# The Fallen Blogger and the Spectre of Secularism **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 28, 2015, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827 "2015-02-28T03:21:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 28
**Author:** ![A\_isha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@A\_isha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_isha)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/541 "2015-04-30T20:52:07Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > You would think anything in your links would contain a single example of a Muslim saying “there is a right to leave Islam.” From the first link, Usama Hasan’s opinion piece in Prospect titled “Charlie Hebdo attacks: time for Islam to reform”: > [@](#): > > Most Muslims are saddened and shocked by inexcusable violence such as the Paris shootings and the use and abuse of their religion to justify terrorism. In the case of the Paris shootings, it is useful to consider two intertwined factors. Firstly, the issue of Muslim attitudes to blasphemy, satire and mocking sacred symbols. Muslims have every right to hold on to a “sense of the sacred,” but need to abolish blasphemy laws and any notion of responding to offence with violence. > > […] > > All of the above are underpinned by liberty, upon which we insist based on the famous Koranic principle, “There is no compulsion in religion.” From the second link, Usama Hasan’s pamphlet titled “No compulsion in religion: Islam & freedom of belief”: > [@](#): > > Regrettably, mediaeval interpretations of Sharia law are dominated by the idea that apostates from Islam, i.e. Muslims who leave their faith and/or convert to another, must be killed. This rule, found in all the major texts of mediaeval jurisprudence that are still taught in Islamic seminaries and universities around the world, blatantly contradicted the Qur’anic principle that 'There is no compulsion in religion" > > […] > > **Modern Muslim jurisprudence on apostasy** > > The mediaeval jurisprudence on apostasy has been developed significantly and progressively in more recent times, although many contemporary traditionalist Muslims appear to be unaware of such developments > > […] > > **Key points** > > 1. The mediaeval death penalty for apostasy is clearly opposed to the Qur’anic principle, “There is no coercion in religion.” > > 2. This was eventually recognised by leading Islamic authorities such as the Ottoman Caliphate and Al-Azhar, who repealed this death penalty in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively. > > 3. The popular _Forty Hadith_ of the 13th-century scholar, Imam Nawawi, is taught worldwide to beginners as well as advanced students of Islam. However, it contains a hadith that is often used to justify a blanket death penalty for apostates. It is a duty of all current teachers of the _Forty Hadith_ to explain that the basic, universal Qur’anic principle of freedom of religion and belief overrides all other interpretations, and that the mediaeval death penalty for apostasy has been formally abolished by the Shaykh al-Islam of the Ottoman Caliphate as well as by al-Azhar of Egypt. From the third link, Abdullah al-Andalusi’s review of his Big Question appearance posted on his own website: > [@](#): > > I think its time Muslims defined Islam for themselves, and not let the West define it for us. Apostasy (in the modern world) means for someone to change their minds about religion in their mind. This is not what is punished under Irtidad laws. The Prophet Muhammed (saaw) knew who were the apostates and didn’t kill them. From the fourth link, a comment that “Edward Woodward” (an atheist YouTuber and blogger who regularly attacks Islam and Muslims in his videos and articles) made to his own blog post criticizing al-Andalusi’s above review: > [@](#): > > In a Skype chat after our public discussion [Abdullah al-Andalusi] made it clear that he is against the idea of people being killed for losing belief in Islam. Anything else I can help you with? > [@Haberdash](#): > > The apostasy issue is incredibly illuminating. How about you – will you simply state that there is an unlimited, unqualified right for anybody to leave Islam without consequence? Yes, there is an unlimited, unqualified right for anybody to leave Islam without consequence. > [@Haberdash](#): > > Or will there be whining and equivocation at best? You’re a walking example of epic fail. ---
**Author:** ![Haberdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/542 "2015-04-30T21:11:36Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Dipshit, you just quoted me expressing sympathy for the people who were shot two posts ago. I quoted one of the typical “it’s too bad they got murdered, but here’s 9000 words on why they deserved to be murdered” launching pads that have been coming from the left wing nonstop since Muslims murdered 12 people for drawing a cartoon. ---
