There are religions that were never violent. There are religions that had their violent days, mostly behind them now. And then there are religions that have extremely violent members, for whom the violence isn’t just a one-off tactic by the occasional lone wolf, it’s fundamentally built into their version of that religion at an institutional level. Today, it looks like some assholes from that kind of faith struck a deadly blow against free press and basic decency:
CNN — Hooded, black-clad gunmen burst into the office of a provocative French satirical magazine Wednesday, killing four cartoonists and eight others before heading off onto the streets of Paris.
While it wasn’t immediately clear who was behind the late morning attack, French officials viewed it as a blatant act of terrorism. And there were fears that things could get worse, with the assailants still on the loose.
“We need to find the actors of this terrorist act,” French President Francois Hollande said. “They must be arrested and brought before judges and condemned as quickly as possible. France is shocked today.”
These guys just do not get the concept of a free press or freedom of expression. That’s one of the most worrisome tendencies of many religions in general, zero tolerance and vicious punishment for the most minor perceived slights. And right now, Sunni fundamentalism or militant ISIS Wahhabism or whatever we’re calling it these days seems to be the most ruthless, sick twisted religious ideology of the lot.
I’ve seen a lot of tweets about how our prayers are with the French people and the families of the victims, I understand the sentiment and sensitivity is warranted in the wider public sphere. But here on FTB, I can’t help but note it was, in a sense, prayer that caused this shit in the first place. Basically, a belief in ancient magic and supernatural justification received, as odds are these guys prayed quite a bit before deciding they had the thumbs up from an invisible sky wizard to murder 12 innocent people in cold blood.
I’ll update as necessary, right now the feed is that these thugs got away.
Update: There are conflicting reports, NBC News just reported on TV, one terrorist dead, the other two in custody.
I think you are misattributing today’s attack to religion. First and foremost the perpetrators are responsible for this, not religion. Just because some terrorists project their vicious motivations onto their victims through the prism of religion is no reason for us to collude in their excuses. Therefore I totally disagree that it was, even in “a sense”, a “prayer” that caused this shit in the first place. In saying that, you are seeking to reduce an attack by people who are responsible for it to a religion-only issue, thereby diluting responsibility and fueling anti-religious and particularly anti-muslim bigotry. That just makes a bad situation worse.
Also I do not think we should be minimising the actions of these people by deploying the too-mild insult “assholes”. That’s a throw-away scatological expletive that should be reserved for mere bigots. These are vile murderers. Let’s hope they’re caught and our society is made safe from them.
Most civilised people want peace, as I do. I don’t care whether people pray for it or are otherwise motivated to work for it. If I am in a public square demonstrating against these terrorists and people call for prayer, I will stand alongside them. A prayer takes five minutes. Peace takes years to build.
I’m not sure what your point is. They are on video shouting God is Great in Arabic as they were shooting innocent people in the head who have, in the past, shown images portraying the Prophet Mohammed. So yes, all signs are this was a religiously motivated attack carried out by religious extremists for clear cut, well established religious reasons. These kinds of attacks have a long, known history, they have happened before, it is a near certainty they will happen again, ergo this particular form of religion is indeed culpable and those who practice it and advise it do not deny that fact. Indeed, they celebrate it.
As far as the term asshole, you’re right, that’s not nearly good enough. Allow me to be more precise: this version of militant Islam is an exceedingly ugly, violent, misogynistic, horrific intolerant faith straight out of the worst of Medieval times that the world, and the majority of its own practitioners and victims, would be better off without in every way measurable by any standard of modern decency and freedom.
@2 You know exactly what my point is. I blame the perpetrators, you blame something else.
Just because a murderer gives an excuse for murdering someone is no reason for us to amplify the excuse for them and so take the responsibility off them. In this case by describing a “particular form of religion” as “culpable” you do exactly that. How can an abstract thing like religion be culpable? People are culpable. If by religion you mean muslims, then no, they’re not responsible, because this crime wasn’t carried out by peaceful, law-abiding muslims, it was carried out by murderers. Their status as muslims is irrelevant. Their religion is irrelevant. They are murderers, pure and simple. They should be hunted down, captured and punished. Escalating their actions to a war of words against religion lets them off the hook and creates an irrelevant conflict elsewhere.
In secular France, such public expressions of religion are rare and not particularly well thought of, although I’m sure that coming from other cultures they’ll be received in the spirit in which they were intended.
And yes, religion is frequently ruthless in its self-promotion. What other evidence does it have?
I think it’s silly and takes a bit of cognitive dissidence for many in this community to so easily blame christianity as a whole for all sorts of problems, yet when a group of muslims do something as disgusting and murdering people many are quick to cry notallmuslims. It takes even more mental gymnastics when you consider the fact that these people were killed for portraying the profit mohammed which is against muslim rules. If the religion did not have this rule these men would not have died no matter how disgusting and immoral they were on an individual level. You are right though they are murderers and should be hunted down but their religion is not irrelevant when it provides a motive for the murder.
Aw gee if only the Paris police where armed….Oh wait, they were.
Agreed my2. But I think many readers on FTB have no problem blaming Christians who do horrible things in the name of their faith either. Hitler’s version of Christanity, the KKK’s version, etc. Totally fair game imo. But I think what happens is there is some degree of blanket hatred of all Muslims, peaceful, nerdy, tedious, or charming ones, along with the violent nutcases, by the religious right. And our kneejerk reaction as progressives or atheists, formed over decades now, is to pushback on the religious right. It’s not an easy balancing act, there is a component of religious intolerance in that blanket hatred and there is component of understandable anger over things like 9-11 and the Paris Massacre. They’re skilled at blending, baiting and switching those two motivations along with the super set and the subset.
