That [Charlie Hebdo] doesn't cause harm to you, but it does to others. <snipped> What cause harm is subjective, people feel different according to many factors, one of the most important is cultural background.
You are confusing two words. The word "harmed" is not the same thing as "insulted". No cartoon published by Charlie Hebdo harmed anybody! If you can explain to me how "harm" is subjective I'll believe you, but until then I'm calling BS.
It's amazing to me that you and others can't differentiate between satire and actual hatefulness. If I wanted to, I can ridicule Islam just for the sake of ridicule, without even intending to make any valid point about Islam or Muslim society. That is not what Charlie Hebdo did. Like I said, more reasonable people would either brush it off as foolishness, or be a bit more introspective and consider if the criticism doesn't also have some truth to it that may be worth looking into. Personally, I didn't find Charlie Hebdo's cartoons all that funny, but anybody with a brain understands what point they were trying to make. Pointing out valid issues, as they did for all religions and French politicians, is not hatefulness.
Harm only came about because some people are so weak in their faith, so delusional in their beliefs, and so limited in their intellectual capacity, that they saw no other option than to resort to violence. Only then did people really get
harmed!
I think US is more liberal but I suspect most countries in the west has laws that limit "hate speech", in penal or civil laws.
<snipped>
So, this invalidate most of what you wrote.
No. It doesn't invalidate any of what I wrote. You're acting as if there is some double standard. You're acting as if insults to some groups of people in the UK and France are already outlawed, and that the UK and France just haven't yet gotten around to legally applying or enforcing the same standards to Islam. That is BS. You just don't understand the difference between what those laws are declaring to be forbidden, and the things Charlie Hebdo published.
What would be illegal is for me to call for a rally, where I'd encourage everyone to bring along their guns, so we can then all go "Hindu hunting" (no, that's not really a thing). You also can't stand on a soap box in a park and claim all good Christians should kill Muslims. Basically, the whole point of all these laws you mentioned is to make clear, that you can't incite violence.
So, if you can show me even one article or cartoon that Charlie Hebdo published which incites violence, then I'll instantly change my mind and agree with you that they erred in their ways. Nothing I've seen so far suggests that.
Oh yeah, and now that you mention it... how about we talk about the anti-hate laws in middle eastern societies, and how those are enforced when large parts of Muslim society call for individuals not living in their societies (in France or Denmark), be murdered for something that was drawn or written? How often do we hear Muslim voices calling for hate-speech laws in those societies? There we really do have double standards...
The evidence is that 3 people sacrificed their lives to stop that publication, and killed ?18?.
No. They didn't stop anything. These murderers wasted their lives and did nothing except make things far worse, and like bijak_riyandi said, I too fear that it will be a difficult year for Muslims in Europe as a result.
What did they really achieve?
- Instead of their usual circulation of 60'000 copies, today's issue of Charlie Hebdeo has been pre-ordered by over three million people in France alone.
- The magazine has already made clear that they will continue to publish the type of satire they always have, as it is what those who were killed would have wanted.
- Instead of just being released in French, the publication will now be translated into five languages, including Arabic.
- Just as there are idiots in Muslim society who think such acts of violence are somewhat justified, there are the same type of idiots in other societies as well, who already have taken this as justification to perpetrate or excuse violence against innocent Muslims.
If you truly think this stopped anything, you have absolutely no understanding of how humans work. Such violence
can stop individual human lives, but it
can't stop ideas. It will actually achieve the exact opposite, by making people more extreme in their support of the ideas they think are under violent attack!
You can't shoot an idea. What you can do is argue and debate over ideas, but guess what? That requires that we have the freedom to occasionally insult those who don't agree with us, because sometimes people are so ideologically blinded that they can't see the difference between constructive criticism in the form of satire, and what is actually a hateful insult or inciting violence.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram