: war as metaphor, someone might believe you’re equating bullets and firebombs with cartoons.
I agree with the underlying thought. They don’t care about the greater principle, only the offense against their sacred cow. But this is universally true. People only have a problem with others’ speech when they’re personally offended. This is why free speech activists find themselves defending racists, pornographers, holocaust deniers and the like. It’s the low hanging fruit.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to say vulgar things about religion.
That’s an attack on freedom of speech. If we can’t mock a certain religion, then we don’t have free speech.
And you don’t see the contradiction in your claim because…?
One man’s vulgar war is another’s light humor. That’s why we call it “free speech.”
Free speech includes vulgar speech against Islam or any other religion or institution.
The magazine also made fun of Judaism and Christianity.
So the claim of a specific attack on Islam is false.
It wouldn’t matter even if it was a specific attack on Islam.
My point is that it don’t seams to me that the mainstream media (that publish reprints of these cartoons) are targets of extreme islamists. It seams to me that Charlie was in some kind of war with Islam and this was the reason that they where targeted and attacked.
This is correct. I do not like the Charlie hebdo and never found them funny, and I think they in their last years have tended to a territory of bigotry and baiting, but it is still their freedom to do so. It is as the supporters of the police officer Ahmed Merabet who was murdered have said in the twitter :* “Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so.”
*
It is possible to defend the principal of the free speech *even *in not agreeing with the Charlie hebdo, and even finding that their satire in the recent years has become not even handed as some pretend, and even thinking that such satire is not polite or right to engage in - but one should be free to do so as I am free to regard it as being in bad taste and not good satire at all.
A war in print. Responded to with bullets, in an attempt to punish and silence them. That is, literally, “an attack on free speech.”
Hebdo did not “launch a vulgar war on Islam” and was not “in some kind of war with Islam”. He was making cartoons about Islam. Making cartoons is a form of speech not a form of military attack.
No, it’s a direct attack on free speech.
This. Attacking someone because of something they said or published is pretty much the exact opposite of free speech.
A slightly different tack than the OP: if I get pissed off at you because of something you said and decide to punch you in the face, I am not attacking free speech, right? I’m just pissed off at something you said and lashing out.
Calling this an “attack on free speech” feels a little over-the-top as far as rhetoric goes.
Is every violent interaction that is predicated by nasty words an attack on free speech?
I see that a lot of you disagree, but it might be that these happenings aren’t a wide attack on freedom of speech, as many claim, but a rather limited attack on a small vulgar magazine that made it their goal to humiliate Muslims.
USA and several European countries are (and have been) military involved in several Muslim nations the last decade. Maybe this will be seen upon as an ideologically part of these wars. I’m thinking especially on USA’s and UK’s insane attack on Iraq in 2003. The first cartoon controversy came in 2006, at a time when a bloody war was raging in Iraq, and not to mention the Abu Ghraib torture. The cartoon controversy in 2006 must be seen in this context. I think that Jyllands-posten was in fact aware of this, and that they did it in the same vulgar tradition as Charlie (both newspapers have a pro-Israel stance).
Yes. How could it be otherwise?
But one of the big principles of Free Speech is that you don’t have a right to not be humiliated. You have to take it. You can turn around and humiliate them back if you want, but you can’t shoot them.