But really, I think here we should exercise equality and call em as we see em; we value freedom of expression and freedom of the press over any religious interference, regardless if that interference is pursued with terrorism or democracy. In the latter case we fight at the ballot box and in the ledge, in the other case we do what we can to limit the carnage, and feel free to oppose and condemn all restrictions on freedom without hesitation.
The odd thing is, I just learned today that the ACTUAL tenet within the Sunni Muslim faith regarding the display of images of Mohamed was designed to curtail idolatry.
funny, but murdering someone over their depiction of that image, when they don’t share your faith at all, seems the most extreme form of idolatry imaginable.
you literally worship the image of Mohamed so much, you are willing to kill someone who displays a version of it not to your liking.
it’s like killing someone because they painted Jesus as rightly Mediterranean in features, instead of the white european version that has become so commonplace.
how does that show respect? how is that not, literally, idolatry?
Horrified by what happened in France today / last night. Killing people over cartoons? Flippin’ cartoons! Evil. Awful. Insufficient words.
But won’t say any more.
Except condolences to the victims here.
Except also that the pieces of excrement have disgraced, once again the religion they claim to believe in and that none of the Muslims I have ever met would agree with them or think they did right.
@5 You see, here you equivocate, and you do it with the magical retrospective prediction of “would have/would not have” for which you have zero compelling evidence and just a fixed prejudice. You thereby take some of the blame off the murderers and put it on the religion as a whole, and the religion as a whole includes all muslims. I agree, everybody should look to themselves for cognitive dissonance. Everybody.
I deliberately and openly say not all muslims are responsible for these murders. That is what a court of law will say if the prayers of the vigils are answered and these men are caught. They will say three men are responsible for these murders. Three muslims and any directly involved accomplices. Not 1.6 billion muslims.
And no, I don’t blame christianity as a whole for anything either. As a community, we need to get a bit more discerning about the way we use our categories.
PS. I don’t know what the murdered journalists, editors and cartoonists last words were – but I hope at least one of them spat out a final :
“Fuck you and the batshit crazy interpretation of the religion you scumbag pieces of pigshit disgrace by supposedly believing in and doing this for! Oh and you are still pathetic ridiculous fucking swine!”
Je suis Charle Hebdo
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-08/jesuis-charlie-social-media-reacts-to-charlie-hebdo-shooting/6005672
Plus :
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/heartbreaking-cartoons-from-artists-in-response-to-the-ch?utm_term=.qj57y0zo5
The cartoons that offended these scum? (& that’s doing scum a diservice!) They shoud;lbe onthefornt page of every newspaper in the Western world tomorrow. Unpixillated, uncensored and as a big “UP YOURS!!!” to those who would kill for their Imaginary Sky-Fiend and his long dead deluded Arabian warlord.
@ 10. exi5tentialist :
Agreed. I’d even go as far as saying that’s stating the flippin’ obvious.
These three pieces of porcine excrement do NOT represent most Muslims – but they do believe in and were motivated by their fouled up (mis?)understanding of Islam.
No, they don’t represent all Muslims any more than the Westboro scumbags represent all Christianty but..
I must not hate. Hatred is easy and so very wrong. But damn it is hard to avoid when shit like this happens.
The world and humanity generally .. so fouled up and horrible at times.
Hatred doesn’t help but comes so easily because, really, the atrocities that happen and the evil that does them.
Think and be kind.
Simple words. So hard to live up to at times.
Yet we must. Think and be kind and try to find solutions to evil (nightsoil) and evil people.
When a lot of people talk about the evils of Islam here, what they really mean is the Wahhabist sect. This poison has infected much, but not all, of a religion that used to be far more benign.
Talking about the West being in a “War against Islam” is stupid and counterproductive. However, talking about a War against Wahabbi is a fairly accurate description of what is going on now. Of course, saying that would put us on a collision course with our good buddies in the House of Saud, who are actually our real enemies here.
There are religions that were never violent
Such as?
Three examples at least spring to my mind – Jainism :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
Plus Quakers (aka the Religious Society of Friends – also via wikipedia) and Pastafarians.
Rastafarians generally being pretty mellow too as I grok it. You did ask.
This :
http://www.onbeing.org/blog/9-points-to-ponder-on-the-paris-shooting-and-charlie-hebdo/7193
Is how one truly good, intelligent and compassionate human being and writer responds -and that human individual also happens to be a Muslim too. Respect and seconded by me. Read via rq, a commenter on the Pharyngula blog here who I would thank there were I able to do so. (Due to me messing up and being an arsehole before I cannot.)
@brucegee1962 : “Talking about the West being in a “War against Islam” is stupid and counterproductive.”
The term generally used for that is even stupider war against terror as if you can fight an emotion, well I can you can but not with military force. The way to fight terror – the emotion of extreme fear is with courage and with seeking to understand. Frank Herbert also made a few suggestions on how to fight it in Dune,whcihIwas slightly riffing off in #13 :
http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Litany_Against_Fear
“”I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing….only I will remain.”
Fear and hatred and other motions can consume us if we let them. Those two emotions in particular can take us to some really horrendous places and turn us into really nasty people. They are emotions that should be overcome and as Norweigan PM Jens Stoltenberg said at the end of the piece by Omid Safi quoted in #17 :
We can do that. I think and hope.
^ D’oh! Italics fail. Sure y’all can guess where. Sorry.
Also news update here :
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-08/charlie-hebdo-terror-raids-manhunt-police-france/6006138
Although it’ll no doubt be old news in a few hours or less time.