**Author:** ![Haberdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/543 "2015-04-30T21:14:29Z")
> [@A\_isha](#): > > From the first link, Usama Hasan’s opinion piece in Prospect titled “Charlie Hebdo attacks: time for Islam to reform”: These are all playing the translation two-step where they first claim that the concept of “apostasy” doesn’t apply to Islam since it’s not an Arabic word, and then make a lot of dancing around claims like “no coercion in religion” where “coercion” and “religion” are never defined to include “killing someone for leaving Islam.” I actually don’t find it that implausible that al-Andalusi personally is opposed to killing people for living Islam, or that he told some blogger such, but the fact that he’s not willing to directly say it himself is indicative of the real problem, which is that no Muslim leader can maintain credibility among Muslims if he makes a clear, unequivocal condemnation of penalizing people for leaving Islam. > [@](#): > > Yes, there is an unlimited, unqualified right for anybody to leave Islam without consequence. Very good. Perhaps \*\*Miller \*\*et al can follow this example of how to simply state a basic moral fact? ---
**Author:** ![A\_isha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@A\_isha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_isha)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/544 "2015-04-30T21:26:06Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > These are all playing the translation two-step where they first claim that the concept of “apostasy” doesn’t apply to Islam since it’s not an Arabic word, and then make a lot of dancing around claims like “no coercion in religion” where “coercion” and “religion” are never defined to include “killing someone for leaving Islam.” Did you not read the part I quoted where Hasan explicitly stated the rule that “apostates from Islam, i.e. Muslims who leave their faith and/or convert to another, must be killed” (doing _exactly_ that thing which you claim is never done) “blatantly contradict[s] the Qur’anic principle that ‘There is no compulsion in religion’”, and since that “basic, universal Qur’anic principle of freedom of religion and belief overrides all other interpretations”, the “death penalty for apostasy has been formally abolished by the Shaykh al-Islam of the Ottoman Caliphate as well as by al-Azhar of Egypt”? Or are you just an even _bigger_ dumbass than you’ve been so far? ---
**Author:** ![Haberdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/545 "2015-04-30T21:31:26Z")
And yet, for some reason, Egypt prosecutes blasphemy, including with the death penalty, on a regular basis, and enjoys widespread majority support for doing so. > **[Majorities of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan support the death penalty for...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01/64-percent-of-muslims-in-egypt-and-pakistan-support-the-death-penalty-for-leaving-islam/)** > > A new Pew survey on views in the Islamic world finds an alarming trend. ---
**Author:** ![Haberdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/546 "2015-04-30T21:33:58Z")
Some more commentary on Charlie Hebdo’s actual content and the actual meaning of the award, from people who have read the thing and don’t reflexively look for reasons to castigate anyone attacked by Muslims. > **[PEN Has Every Right to Honor Charlie Hebdo](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/pen-has-every-right-to-honor-charlie-hebdo?intcid=mod-latest)** > > If literature has any social function, it is premised on the belief that, in the long run, the most comfortable community is going to be the one that knows the most about itself. > **[Charlie Hebdo and the previous question](https://steamthing.com/2015/04/charlie-hebdo-and-the-previous-question.html?fb_action_ids=10153341081448628&fb_action_types=news.publishes&fb_ref=pub-standard)** > > Years ago, I served on a jury that had a bit of trouble making up its mind. After we sent the judge a lot of notes asking questions, which seem to have tried his patience, he brought us back into t… ---
**Author:** ![A\_isha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@A\_isha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_isha)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/547 "2015-04-30T21:40:52Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > And yet, for some reason, Egypt prosecutes blasphemy, including with the death penalty, on a regular basis, and enjoys widespread majority support for doing so. > > [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01/64-percent-of-muslims-in-egypt-and-pakistan-support-the-death-penalty-for-leaving-islam/](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01/64-percent-of-muslims-in-egypt-and-pakistan-support-the-death-penalty-for-leaving-islam/) Pssst! Haberdash! Put those goalposts back! We were talking about Usama Hasan and Abdullah al-Andalusi, neither of whom are the nation of Egypt, you know. So are you going to admit that Hasan, in his pamphlet, did everything you falsely claimed he didn’t do (and _didn’t_ do what you falsely claimed he _did_ do)? Or are you going to stick with being a goalpost-moving, lying dumbass? ---
**Author:** ![Haberdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/548 "2015-04-30T21:42:23Z")
No, you claimed that Egypt has abolished the death penalty for apostasy. Strange how people still get executed for apostasy in Egypt regularly, and 88% of Egyptians say they support this. Maybe nobody is listening to al-Azhar? