Taking this entire thing at face value, what is the cartoonist’s actual position on satire?
It would be cool if the Charlie Hebdo tragedy served to both promote free speech in the face of violence and to not incite further waves of Islamophobia. Too bad it’ll do neither.
We’re not talking about history, we’re talking about now; and one group of people being assholes in the past isn’t a good excuse for another group being assholes now.
The issue is not truly that the Islamic religion supports martyrdom - I can’t think of a religion that doesn’t - or that it’s more susceptible to terrorist ideals than other religions.
Plenty of religions don’t (even if they may have in the past), and certainly most don’t currently to the extent that the extreme forms of Islam I’m talking about do.
It’s the fact that the underlying conditions of life in those areas are such that it leads to feelings of severe oppression, which in turn lead to terrorist ideals. The religious angle is more the release valve for these people - if it wasn’t religion it would be something else, but in most cases without a concrete target for this aggression (such as a military dictator), a feeling of religious persecution is the easy focus.
Even if that were true, and that’s debatable, how can you hope to remove religion from the equation when talking about the underlying conditions of these societies? With the exception of the Ba’athists and Egypt, most of the Muslim states in the region in recent times have either been either outright theocracies, hybrid-theocracies, or theocracies in all but name. You simply cannot remove religion as one of the major factors for the lack of development of their ecconomies (or in cases where there has been wealth creation (mostly via oil), the repression of their citizens and failure to spread that wealth around).
Charlie Hebdo doesn’t only pick on Muslims.
“Go into movies, like Polanski…”
“Charlie Hebdo must be veiled!”
“The father, the son, and the holy ghost”. A comment on same-sex marriage.
“The true history of baby Jesus”.
"Islamophobia: Should we be afraid of little Jesus?”
Deleted.
Xenophobia being an example of barbarity from the Middle Ages. So yes, you should applaud xenophobia because you seem to actually be on its side.
Yeah, they remind me of an idiot like Bill Maher who goes “See, see! ALL religions are bad!” and then goes on to talk about how Muslims inherently have something wrong with them.
Bill Maher has never said anything like that. This straw man tactic is getting old, misrepresenting criticism of extreme forms of Islam as hatred of all Muslims is such bullshit.
All I’ve seen of Charlie Hebdo is the front pages. What is the magazine like, really?
Is it a French Private Eye? Is it just a collection of satirical cartoons?
[quote=“caze, post:106, topic:49614”]We’re not talking about history, we’re talking about now[/quote]Offhandedly ignoring historical evidence shows the depths of your ignorance. History is the data we have to use in order to understand what is happening now.
[quote=“caze, post:106, topic:49614”]Plenty of religions don’t (even if they may have in the past), and certainly most don’t currently to the extent that the extreme forms of Islam I’m talking about do.[/quote]You’re completely missing the point. The point is that the fact that others have been this bad in the past but not now, and vice versa, points to the larger issue not being the religion but the underlying conditions. Change the religion to something else and it’d be just about as bad. This indicates that it’s not the religion that is the core problem - you cannot fix this be focusing on religion, but must find the root cause that leads to terrorism.
[quote=“caze, post:106, topic:49614”]With the exception of the Ba’athists and Egypt, most of the Muslim states in the region in recent times have either been either outright theocracies, hybrid-theocracies, or theocracies in all but name. You simply cannot remove religion as one of the major factors for the lack of development of their ecconomies (or in cases where there has been wealth creation (mostly via oil), the repression of their citizens and failure to spread that wealth around).[/quote]Sure you can. Religion is the method being used to control the populous, but which religion doesn’t matter. It’s also a cause-and-effect problem; do the poor conditions lead to the theocracies, or do the theocracies lead to the poor conditions? History has shown that it’s mostly the former - as countries get richer they tend away from theocracies. (Note: This only holds if the whole country gets wealthier - if just the people in control of the government do, then they use a regime - religious, ideological, military, etc. - to maintain power.)
You claim that the word “Islamophobia” was created by Muslims to squash criticism. This is what OtherMichael was asking you for citations for. This is what makes it sound like you have hatred towards an entire group of people. And it’s what makes me believe I’m wasting my time replying to you.
Care to back up this sentiment with something other than opinion?
No, that’s not what I said. I said Musilms have promulgated the term and used it to squash criticism - which they unquestionably have. I didn’t say they invented the term, nor invented it for that purpose, nor that they had exclusive use of the term. However, Muslims don’t need to do all the heavy lifting when well meaning non-Muslim liberals will broadly accuse critics of “Islamophobia”, as some are doing right here in this thread.
Citations? I’m questioning it.
Offhandedly ignoring historical evidence shows the depths of your ignorance. History is the data we have to use in order to understand what is happening now.
I’m not ignoring historical evidence, it’s just not relevant to my point. Never mind the fact that I disagree with your interpretation of it.
You’re completely missing the point. The point is that the fact that others have been this bad in the past but not now, and vice versa, points to the larger issue not being the religion but the underlying conditions. Change the religion to something else and it’d be just about as bad. This indicates that it’s not the religion that is the core problem - you cannot fix this be focusing on religion, but must find the root cause that leads to terrorism.
