A Beheading In France

[Dreiko]

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.

That's the letter of the law, the spirit of the law is a tacit acknowledgement of agnosticism or atheism because any government that would knowingly condemn its citizenry to the fires of hell would be reprehensible. So either they are reprehensible and are allowing their citizens to doom their eternal souls, or they don't actually believe in the premise that would put them at risk for eternity, meaning, they reject the notions that religious people hold.

So if you go live there, the idea is that people by and large, think what your religion is is bullshit, but they allow you to believe in it anyways because for them to be allowed to believe true things they must also allow lunatics to believe their mumbo jumbo too, for the sake of consistency.

I'm fairly certain that making fun of a fictionally magical dude is not the same as banning a religion. Not any more than making fun of vegans bans veganism.

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.

The society should have been one, was supposed to be one, where you can joke about anyone in the first place. It's just only now living up to that promise a bit more fully. It ALWAYS was like this. They were getting special treatment they did not deserve all this time. Treatment nobody else gets. That's the entire point.

This is not about muslims, it's about everyone else reclaiming their human rights despite them being against people's right to make fun of anything they please. Also, this applies to muslims as well, they're free to insult their own religion in France. Do you think they would have that human right where they came from? Where apostasy can get you executed? I kinda doubt it.

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.



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.

Poking fun at your religion is "suppression" now? Defending the rights of people to poke fun at your religion is suppression? No. You're wrong. They're not closing down mosques in france. They're not banning people from praying 5 times a day. They're not doing half the things people of other religions would have done to them in the countries these people came to France from.

And no I'm not an asshole to those people either but I fully support the right of people to be assholes to them if they so choose. I celebrate it even, cause it's hilarious. You don't get to find people's sense of humor as sinful just because you feel it is so.

In a free society we tolerate opinions and thoughts we disagree with. We use our words to make jokes back. We do not throw snackpacks, we do not eat the glue. We're big kids here.

 

[happyninja42]

I know Muslim people personally who are far more chill about their faith than a lot of atheists are about their atheism.

So what? That doesn't change the fact that for Islam at least, the punishment for apostasy is death, something that they have, and still do, actually inflict upon vocally athiest people in their countries. So I don't particularly care how "chill" some members of the religion might be, the fact that it's an endorsed behavior, simply for not agreeing with them, and isn't something they try and, I don't know, STOP, makes me not really give a shit about how chill they are. This is the problem, because every time a religion is exposed for the really shitty stuff at it's core, people always play the No True Scotsman card, and try to distance themselves from the bad parts of their religion. They say shit like "oh well that was back then, we're not like that now!" when they totally still are, and ignore the people behaving that way.

Magical thinking is bad, period. And magical thinking that is used to justify treating other humans like shit, and even killing them, is worse. And no amount of hand waving away "oh yeah but THESE guys aren't running around chopping heads off" will change that.

None of the religions of the world can actually fucking PROVE anything they claim to be true, but they run around and do horrible things, on the macro and micro level in our society. And I frankly am tired of the free pass they think they're entitled to, because I'm supposed to "respect their beliefs". Fuck that, and fuck them. Every day, in the US at least, the religious right are trying to actually encode their faith as law, so now it's not just "well that cooky neighbor and his belief in a sky daddy", no their faith is now directly, and legally impacting me, regardless of the fact that I don't share their beliefs.

So yeah, I'm not chill about religion. The day that religion stops being a monumental force for violence, subjugation and oppression, worldwide, I'll be chill about it. But as long as people are babbling about "putting god back in our schools/government" and chopping heads off, and funding gay conversion therapy camps, and abandoning their LGBTQ/athiest children when they state they don't share the beliefs of these religious fundamentalist, I'm going to keep telling them all to fuck off.

And if they don't like that, well, they can all tell their invisible sky daddies to strike me down if they're/he is so offended, I personally don't care.

 

[Buyetyen]

Poking fun at your religion is "suppression" now?

No. And neither is a secular society. Keep up.

And no I'm not an asshole to those people either but I fully support the right of people to be assholes to them if they so choose. I celebrate it even, cause it's hilarious. You don't get to find people's sense of humor as sinful just because you feel it is so.

You're the only one bringing up the idea of sin. I just don't like assholes, which is why we're not friends.

Magical thinking is bad, period. And magical thinking that is used to justify treating other humans like shit, and even killing them, is worse. And no amount of hand waving away "oh yeah but THESE guys aren't running around chopping heads off" will change that.

