A Beheading In France

[Dreiko]

Whose human rights?

I think perhaps the most telling thing here, even more so than the obvious comparison to the "immoral" swimwear, is that this beheading has triggered a massive police crackdown, and looks set to usher in an enormous curtailing of civil liberties.

Hundreds of people have been arrested, only a handful of whom had any connection at all to the actual attacker.

Muslim organisations have been raided, including many previously awarded funds by the government for their work in promoting civil relations between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. One of the organisations declared an "enemy of the Republic" is the CCIF, an organisation whose terrible crime against French values is maintaining a register of hate crimes targeting Muslims. It will be forcibly disbanded, because human rights (the right to free assembly isn't a human right, shut up).

Also arrested, several people who committed the terrible crime of making online videos mocking or denouncing Samuel Paty (including making such videos before he died) because that is a crime now. You can insult the prophet Muhammad, but you can't insult a dead middle school teacher. That is an unacceptable attack on French values. Not like insulting the prophet Muhammad, which is an necessary attack on non-French values. That is how free speech works. Don't question it.

I think what is so tiresome about this is that we've seen it before. The war on terror has concretely and demonstrably made us less free, while giving enormous power to government and police. People talk about defending freedom or human rights, when what is actually happening on the ground is mass arrests, collective punishment, punitive retaliation and the strengthening of the state's power to regulate what you can and can't say or do in the interests of security and fighting largely imaginary "enemies within".

It's paper thin, and we should all be capable of seeing through it by now.

Muhammad is much less relevant than a modern day dead teacher because he still has living family who will be affected by the videos, not a mentally sick cult who believes they are in some magical form connected with him through spiritualism and get offended on his behalf like fangirls get offended when you badmouth Twilight.



So while I am against those videos you mention being taken down on the premises of free-speech, it's the climate of offense-policing to blame, not of freedom of speech, which Shaitan Macron empowered with his action. If you are against videos talking shit of dead teachers being taken down, you fist should have already been against cartoons being met with harm.


But more fundamentally on the question of whose rights, everyone's rights are protected. When you're used at only your rights being seen as valid the feeling of other people's rights being equally valid will feel like you're being oppressed but no, that's just equality.

Muslims have been treated like the special needs kid of the family for far too long as is. Time to feel the taste of fairness.


(notice, in one of the images there's also the bible shown right next to the quaran as a roll of toilet paper, but somehow that is seen as being JUST against islam, despite it treating christianity and judaism with the same exact amount of respect, this kinda says it all)

 

[Thaluikhain]

When you're used at only your rights being seen as valid the feeling of other people's rights being equally valid will feel like you're being oppressed but no, that's just equality

You've managed to simultaneously totally get the point and totally miss the point at the same time there.

 

[Dreiko]

You've managed to simultaneously totally get the point and totally miss the point at the same time there.

The point is that muslims act like other people don't have a right to offend their religion and that for too long society has tolerated that. Nothing else is relevant here.


Just drive it into their heads in any way you can come up with that they're fair game too and that they don't get to throw tantrums.

Muslims can't be the kid throwing snack-packs while everyone else is trying to learn any more. They have to just accept that it's ok for people to make fun of their religion and get on with it.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I feel like we've somehow reached some kind of physics-defying state of negative irony.

 

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[Houseman]

If someone doesn't like my mean spirited jokes about them and react negatively, I continue harassing them with increasing intensity until they understand that they are just a big sourpuss and that I am legitimately funny. Seven out of ten times it works every time.

Are you implying that murder in response to mean-spirited jokes is just a consequence of mean-spirited jokes, and the murder could be stopped if we cease with the mean-spirited jokes?

 

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[Houseman]

No. I am trying to point out the obvious (or so I thought) point that continually harassing people, like France is doing in response to the murder, has never made the people you harass stop being angry at you. It only makes them angrier and less likely to come around to how funny you really are.

I would think that continual mocking, especially in the face of genuine death threats, would make it clear that the threats are ineffective and the mocking cannot be stopped, and therefore, they should try a different tactic other than murder. "We don't negotiate with terrorists" and all that.

But I agree with your other point, that unaffiliated groups that merely share the religion do not warrant any sort of punitive action.

 

[Satinavian]

Does your car run on magic?

I don't have a car and never had one. That is one of the things i do for the environment.

And the oil the country i was born in used did come from Russia afaik. Today that would be some strange market based mix instead but still no reason to meddle in arabia.

 

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[Dreiko]

If someone doesn't like my mean spirited jokes about them and react negatively, I continue harassing them with increasing intensity until they understand that they are just a big sourpuss and that I am legitimately funny. Seven out of ten times it works every time.

France is a secular country.

This means they deny fundamentally the truth of your particular faith whatever it may be.

If you choose to go live there, you must expect this treatment as a matter of course, because by definition the state treats your faith as bullshit and has no reason to defend you.


It's literally like if you took fans of a movie or book or videogame or anime or music band and were asking other people to not make fun of their objects of fandom because they really really care about the thing you're making fun of.