You making hypothetical statements with nothing to back them up doesn’t indicate anything. Religion is still a massive part of society in the Middle East, in a way that is simply no longer the case in the west; it informs decisions at every level, puts limits on human action, speech, education, art, and economics. Terrorism has many causes, and at no point have I claimed it’s all down to religion; but Islamic terrorism is clearly informed by the doctrines of Islam (most obviously in the Shia/Sunni conflict, in stark contrast to the conflict in Northern Ireland for example – which obviously had a religious dimension, but was not based on doctrinal differences), and propagated by a sizable minority (and in some countries a majority) of fundamentalist Muslims throughout the Muslim world (bypassing borders and local political grievances and circumstances).
Thinking that there’s a single root cause that leads to terrorism is naïve in the extreme. Poverty, oppression, careless outside interference from the west, and lack of access to education are all important factors; but so is extremist religion, and in many cases it’s the religion that’s reinforcing or even creating the other problems to begin with. Supporting moderate Muslims and opposing extremists is as important in solving the problem as anything else.
Sure you can. Religion is the method being used to control the populous, but which religion doesn’t matter.
Of course it matters, there’s only one world religion at the moment really attempting to do the controlling (bar perhaps a couple of isolated examples). Sure, if could magically transport 15th century Spanish Catholicism into the Middle East we probably wouldn’t fare much better, but we’re not in the 15th century.
It’s also a cause-and-effect problem; do the poor conditions lead to the theocracies, or do the theocracies lead to the poor conditions? History has shown that it’s mostly the former - as countries get richer they tend away from theocracies.
History shows nothing of the sort, countries got more prosperous and egalitarian when people fought tooth and nail to wrest power from religious systems of control. If it was a simple matter of prosperity then we’d have reached the modern age a few hundred years after the Greeks got the ball rolling (they had already invented the computer ffs), but no, religion was acting in direct opposition to this the whole time. Political Islam is just the last vestige of this sorry mess remaining in the world today.
Question it all you want. Get back to me when all of your own posts are fully footnoted.
I have a lot of respect for Joe Sacco but to be honest I’m disappointed by this statement. I understand and respect his point of view and I think most of his commentaries in this strip are interesting.
But that voluntary racist picture of the black man… wow, really ?
Yes, he’s right, drawing an unfunny offensive picture really proves that unfunny offensive pictures are tastless.
But that’s not what Charlie does.
Their jokes have a context, a meaning. It makes you laugh or it doesn’t. It might offend you. It might be clumsy, bad taste, well it can even be bad (they produce a lot of cartoons every week). But at least it is attempting to make you laugh. It’s not gratuitous like Sacco’s thing.
I’ve been reading Charlie for the last 20 years and please, please, believe me : they are good guys, fighting the good fight.
All people know about them is what you can see in the press today : trash cartoons, almost exclusively about Islam. With no elements of context or even translation, some of them even completely loose their
meaning, with horrific results. The Christine Taubira as a monkey cartoon someone posted here is a really, really sad exemple of that (it means exactly the contrary of what you think ! That’s how the far right depicts her. Putting the name of their party above the cartoon means you wanna vote for these guys ? No it’s not a party like any other. This is how they see black people. It’s a scary cartoon. It’s not supposed to be funny).
And we end up with the world seeing Charlie Hebdo as a xenophobe newspaper… Heartbreaking.
Yes, Charlie publishes gross, punk, childish, offensive cartoons. But it also publishes smart articles about economy, politics, ecology, literature, movies… And don’t believe that Islam is the only topic they mock : they joke mainly about politics, ridiculous personalities, and yes, yes, religions too. I completely understand if it’s shocking to some of us. I’m an atheist and I think it’s quite okay to mock religions (and to be honest it makes me laugh). But I know religion is off limits for a lot of people .
But here’s the important point : no media in France has done more to fight racism than Charlie Hebdo. Yes they do offensive jokes about Islam (and catholics -mostly ! they sued them 14 times these last years- and jews and buddhists and whatever), but they do it with a 22 years history of fighting the french far right and the oh so scary Front national party.
When you’re a Charlie reader, you know all that, and you trust the guys. You look at a cartoon featuring Mahomet and you know they’re targeting extremists. It doesn’t even cross your mind that they could despise a whole community.
I certainly don’t mean to sound aggressive or patronizing but it’s just very disappointing to see you
well-intentioned people slightly loathing Charlie… and to think I would do just the same in your place.
I’ve been reading Charlie Hebdo all my adult life and it has only made me a smarter, more generous, positive and tolerant man. We lost precious people. As one of their former journalist said, they were just happy
people trying to make people happy. We need the surviving team to go on and make us laugh and think some more .
Iron age? It’s modern, developed by Western nations in the 20th century.
Beheadings and crucifictions were invented in the 20th century?
You made an inflammatory statement and refuse to back it up with any sort of citation. I can only assume then that your statement…
what was the term?
right! Thanks for that.
That’s a good retort, yet it still applies to you as much as any body.
Yes, there is.
I thought we were talking about the instigation of terror amongst a civilian population by a small force of people? Roots in Russia, perfected by the CIA, amongst others.
nope, that’s not what the sentence you replied to was about. you might want to try reading it again.