And if they want to be a dick about their faith, then I'll react as such. I grew out of my angry atheist phase a long time ago, guys. I can criticize the bullshit of religion while also giving each individual a chance to just be a person. It is very possible to do both. I'm not defending brutal Muslim theocracies, evangelical control freaks or Hindu nationalists. I'm arguing against the assertion that being secular requires you to be an antagonist.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Samtemdo8]

I've completely missed out on how much this event exploded into what it is now.

So what's been happening that I've missed since the killings of both victim and killer.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I've completely missed out on how much this event exploded into what it is now.

So what's been happening that I've missed since the killings of both victim and killer.

The predictable. Usual angry backlash, nothing useful gets done, but people get to feel good about themselves by persecuting randoms.

 

[Silvanus]

I disagree as well. But as I said earlier, there's still no equivalent in this regard. Christianity may have helped culvitate or suppress those values, Islam didn't do anything one way or the other.

But this isn't relevant to the argument being made. The role of the religion in the society in question isn't relevant in the least; you still cannot apply one standard to one religion, and another elsewhere. That a religion played whatever role in the past doesn't afford it a different standard.

 

[CM156]

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.

I agree with you here. There should not be a crackdown the likes of which France is carrying out. It seems scattershot and like the French government wants to be seen as doing something, rather than actually doing something good.

 

[Iron]

Um, guys?

 

[Agema]

Um, guys?

Yeah well, he's got a point, hasn't he?

 

[CM156]

Um, guys?

Yeah well, he's got a point, hasn't he?

I've never understood this argument. Most of the world lives countries where holocaust denial is legal. Of the world's top ten most populated nations, in fact (China, India, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, and Mexico), Russia is the only one where Holocaust denial is legal. There is no country in the Americas (North, Central, or South) or Africa (depending on how you count Israel) where denying the Holocaust can get you arrested.

In fact, the only non-European country (assuming you count Russia as European) where Holocaust denial is illegal is Israel, for reasons that I hope are obvious.

Now, the question of "should Holocaust denial be illegal" is an interesting policy question. But its connection to the topic at hand is somewhat tangential. His argument could be more accurately stated as "if people in the majority of European countries are not allowed to deny a recent historic atrocity, why are they permitted to insult a religious leader of ours who died almost 1400 years ago?" Which doesn't really make sense.

Also, if appeal to hypocrisy arguments are valid, why is Khamenei communicating with us through a microbloging website that is illegal in his own country, in part due to his actions?

EDIT: I should clarify that I'm talking about countries with laws that explicitly say it's illegal to deny the Holocaust or any other genocide. I can find a handful of people from countries where "inciting race hatred" is a crime who have been convicted of that for denying the holocaust in conjunction with other statements, such as Canada or the UK. However, I can find no laws or convictions for people denying the Holocaust in China, India, the USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh, which combined makes up about 55% of the world's population.

 

[Agema]

In fact, the only non-European country (assuming you count Russia as European) where Holocaust denial is illegal is Israel, for reasons that I hope are obvious.

Right... but we're talking about France here, aren't we?

One might also note that the definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance includes examples, such as: "Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)." That's a definition the US government has signed up to. The USA has broad free speech laws, but it does have "hate crimes" where this definition will almost certainly have some legal repercussions (which I do not necessarily oppose). So it's not quite as irrelevant as I think you make out.

If we take at base the idea that it is free speech both to make blasphemous pictures of Mohammed and to deny the Holocaust. But who, precisely, denies the Holocaust to make a neutral statement about free speech? Why don't they? We know exactly why the Ayatollah is making a point about the Holocaust: he's rabble rousing against Jews / Israel, as he always does. And indeed, just about everyone else you can be found defending Holocaust denial in terms of free speech is also an antisemite. But for some reason, making blasphemous pictures of Mohammed is a totally innocent and neutral defence of free speech that garners wide applause. Let's not pretend that this isn't to some degree a double standard based in differing, Western, societal attitudes to Muslims and Jews.

 

[CM156]

And indeed, just about everyone you can be found defending Holocaust denial in terms of free speech is also an antisemite

I contest the use of your phrase "just about everyone" considering that the ACLU has gone to bat for literal Nazis in cases like National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie and I would hardly call the ACLU a bunch of antisemities.

But who, precisely, denies the Holocaust to make a neutral statement about free speech? Why don't they?

Probably because the social consequences are high and people can accomplish the same message in a way that will not earn them as much scorn?

Let's not pretend that this isn't to some degree a double standard based in differing, Western, societal attitudes to Muslims and Jews.