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/549 "2015-04-30T21:59:49Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > Except, it’s clear that [Cole] would never actually sign on to honor anyone persecuted by Muslims I don’t know how you regularly manage to get so disconnected from factual reality, but you’ve done it again. For one counterexample to your assertion, take a look at [what Teju Cole wrote about terrorist-murder victim Kofi Awoonor and participating in the memorial to him in 2013](http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/letter-from-nairobi-i-will-say-it-before-death-comes): > [@](#): > > On Saturday, September 21st, the Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor was shot dead at Nairobi’s Westgate mall by terrorists. He was one of dozens of innocent victims of the massacre, for which the Somali group Shabaab claimed responsibility. […] > > Awoonor shared with many of his illustrious contemporaries an intense engagement with both African tradition and African modernity. The influence of T. S. Eliot was strong, and Awoonor’s poems are often dense and mysterious. But, like Achebe, he also gave voice to a culture under rapid and destructive change from colonial influences, and he expressed a disillusionment with the violence that marred the post-colonial project. […] > > Awoonor’s son Afetsi had accompanied his father to Nairobi, and we’d all been at the same hotel. Afetsi was injured in the attack—shot in the shoulder—but he came to the memorial, with a white bandage slung across his right arm. […] One of the authors at the festival, the young Ghanaian poet Nii Ayikwei Parkes, during his eulogy, referred to Awoonor in the present tense. As he corrected himself, replacing “is” with “was,” grief took sudden hold, and his voice cracked. > > After Parkes’s eulogy, I read out Awoonor’s short poem “The Journey Beyond” […] I repeat, not that it needs any repeating: **Teju Cole’s publicly expressed support for writers who’ve been victims of Islamist violence is way more courageous and meaningful as a defense of free expression than anything your self-congratulatory anonymous messageboard posturing has ever accomplished.** ---
**Author:** ![Haberdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/550 "2015-04-30T22:03:34Z")
Alright, let’s amend: If someone Teju Cole has a personal relationship with is, by random chance, one of the people in a shopping mall when it is attacked by Muslims, he will express admiration for that person. If someone unknown to Teju Cole is specifically targeted and killed for writing against Islam, he will furiously distance himself from and condemn that person, and make it clear to anyone with a brain that he believed their murder was justified. He really comes out smelling like roses. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/551 "2015-04-30T22:12:43Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > If someone unknown to Teju Cole is specifically targeted and killed for writing against Islam, he will furiously distance himself from and condemn that person, and make it clear to anyone with a brain that he believed their murder was justified. Well there’s your problem: you think you’re someone with a brain. You’re not. You’re someone who is incapable of reading an essay without substituting what you _want_ the author to be saying for their actual intent, and the text. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/552 "2015-04-30T22:22:44Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > You are a truly massive hypocrite. The one inarguably false statement you’ve made. I am a free speech absolutist, and every position I have staked is in line with such a purview. Re-read the [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=747801) I made months ago. In there I am defending terrorist apologists and their right to speak their opinion. Hypocritical to take such a stand only if one foolishly condemned me an “Islamophobe.” ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/553 "2015-04-30T22:24:18Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > Alright, let’s amend: > > If someone Teju Cole has a personal relationship with is, by random chance, one of the people in a shopping mall when it is attacked by Muslims, he will express admiration for that person. > > If someone unknown to Teju Cole is specifically targeted and killed for writing against Islam, he will furiously distance himself from and condemn that person, and make it clear to anyone with a brain that he believed their murder was justified. > > He really comes out smelling like roses. **None of this is true, of course.** I wonder what it is like living in an alternate reality where facts do not ever matter and hatred is the driving force for all opinion and action. ---
