Gunmen Storm Office Of Satirical Magazine In Paris

Way more worrisome is the reaction of muslim students in France who declare the terrorists as heroes. It will take a lot to change this gigantic problem within the society (which also includes the Front National). Stationing the Army within the country like it's donw now will only worsen the problem.

Now go and read the definition of that word.

Why?

Because youre the only "inteligent" person here and everyone is dumb?

Lol.

Ok fine ***since people don't like violence (could have fooled me) have the tournament be poker or darts or some ***either way at least we only have to hear 1 set of lies for 4 years

Do you seriously want to talk about intelligence? You're asking to be flamed.

Why can't religions just each send their strongest fighter every 4 years to a tournament to decide who is right for that term

Because the Buddhists will always win. They have Goku.

It's called an utopia.

Now go and read the definition of that word.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the dilemma is we are entwining two debates – how to counter terrorism and how to nurture freedom of expression as a cornerstone of democracy. The first is being argued in obsessive detail, the second is conceded as a given.

Yes, it is utterly inappropriate to go around shooting those who cause offence, but is it appropriate to go around causing offence?

Seemingly not, if we go by the French experience. Even as huge crowds take to city squares, the principle they seek to defend doesn't exist in France – certainly not in the pure sense they'd have us believe in the wake of last week's carnage.

As in many countries, Australia included, France has a substantial body of hate law – it's wrong to insult, slander and defame, to discriminate or to incite hatred based on religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, gender or sexual orientation.

In 2008, Brigitte Bardot was found guilty on the basis of a letter to Nicolas Sarkozy, then France's Interior Minister, in which she repeated her oft-stated view that Muslims and homosexuals were ruining the country. In 2011, the designer John Galliano copped it for his anti-Semitic ranting at patrons in a Paris cafe.

The French can be jailed for a year or fined more than $AUD65,000 for denying the Holocaust of World War II, but when the parliament applied the same penalties to denial of the Armenian genocide in 2012, the new law was overturned by the courts.

And it's not just French law that draws lines around good behaviour. Hard to believe, even Charlie Hebdo has limits, when cartoonist and columnist Maurice Sinet was accused of anti-Semitism after disparaging Jean Sarkozy, a son of the former president, on the news of his engagement to a Jewish heiress, Charlie Hebdo editor Philippe Val, demanded that Sinet apologise.

When Sinet refused, declaring, "I'd rather cut off my balls," he was fired, according to a report in London's Telegraph.

And in the US? Did you hear the one about the three quadriplegic servicemen who met in a bar when they returned from the Iraq war? No. And you won't. September 11 victims and their families are absolutely taboo.

But for all the First Amendment hoopla in the US, New York Times commentator David Brooks observes that the Charlie Hebdo gang wouldn't have survived for 30 seconds if they had attempted to publish on a US college campus in the last 20 years.

He pings the University of Illinois for firing a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality; the University of Kansas because it suspended an academic for tweeting against the National Rifle Association; and Vanderbilt University because it 'derecognised' a campus Christian group that insisted on being led by Christians.


When Charlie Hebdo republished the controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in 2006, then French President Jacques Chirac issued a swift rebuke: "Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided – freedom of expression should be exercised in a spirit of responsibility."

The notion of media responsibility makes more sense than editors being slapped around by the law. We have observed the most powerful mastheads in the world bend over backwards in the course of reporting the so-called WikiLeaks and Snowden leaks, without being accused of kowtowing to big government as they sought to strike a balance between disclosure and a need to not compromise national security.

And if freedom of expression is about principles, how do we address the narrowness of some of the attacks that cause so much offence? Much of what some in the west object to in Islamism and Islam is practised, to varying degrees, by our stoutest Middle Eastern allies – think justice and women's rights in Saudi Arabia; and beyond the Muslim world, by our most powerful trading partners – think media policy in China.

What an absolute hoot that Riyadh sent a representative to Paris for Sunday's solidarity rally, just days after a young blogger was publicly administered the first 50 of 1000 lashes – his punishment for insulting Islam. And Vladimir Putin, another human rights hero, also sent emissaries.

Even more important, is whether or not an offended community feels accepted or like an outcast. "The last 12 years have been a Charlie Hebdo for Muslims," an Arab colleague snapped during a dinner conversation on the weekend, referring to the civilian death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a New York Times discussion on Charlie Hebdo, the Arab American fiction writer Saladin Ahmed notes that we all self-censor, selecting targets for our satire according to our world view.

"In a field dominated by privileged voices, it's not enough to say 'mock everyone!' In an unequal world, satire that mocks everyone ends up serving the powerful. And in the context of brutal inequality, it is worth at least asking what pre-existing injuries we are adding our insults to."

