Garry Trudeau, Teju Cole, Gawker, Salon, the entire progressosphere online, their devotees here…
Wow, Haberdash, that’s a new low in factual distortion even for you. Allow me to remind you for the third or fourth time that it was Teju Cole himself who brought up Avijit Roy as an example of a courageous proponent of free speech who deserves to be honored.
Your other accusations are equally bullshit. Nobody on the liberal/left progressive side is saying that Bangladeshi atheist bloggers are “punching down” by criticizing radical-extremist political Islam in Bangladesh.
If you’re going to persist in denying that fact, let’s see your cites in evidence.
No, it was Teju Cole who started the “you shouldn’t kill people, unless…” meme with a column that was published so quickly after the Charlie Hebdo attack that he must have literally started writing it while the Jews in the supermarket were still being held hostage:
As we have thoroughly established in this thread, he brought up Roy only as a bullshit pretext for why he opposed honoring Charlie Hebdo, and, despite having 73 days to do so and six major magazine columns at his disposal, has not seen fit to write a single word actually praising or discussing Roy. So no, he apparently does not think Roy is a “courageous proponent of free speech who deserves to be honored.” Teju Cole stands for one thing in this debate, which is the same thing that you think other people are stupid enough to not understand – he stands for the same thing that “punching down” and “I support free speech, but…” and “no Islamophobia” stand for – the one and only thing that left-wingers have been clearly broadcasting since January: Behead those who insult Islam.
What you actually mean, of course, is that violent terrorist radical Islamists in Bangladesh continue to attack and threaten atheists, liberal/secular Muslims, Hindus, and other advocates of secularism and freethinking involved with the Mukto-Mona Writers’ Corner (a laudable example of literary activism that I encourage other free-speech advocates to read and support).
But of course, Haberdash, you would never describe the situation in that factually accurate form, because it would deprive you of the opportunity to accuse Muslims in general of committing these acts of violence and intimidation.
As I’ve noted earlier, it is all too clear that you don’t give a single solitary shit about any victims of violence and intimidation except insofar as their suffering allows you to get away with talking shit about Muslims in general.
If you had to choose between (a) condemning only the actual perpetrators of Islamist-extremist violence and oppression or (b) passing over such violence and oppression in total silence, we wouldn’t be hearing a peep out of you.
Most Muslims work hard to improve their circumstances, go about their daily lives peacefully, and do remarkably little caterwauling about bigots. Your ‘knowledge’ about Muslims continues to fail to impress… I don’t think you actually know much at all about Muslims in the real world.
I think my invocation of “punching down” is quite clearly an accusation directed at Western leftist apologists who insist that any criticism of Islam is racism and any horrific action undertaken by Muslims is justified.
To what degree “Muslims in general” in Bangladesh approve of the policy of murdering apostates with machetes is worthy of discussion. It seems that it’s a fairly significant phenomenon:
Bangladesh protesters rally against atheist bloggers
Of course, this is one of those facts and news stories that I get in trouble for sharing, and probably can’t stand up to shrieking the word “bigot” over and over again when it comes time to answer the question of what percentage of Muslims feel this way.
Statements like “don’t rape children,” “don’t kill people,” and “allow women to leave their houses” are not bigotry. Statements like “[Muslims] venerate Muhammad (PB&J), who is attested in the Quran as a child rapist who made his fortune as a highway robber”, “How do I know that you don’t define ‘calling you out on your bullshit’ to include murdering me [because you’re a Muslim]?”, and “Better hope your father or brother don’t find out [that you live by yourself]. They might do what Muslims usually do to female family members who defy the rules”, on the other hand, are straight up bigotry.
That is not in the least like anything that Cole actually said in that article. Here’s some of what he actually said:
Absolutely no “unless…” caveat anywhere in Cole’s article that in any way suggests any justification or excuse for the Charlie murders.
In fact, Haberdash, every time you hurl one of your bullshit accusations at Teju Cole that prompts a closer examination of what he actually wrote, it becomes clearer and clearer that Cole has been far more courageous in taking public stands against Islamist-extremist violence than anonymous messageboard cockroaches like you would ever even attempt to be.
Moreover, your vicious smears against Cole and others for daring to have a different opinion from you about the nature and value of some anti-Islam opinions, even though they steadfastly defend the free-speech right to express such opinions, don’t reflect very favorably on your alleged enthusiasm for free expression.
As far as you’re concerned, the defense of free speech, like the condemnation of rape or pedophilia and the support of equal rights for LGBTQ people, is simply a convenient excuse to justify your Islamophobic bigotry.
That “protest” was a rally organized by the Islamist party Hefajat-e-Islam who bused all the supporters they could manage to gather together from their stronghold of Chittagong to the capital of Dhaka, where they gave an ultimatum for the government to agree to their 13-point list of demands by May 5, 2013.
The government, needless to say, rejected them.
