Are we fiddling, while the barbarians of religion storm the gates?

This sounds not the least bit racist.......

Is liberalism too Pollyanna in the face of poverty-driven fanaticism?

I doubt that many here would label themselves as liberals.  There's a socialist or at least social democratic (of the unreconstructed variety) strain to the debate here.

Which brings me to a simple question.  If poverty is the root of fanaticism, isn't it better to combat poverty than get sucked into the meaningless fight that is the culture wars?


And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

Is Charlie Hebdo all alone?

No, Pamela Geller, Gates of Vienna and many more are still there. In fact, the number of sites and media attempting to humiliate Muslims is even growing.

Are the intellectuals blind to the grassroots of self-segregation?

No. Scaremongering about the Muslim hordes invading Europe grabbing the generous gifts that the welfare state has on offer is well developed or what else can you mean? Self-segregation? Define!

It depends which Islam you are talking about. One of the primary difficulties of being a Muslim today is that one is subject to intellectual terrorism by extremists who attempt to dictate what it is to be a Muslim. In my experience, the Salafists who are the worst offenders, are about as representative as Muslims in general as Fred Phelps of Westboro is representative of American Christians.

Certain segments or tendencies of Islam have a big issue with portrayals of Mohamed. This has always been the case, and there has always been great diversity on this issue among Muslims.  Bad taste to quote Wikipedia, but the article is pretty well-referenced :

Depictions of Muhammad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The permissibility of depictions of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, has long been a concern in the religion's history. Oral and written descriptions are readily accepted by all traditions of Islam, but there is disagreement about visual depictions.^[1][2] The Quran does not explicitly forbid images of Muhammad, but there are a few hadith (supplemental teachings) which have explicitly prohibited Muslims from creating visual depictions of figures.

Most Sunni Muslims believe that visual depictions of all the prophets of Islam should be prohibited^[3] and are particularly averse to visual representations of Muhammad.^[4] The key concern is that the use of images can encourage idolatry.^[5] In Shia Islam, however, images of Muhammad are quite common nowadays, even though Shia scholars historically were against such depictions.^[4][6] Still, many Muslims who take a stricter view of the supplemental traditions will sometimes challenge any depiction of Muhammad, including those created and published by non-Muslims.^[7]

The Arabian tradition tended to forbid all portrayal of living things. This seems to have broken down a bit in the TV age. The Turkish pictorial tradition is of course the counter-example.

But the more important thing to bear in mind is that any historical tradition or sacred law forbidding portrayal of Mohammed or anyone else could only apply, by definition, within territories governed by a Muslim political power. Postulating an obligation to accede to demands of non-depiction based on a notion of religious freedom is completely fallacious and baseless. The demand is explicitly political, conceived as such by those making it and claiming to speak for all Muslims, and it is our duty to resist it.


_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Really? It's not the Muslims I'd worry about. Christian fundamentalism seems a much more current threat.

A swedish kind of death:

I have no problem supporting muslems who wants to exercise their right to portray their profet. But that is not generally what happens, what generally happens is that westerners brought up in Christianity finds easy targets in another culture and thereby feeds the fundamentalists sense of a culture war against another culture.

Lets also remember that pictures of Muhammed - and republishing those pictures - became a big deal in February 2006 when non-violent protests, boycotts and symbolic destruction (flags, an empty embassy in Syria) in the Muslem world had got Aftenposten to apologise for offense they caused (30th of January 2005). Yes, it is a pitty for comic writers that gets caught up in a culture war they did not ask for, but it is not like this is the only taboo out there. Just by following the news, I have after January 2006 noticed that comics of the royalty in the nude is forbidden in Spain, as well as depicting cops as pigs is forbidden in France.

I can add that the right to depict other cultures prophets are not a very important right. In my book it is about as important as using particular garments in other religions holy buildings.

Secularism in traditionally Christain countries is not under assault from Islam. If it is under assault from Christianity, then fundie Cristians uses Islam to conjure up an enemy that demands supporting our own fundies lest the other fundies get us.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

but I don't recall much about the ascendancy of political Islam

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

So all these fall into one big category called "people who take religion seriously":

• Radical Islamists.
  
• Semi-secular Moslems.
  
• The Pope.
  