Freedom of expression is a right we should hold dear. But it has a purity that has little chance of survival in an imperfect society.

The media doesn't have to abandon its principle. But they might do better to articulate it more as a right to disclose, and less as a right to say something merely because it was the first thought that entered someone's head when they sat at a keyboard this morning.

Because the magazine only poked fun at Islam. Also, as a Christian you don't need to go far to see Jesus ridiculed or as a Jew where the Muslims do a bang up job of going out of their way to insult that faith.


So when do I get murdered?

tl;dr - Deal with it. Everyone is getting insulted out here, either come up with witty retorts or ignore the trolls.

Because the magazine only poked fun at Islam. Also, as a Christian you don't need to go far to see Jesus ridiculed or as a Jew where the Muslims do a bang up job of going out of their way to insult that faith.


So when do I get murdered?

tl;dr - Deal with it. Everyone is getting insulted out here, either come up with witty retorts or ignore the trolls.

New magazine cover

I find the Muslim leaders quoted here to be extremely insulting. Act like adults and learn that not everyone will arbitrarily honor your beliefs because you think they should be honored.

[The Jewish nation] dares spread an irreconcilable hatred against all nations; it revolts against all its masters. Always superstitious, always avid of the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous, crawling in misfortune, and insolent in prosperity. Here are what were the Jews in the eyes of the Greeks and the Romans who could read their books. —Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs (1756) Tome 1, page 186

So, the comedians who go visit the middle east, where Muslims come up to them, and offer to practice jokes on them, which are mainly targeting Jewish people, according to said comedians, aren't happening?

That Gabriel Iglesias's account of a practicing Muslim comedian telling the joke "So, a Jew walks into a bar... NOT IN MY COUNTRY!" was and forever shall be, a complete fabrication?

If these Ismaélites (Arabs) resembled to the Jews by the enthusiasm and the thirst for plundering, they were prodigiously higher by courage, by the nobility of soul, by the magnanimity: their history, or true or fabulous, before Mahomet, is filled of examples of friendship, such as Greece invented some in the fables of Pilade and Oreste, of Thésée and Pirithous. The history of Barmécides is only one continuation of amazing generosities which raise the heart. These features characterize a nation. We do not see on the contrary, in all annals of the Hebrew people, no generous action. They do not know nor hospitality, nor liberality, nor leniency. Their sovereign happiness is to exert wear with the foreigners; and this spirit of wear, principle of any cowardice, is so natural in their hearts, that it is the continual object of the figures that they employ in the species of eloquence which is proper for them. Their glory is to put at fire and blood the small villages they can seize. They cut the throat of the old men and the children; they hold only the girls nubiles; they assassinate their Masters when they are slaves; they can never forgive when they are victorious: they are enemy of the human mankind. No courtesy, no science, no art improved in any time, in this atrocious nation. —Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs (1756) Tome 2, page 83

You seem to me to be the maddest of the lot. The Kaffirs, the Hottentots, and the Negroes of Guinea are much more reasonable and more honest people than your ancestors, the Jews. You have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables in bad conduct and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny.[2] —Voltaire, From a letter to a Jew who had written to him, complaining of his antisemitism in L'Essai sur le Moeurs

… [Jews] are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race.[2] —Voltaire, Lettres de Memmius a Ciceron (1771)

I know that there are some Jews in the English colonies. These marranos go wherever there is money to be made... But whether these circumcised who sell old clothes claim that they are of the tribe of Naphtali or Issachar is not of the slightest importance. They are, simply, the biggest scoundrels who have ever dirtied the face of the earth." —Voltaire, Letter to Jean-Baptiste Nicolas de Lisle de Sales, December 15, 1773. Correspondance. 86:166

Yes, you're right. One account by Gabriel Iglesias clearly establishes definitive proof of an epidemic of jew bashing amongst muslims everywhere.

Charlie Hebdo: total freedom of expression has little chance of survival in an imperfect society[/spoiler]

Muslims routinely make mockery of Jews and the anti-semitism

You're clearly in denial.


That's ok. Others have woken up from this head-in-the-sand ***, and can attest to it happening.

So, the comedians who go visit the middle east, where Muslims come up to them, and offer to practice jokes on them, which are mainly targeting Jewish people, according to said comedians, aren't happening?

That Gabriel Iglesias's account of a practicing Muslim comedian telling the joke "So, a Jew walks into a bar... NOT IN MY COUNTRY!" was and forever shall be, a complete fabrication?

Charlie Hebdo: total freedom of expression has little chance of survival in an imperfect society

You like Voltaire quotes?
How about this one:

By the way, I'm not quoting Voltaire here because I agree with him, I'm just pointing out that you might want to find a more inspirational and decent source for quotes, seeing as the man was a racist bigot.