To some degree, it might be a double standard. To another degree, we're comparing denying a historic tragedy that occurred in living memory to mocking a 7th century figure who is attested to have done some pretty nasty things by modern moral standards and yet is professed to be the best person to ever have lived by the over one billion adherents to his religion.

 

[Houseman]

But for some reason, making blasphemous pictures of Mohammed is a totally innocent and neutral defence of free speech that garners wide applause. Let's not pretend that this isn't to some degree a double standard based in differing

I don't think it is.

With the holocaust, there is real human death and suffering there.
With a picture of Mohammad, there isn't.

There's a huge difference.

I think you're trying to say that he's trying to say "So you can't make fun of Jews, but you can make fun of Muslims?"
If we're to see his tweet as that argument, it falls apart because you can still make fun of Jews in France.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Yeah well, he's got a point, hasn't he?

What??? No, he doesn't. How do the two compare? Holocaust denial isn't just about the insult it causes to others.

 

[Houseman]

Holocaust denial isn't just about the insult it causes to others.

Genuine question: What else is it about?

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Right... but we're talking about France here, aren't we?

One might also note that the definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance includes examples, such as: "Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)." That's a definition the US government has signed up to. The USA has broad free speech laws, but it does have "hate crimes" where this definition will almost certainly have some legal repercussions (which I do not necessarily oppose). So it's not quite as irrelevant as I think you make out.

If we take at base the idea that it is free speech both to make blasphemous pictures of Mohammed and to deny the Holocaust. But who, precisely, denies the Holocaust to make a neutral statement about free speech? Why don't they? We know exactly why the Ayatollah is making a point about the Holocaust: he's rabble rousing against Jews / Israel, as he always does. And indeed, just about everyone else you can be found defending Holocaust denial in terms of free speech is also an antisemite. But for some reason, making blasphemous pictures of Mohammed is a totally innocent and neutral defence of free speech that garners wide applause. Let's not pretend that this isn't to some degree a double standard based in differing, Western, societal attitudes to Muslims and Jews.

Making blasphemous pictures isn't trying to whitewash the past to help create some narrative. There's a hell of a lot more going on with Holocaust denial than trying to insult people

 

[Satinavian]

Genuine question: What else is it about?

The holocaust denial laws are there to criminalize Nazi apologets and Nazi sympathizers. They come bundled with actually forbidding a Nazi party and other Nazi organisations, display of Nazi symbols etc. That is because Nazis are considered an enemy of the state and also a threat to said state.

It is really hard to agree that murdering millions of innocents is kinda OK. That is why anyone who wants to paint Nazis in a more positive light needs holocaust denial and is seriously hampered by laws forbidding that.

Those laws have never been about jewish sensibilities or possible insults, at least outside of Israel.

 

[meiam]

I've completely missed out on how much this event exploded into what it is now.

So what's been happening that I've missed since the killings of both victim and killer.

Politic happened. Turkey is in conflict with Greece over regional water (for oil exploration), France back Greece in an attempt to increase European integration. Erdogan (Turkey leader) is using the situation to try and increase pressure over France, also he allied himself with religious people in his country so denouncing anything that sound like hostility to Muslim let him score political point (I don't think he personally care, he started his political career as a fairly secular leader, he only switched to religious support when secular people started pointing out that he was pretty corrupt). Macron (French leader) is using the situation to try and increase his political standing, he's also probably someone who strongly believe in the French ideal which prominently include secularism.

Otherwise its the same old thing over and over again, Muslim leaders are a lot louder at denouncing drawing related to their religion as they are denouncing killing related to it. Secular and Non-muslim religious people are a bit pissed off about that and so double down on the cartoon as to show they're not going to be cowed into changing their way. This piss off Muslim leader even more who are then ever louder and the cycle continue until everyone get bored of it and move on.

As far as French Muslim, France is literally never going to stop making cartoon that will make fun of religion (all of them, and the more they oppose it, the more cartoon there will be). Its sad if it comes to this, but if someone is really incapable living in a country that does not forbid cartoon making fun of their religion their only option is to leave. France secularism is not particularly aimed Muslim, every Christmas they are rows between central government that says public building cannot display religious symbols and religious Mayor that want to have Christmas tree (with baby Jesus) in their public place.

 

[Houseman]

That is why anyone who wants to paint Nazis in a more positive light needs holocaust denial and is seriously hampered by laws forbidding that.

If the Nazis really do want to exterminate all Jews, wouldn't they just be up-front about it, not deny it, and explicitly claim that they'd like to do it again?
Or is the thinking that they're just being sneaky, pretending to be nice, and then, when they get power, drop the facade and do evil things?

If they've been denying that it happened all along...