Standing over the corpse of a victim listing everything the murderers found wrong with him, including fabricated accusations of racism, is a justification for murder. Again, Cole wrote this *while *the murderers were still at large and holding hostages – hostages whose only offense was shopping at a kosher supermarket and didn’t even publish images that a tendentious Islam apologist could decide were “racist.”
As for “why are we talking about this when there are Other Bad Things in the world,” that’s not as morally outrageous as the above, but it’s still a classic fallacious deflection.
Everybody except your small circle of Islamophiles quite clearly understood the point of Cole’s column. His subsequent actions – including his vile appropriation of the Badawi and Roy cases to squirm out of his standing with murderers – make it all the more clear.
73 days. Six columns. Not a word about Badawi, not a word about Roy. Yeah, he really just thought the award was more deserved by someone else. Sure.
Of course, Cole didn’t need to come up with a reason that the kosher supermarket shoppers deserved to die, as the BBC did that for him:
It’s a perfectly closed loop where Muslims can only be victims and critics of Islam can only be “bigots,” never the reverse. Cole knew what part he was playing, and you’re not convincing anyone by pretending to believe otherwise.
Haberdash, the word “strawman” doesn’t even begin to do justice to the absurdity of these ridiculous illusory “left-winger” and “Western leftist” constructs of yours. They are made from the straw left over from the bedding of Elvish cavalry unicorns that was stolen by Rumpelstiltskin for his girlfriend’s spinning project. Strawmen simply don’t get any more imaginary than this.
Let’s see your actual cite for even one “leftist” who actually says that those who insult Islam should be beheaded. Or that any criticism of Islam is racism. Or that any horrific action undertaken by Muslims is justified.
Actual cite, remember. Not just more accusations pulled out of your ass. We are getting rather tired of the way those smell.
Actually, it’s saying that both Muslims and critics of Islam can be victims, and both Muslims and critics of Islam can be bigots. Which is the exact opposite of the way you’re trying to interpret it.
A BBC reporter – not an editorialist, a news reporter – went to a rally against racism that took place in the days after the Charlie Hebdo attack. Upon finding out that a person was Jewish, he immediately accused her of being responsible for Israeli government policy and complicity in the suffering of Palestinians.
You are defending this.
This is my answer to your above post about examples of what kind of insanity the proximity to Islam causes leftists to engage in.
My, Haberdash, that corner you’ve backed yourself into is starting to look a little uncomfortable. When a closer examination of what Cole actually said reveals that it was in fact the exact opposite of what you were trying to pretend that he said, you switch to claiming that he was “playing a part”. How very convenient.
“I claim that my vile and dastardly opponents are saying X, which is a loathsome sentiment and fully justifies my condemning them! And when it turns out that what they actually said was Not-X, that just shows that they were playing a part, but everybody knows that they really meant X!”
Uh-huh. :rolleyes:
When did that happen? That’s not at all what took place in the incident you cited above. The reporter Willcox did not “accuse” his interlocutor of “being responsible for Israeli government policy”.
[QUOTE=Haberdash]
This is my answer to your above post about examples of what kind of insanity the proximity to Islam causes leftists to engage in.
[/QUOTE]
In other words, you don’t have a shred of anything resembling an actual cite of an actual instance of any “leftist” actually saying that that those who insult Islam should be beheaded, or that any criticism of Islam is racism, or that any horrific action undertaken by Muslims is justified.
Not in the least surprising.
I’m not claiming anything. Everybody who is not in the small camp of Islamophile apologists could read the article for what it was, and still can.
Scene: Tulsa, Oklahoma. An NBC reporter arrives at the site of a reported hate crime.
“Yes, Mrs. Bashar, I understand that someone threw a brick through your window and said they wanted to kill Muslims. But many critics of Saudi Arabia’s policy would suggest that the Christians suffer hugely at Muslim hands as well. How do you respond?”
A good reporter who is not advancing any agenda, or accusing anyone of anything, according to Kimstu.
This thread and the last five months of furious apologism for the Charlie Hebdo killers from the left say enough on their own.
Ah, the wonderful Looking-Glass Land of Haberdash-speak, where some kind of indefinite “advancing an agenda” is the same thing as explicitly “accusing” someone of a particular action, which is the same thing as saying they’re racist, which is the same thing as calling for their beheading.
Back here in the mundane world of ordinary English usage, of course, it’s perfectly possible that a reporter like Willcox may have made remarks that are inappropriate, or unfairly privileging the suffering of Muslims over that of non-Muslims, or even “advancing an agenda” of some sort. But that doesn’t automatically make them equivalent to an “accusation” of any kind.
Much less to any sort of assertion that those who insult Islam should be beheaded, or that any criticism of Islam is racism, or that any horrific action undertaken by Muslims is justified. Which is what you claim that “leftists” and “progressives” all over the place are asserting, even though you can’t find any actual evidence of their actually making such assertions.