• Secular Europeans who pay taxes to support churches.
  
• Fundamentalist Americans who stand on street corners and shout about Bible passages.
  
• Radio preachers.
  
• NASCAR fans and rodeo cowboys.
  
• Atheists who think about their atheism.
  
• Cosmologists.

Just the way things are.

When a Muslim Three-Percenter commits an act of violence the media do not, generally, broadcast "A Mentally Ill Person" did such-and-such.  What is generally broadcast is "A Muslim" did such-and-such.  Lots of reasons for this.  99.99% of them bad.  

But what this does is shift the Public Discourse from, "How do we treat the mentally ill" to "OMG!!!!!  How do we save ->Western Civilization<- from these Mooselems in our midst?"  (At least that's how it works in the US.)  Lot's of reasons for this.  99.99% of them are bad.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

if moslems anywhere started publishing provocative pix of jesus doing obscene things (i know we already have artists in 'xtian' countries doing this already, so se beat them to it, lol!), would we think it was great for free speech, if our xtian fundies got hot'n'bothered and started firebombing their newspapers?

it's so fucking juvenile a. to let your own faith be so high and mighty in your own mind that it begs to be lampooned, and b. give a rat's posterior if it is.

it is not moslem countries who have been bombing our homelands, it is not moslems who are making shit up to justify wars for others' resources, mostly they want to attract others to their religion by example rather than the xtian insufferable coercion-through-fear'n'guilt 'our' side has burdened the planet with for centuries, in the name of a prophet who explicitly did not.

these ancient monotheisms have been encrusted with obsolescence since the day when they started forgetting their humble roots, gold lacquering their temple spires and insinuating their wiles into politics.

if we really want to keep our right to free(ish) speech, we should use it responsibly, not like a red rag in a bullpen, not only because it's stupid for the bulls, but because it's stupid for us too, it's being arrogant.

not because of their poor little tender feelings their widdle avatar might theoretically feel so vulnerable to, 500+ years after his death but because it's beneath us to go push teh stupid button just because we can, big whoop, watch them jump up'n'down and set fire to things. hardy har... ain't they cute? aren't we the masters?

when i was a young teenager i used to visit my godparents in sussex. they had one of those mountain shepherd horns, the really long ones.

i used to like to take it out on the balcony overlooking the next door farms and give it a good blow till i got the embouchure right and pow, the sound was really great! the funnest part was watching the cows scatter and run around almost a mile away!

i grew out of it, and respectfully would ask if we could grow up as a culture when it comes to getting along with our neighbours. being callow is not hip or avant-guarde or cutting edge or kewl, it's just dumb, and considering the long train of insults they have had to put up with from the rumsfelds et al to their nations and pride, it's colossally, head-bangingly stupid, and makes us look like we're in high school.

it's not the silly cartoons per se, but the cock-a-snook sniper aspect that is especially galling, if we are sincere about inviting them to a better form of politics than the muslim brotherhood is capable of, this has to be one of the clumsiest ways of making that effort.

epic fail... to the point that i really have to wonder if there isn't a psyops side to it all. it's that dumb, like giving land to air missiles to the mujahaddin was.

religion is not the real problem here, fanaticism is, and i hear it in those defending the right to free speech, no matter what, and damn the consequences. we can nip religious extremism in the bud without winding up the loons.


'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

I need time to frame this correctly (as I have said, I don't like ormondotvos's framing), but the important issues, to my mind, are specifically French on the one hand, and pan-islamic on the other. It is no surprise that the voices calling for death and destruction, legal measures, or street demonstrations against Charlie Hebdo are the very same politico-religious movements which are the most reactionary forces in, for example, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Their aims are antithetical to ours. To my mind, CH are fighting the good fight with respect to "self-segregation" which is a real issue in certain sections of the French underclass. It's about constructing alternative narratives, and opening doors to enable vulnerable young people to resist the easy out which is identity politics.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

If the point driven is about awareness of the developments in the Arab revolts and the sectarian violence, that would be a worthy discussion. Just to posit a theorem without providing arguments will not suffice.

'Sapere aude'

There has been enough pointless catfighting in this thread.

If it flares up again (as it seems to promise to), comments in this thread will be closed.

But I doubt it would be of any interest. Everyone here already has their own opinion of it.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}