**Author:** ![A\_isha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@A\_isha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_isha)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/554 "2015-04-30T22:30:35Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > No, you claimed that Egypt has abolished the death penalty for apostasy. No, I quoted Usama Hasan stating that al-Azhar had abolished the death penalty for apostasy (by issuing a _fatwa_ to that effect in 1958). > [@Haberdash](#): > > Strange how people still get executed for apostasy in Egypt regularly, and 88% of Egyptians say they support this. Maybe nobody is listening to al-Azhar? Or you don’t know how al-Azhar and its relationship with the Egyptian government, past and present, works (or how _fatawa_ work, for that matter). Mahmud Shaltut, named Grand Imam of al-Azhar by General Nasser in 1958, was a reformist disciple of Muhammad Abduh, and was the one who determined that there is no death penalty for apostasy (a view shared by the Grand Imam of al-Azhar from 1996 to 2010, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy). Egyptian law doesn’t mention apostasy at all. Prosecutions for apostasy are done by using other laws, such as individual prosecutors using Egypt’s _hisbah_ laws, which are broad, extremely vague laws which allow suits brought against anyone for any reason if the person filing the suit believes that by so doing they are following the injunction to impose good when it is absent and forbid evil when it is present (Nasr Abu Zayd, for instance, was prosecuted under _hisbah_). > [@Haberdash](#): > > [Charlie Hebdo and the previous question – Steamboats Are Ruining Everything](http://www.steamthing.com/2015/04/charlie-hebdo-and-the-previous-question.html?fb_action_ids=10153341081448628&fb_action_types=news.publishes&fb_ref=pub-standard) > [@](#): > > Yes, technically, a cartoonist killed for a racist or bigoted cartoon was being courageous if he drew it knowing that he might be killed for it. But no, it isn’t right to honor him. We distinguish all the time, and pretty sharply, between courage in what we consider to be a just cause and courage in what we consider to be an unjust one. I see your dumbassery extends beyond your inability to read my links, and into an inability to read your own. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/555 "2015-04-30T22:30:47Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > Alright, let’s amend: That’s a cute abbreviation for “move the goalposts” you’ve got there. > [@Haberdash](#): > > If someone Teju Cole has a personal relationship with is, by random chance, one of the people in a shopping mall when it is attacked by Muslims, he will express admiration for that person. Gee, I hope you’re not too exhausted from your recent goalpost-moving, because I’m afraid you’re going to have to move them again. Here’s what [Teju Cole wrote](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/perplexed-perplexed-on-mob-justice-in-nigeria/264006/) about a group of innocent students with whom he had no personal relationship at all, who were murdered by Muslim extremists in Nigeria in 2012: > [@](#): > > […] another atrocity had occurred in north-eastern Nigeria four days earlier, at the Federal Polytechnic Mubi, when gunmen had lined up and shot no fewer than 26 college students. Some reports put the number of dead as high as 40. […] That incident has essentially dropped out of the public discussion now. We do not know the names of the dead students, nor do we know if they recorded hip-hop music in their spare time, or had Twitter accounts, or traveled overseas. […] The Mubi killings also seem to have some element of the incessant religious conflict that is ripping the north of the country apart. Boko Haram might have been involved. The conflict in the north frightens many privileged southern Nigerians, but rarely touches them directly. Yeah, I think Teju Cole is doing okay at publicly condemning and drawing popular attention to Islamist-terrorist violence, even when the victims don’t happen to be friends of his. He’s certainly making a much more significant and positive impact than ignorant bigoted anonymous keyboard warriors like you, that’s for sure. > [@Haberdash](#): > > If someone unknown to Teju Cole is specifically targeted and killed for writing against Islam, he will furiously distance himself from and condemn that person, and make it clear to anyone with a brain that he believed their murder was justified. “Make it clear to anyone with a brain that he believed X” is apparently **Haberdash** -speak for “explicitly contradicted X”. You’ve decided to cast Cole as one of your “Sharia-compliant coward” fantasy villains, completely regardless of anything he actually says or does that contradicts the beliefs you want to pretend he holds. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/556 "2015-04-30T22:46:54Z")
Haberdash, Stringbean, you show a noteworthy aptitude for changing the minds of those who disagree with you. This relentless persuasiveness surely influences all manner of success in your lives, and I imagine that I am quite jealous. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/557 "2015-04-30T22:57:08Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > I quoted one of the typical “it’s too bad they got murdered, but here’s 9000 words on why they deserved to be murdered” launching pads that have been coming from the left wing nonstop since Muslims murdered 12 people for drawing a cartoon. Apparently, you can’t understand the difference between 9000, and 73. Also, those 73 words had nothing to do with what they deserved, and everything to do with what they don’t deserve: namely, an award. So, you also can’t seem understand the difference between not receiving an award, and being shot. There’s really just no end to the number of things that you can’t understand, is there? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/558 "2015-04-30T23:03:04Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > The one inarguably false statement you’ve made. > > I am a free speech absolutist, and every position I have staked is in line with such a purview. Re-read the [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=747801) I made months ago. In there I am defending terrorist apologists and their right to speak their opinion. Hypocritical to take such a stand only if one foolishly condemned me an “Islamophobe.” Yeah, about that. You never answered my question. Should those people who made those comments receive awards for their exercise of free speech? If you were invited to the award ceremony, would you attend? If you declined to attend an award ceremony for anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, would that undermine your claims to be a free speech absolutist? ---
**Author:** ![Haberdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/559 "2015-05-01T02:30:26Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > If you declined to attend an award ceremony for anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, would that undermine your claims to be a free speech absolutist? If the award is for martyrdom for free speech and I am a member of an organization which is devoted to free speech and giving such awards? Yes. You’re trying to paint this as if someone accosted Cole on the street and demanded that he agree with [the fictitious racist version of] Charlie Hebdo [created by Cole and other leftists in a furious attempt to avoid acknowledging that Muslims killed liberals]. He chose to join an organization devoted to free speech and chose to distance himself from an award for being a free speech martyr; this is not “a random award for being an anti-Semite” or anything analogous to it. With that distinction that you consistently refuse to acknowledge made, the other point is of course that there are few to no opportunities to give awards to anti-Semites, white supremacists, or homophobes killed for their speech, because Jewish, black, and gay organizations don’t use machine guns to settle hurt feelings. There’s only one group of people whose vision of stamping out “phobia” involves constant blood-soaked massacres, so it’s an irrelevant comparison. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/560 "2015-05-01T03:16:03Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Yeah, about that. You never answered my question. Should those people who made those comments receive awards for their exercise of free speech? If you were invited to the award ceremony, would you attend? If you declined to attend an award ceremony for anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, would that undermine your claims to be a free speech absolutist? I think the United States should offer them an award as political prisoners and our president should be criticizing the French authorities for their hypocritical censoring of language. I would certainly attend _that_ ceremony. Most would disagree with me and consider my attendance a “defense” of the content of their hateful or otherwise offensive speech. As an absolutist, I don’t care what they said. The killing of people to stifle their ideas is the greatest expression of undemocratic totalitarianism. What I am saying is, don’t call yourself a “fundamentalist” if you disagree with this position; Cole lacks the backbone to do the dirty work. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827.md?page=27) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827.md?page=29)