Since when did we change the rule into being that we can't make fun of something if someone cares deeply about it?

Why does a religion get more respect than Twilight in a secular nation?

This is long overdue. People will need to accept they're not any more special than any other person who believes in factually not proven things with all their heart.

 

[Agema]

France is a secular country.

This means they deny fundamentally the truth of your particular faith whatever it may be.

No it doesn't.

 

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[Gordon_4]

France is a secular country.

This means they deny fundamentally the truth of your particular faith whatever it may be.

If you choose to go live there, you must expect this treatment as a matter of course, because by definition the state treats your faith as bullshit and has no reason to defend you.


It's literally like if you took fans of a movie or book or videogame or anime or music band and were asking other people to not make fun of their objects of fandom because they really really care about the thing you're making fun of.

Since when did we change the rule into being that we can't make fun of something if someone cares deeply about it?

Why does a religion get more respect than Twilight in a secular nation?

This is long overdue. People will need to accept they're not any more special than any other person who believes in factually not proven things with all their heart.

A secular nation merely does not impose a state mandated religion. It still affords its citizens rights to worship as they will provided it is not in contrary to the law.

 

[Iron]

French state religion had been secularism ever since the revolution that's named after them. I don't see why this is not obvious to everyone in this thread.

 

[Satinavian]

Especially if you also impose sanctions that only target them, such as the ban on full body swimsuits. Because that makes it seem as if you've got a grudge and as if your jokes aren't so much funny as they are intended as barbs and insults against those people.

I agree that the ban on full-body-swimsuits is wrong and needlessly provocative. There is literally no reason to ban those aside from trying to antagonize muslims.

But as for prejecting the images ... i think that is an appropriate response. It shows that the French nation and French people are willing to defend the principle that murder for carricature is unacceptable.

 

[Generals]

I don't get your response. I am not saying France can't do this. I am saying that if they want to have a functional relationship to their Muslim citizens (particularly those that are deeply religious) they can't keep doubling down on offending them time and time again and hoping that the next time they'll get the joke and be chill about it.

I work a lot with conflict de-escalation and everything France is doing is the opposite of what you should be doing if you want to avoid conflicts and violence. That's literally the full extent of my point: that France is going about this backwards if they want to create a society in which you can joke with Muslims about their faith. Those sorts of jokes requires trust and mutual respect and you don't get that by insisting that you're hilarious and the offended party is just some thin skinned crybaby. Especially if you also impose sanctions that only target them, such as the ban on full body swimsuits. Because that makes it seem as if you've got a grudge and as if your jokes aren't so much funny as they are intended as barbs and insults against those people.

You can't just take methods of deescalation between individuals and apply them to morals/values/cultures. What should "France" as an entity have done here? Say it was the teacher's fault? Victim blame the decapitated? Forbid teachers to teach their pupils about freedom of speech and satire? And mind you "France" isn't insisting it's hilarious or that making caricatures of Muhamed the conqueror is "funny" or even a good thing. it's simply insisting that people's right to do that is a good thing and part of France's values. If people cannot accept that they're free to go Islamic nations where that right doesn't exist. Nobody is forcing islamists to stay in "fascist" europe (because apparently Freedom of making caricatures is fascism according to islamists). It's time for western continental european nations to stand for their ideals and stop giving ground to Islamists and I support Macron in his attempts to do that (although way too meager).

As for the full body swimsuits ban, isn't that only applicable in public pools? And don't public pools also ban other types of swimsuits for hygiene reasons? It's just that in the past full body swimsuits weren't a thing and therefor rules for it weren't necessary.

 

[Agema]

As for the full body swimsuits ban, isn't that only applicable in public pools? And don't public pools also ban other types of swimsuits for hygiene reasons? It's just that in the past full body swimsuits weren't a thing and therefor rules for it weren't necessary.

Yeah, but they didn't ban it for hygeine reasons, they banned it because it was deemed an overt display of religion in a public place. One of my Muslim ex-colleagues took a postdoctoral post in the south of France, and they banned the hijab shortly after - so she quit. But she's got a good qualification and can work in lots of countries, where many others don't. These aren't victories over Islamists. They're just making ordinary Muslims feel excluded from society.

And if we were honest, overtly in the case of the far right or covertly for more mainstream opinion, that is the intention of such policies: exclusion.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[Buyetyen]

France is a secular country.

This means they deny fundamentally the truth of your particular faith whatever it may be.

If you choose to go live there, you must expect this treatment as a matter of course, because by definition the state treats your faith as bullshit and has no reason to defend you.

What an ignorant thing to say. A secular nation does not suppress religion, it simply refuses to play favorites. There's a vast difference between the 2.

Why does a religion get more respect than Twilight in a secular nation?

I don't like those books either, but I'm not a giant asshole to people who do like them. Are you? Because that's kind of what we're getting at here, bro. No one's saying you have to like Islam, just don't be antagonistic about it. I know Muslim people personally who are far more chill about their faith than a lot of atheists are about their atheism.