Shooting at Wilders speech in Texas

[Borachio]

No, one could not. No more than you would be asking for it if you ever end up a victim of blind violence when you go out of your house. Frankly, I find your disparaging attitude towards the potential victims here quite offensive.

Isn't it just a bit silly of them, though? You simply don't poke a rabid dog with a stick unless you're looking for trouble.

After the Charlie Hebdo attacks (and others), they surely knew that what they were doing would provoke a reaction. In fact, I'd say they'd have been disappointed not to get one. So, in this sense they really were asking for it.

Of course, the police would have known this too (unless they're totally out of touch with reality, which is always a possibility). And maybe that's why the gunman was successfully shot down before anyone else was injured.

So, in fact, the gunman was "just asking" to be shot.

Maybe the whole thing was a conspiracy between the cartoonists and the police to give the latter some live fire practice against a human target.

As if they need any!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

No, one could not. No more than you would be asking for it if you ever end up a victim of blind violence when you go out of your house. Frankly, I find your disparaging attitude towards the potential victims here quite offensive.

The comparison to "blind violence when you go out of your house" holds no water. Maybe if you were to go out of your house wearing a sandwich board sign that said "hey neighbors, I hate all you [deleted] and I'm hoping to have an opportunity to burn your houses down one day" the comparison would be more apt.

The violent result would still be illegal, but it wouldn't really be "blind" in either case...or unpredictable, which I think was the point.

 

[jackelgull]

I hope you all forgive me if I don't contribute to this thread as one of the few Muslims here, but I'm tired of this. Not only of the Muslims who react with disproportionate violence to these cartoons, but also American cartoonists and their sheer invasiveness when publishing these cartoons. Having stripped Jesus of his meaning and sacred status, Americans are now moving onto our religious figure without our permission or consent and they condemn us when we are angry. So fine, take our prophet. Then I suppose next will be our holy book.

 

[warpus]

Having stripped Jesus of his meaning and sacred status, Americans are now moving onto our religious figure without our permission or consent

The mistake you're making here is assuming that something can be "sacred".

If you want to consider Jesus to be scared, that's fine, but you can't hold such expectations of society as a whole.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

The mistake you're making here is assuming that something can be "sacred".

If you want to consider Jesus to be scared, that's fine, but you can't hold such expectations of society as a whole.

Exactly. From my perspective, all sacred religious figures might as well be the Easter Bunny, they don't seem any less silly.

 

[Phrossack]

Do they have the right to mock Muhammad? Yes. But it seems to me that the defenders of free speech come out swinging on the same side as actual Islamophobes and that defending this sort of thing too much leads one to glorify efforts to be as unproductively offensive as possible. It's one thing to make a political cartoon that mocks a government for its actions. It's quite another to deliberately choose the most important prophet of a religion and make extremely crude caricatures of him purely to get as much of a rise out of others as you can, or merely to show that you can.

It's like if schoolyard bullies find out that a classmate really likes cows, so they start cornering him and eating beef with exaggerated pleasure in front of him, or mooing at him, or showing him photos of dead cows at slaughterhouses, over and over, just to hurt the other kid and to prove that it's technically not prohibited by playground rules. Then the bullied kid has enough and injures or kills someone in the group of bullies. Obviously an awful overreaction, and worse than the bullying itself. Don't get me wrong, bullying doesn't warrant murder. You'll never find me saying that terrorists are better than caricaturing trolls. But I find it hard to believe that we're supposed to rally in defense of the bullies' right to pick on someone for no productive purpose. I'd rather criticize both deliberately offending people for no good reason, and terrorism. Obviously I'd criticize terrorism more, since while both are bad things, that doesn't make them equally bad, but the point remains.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Heh, I think you may mistake some people pointing out that defamation of a religious figure never warrants murder with actual defense of the defamation.

I agree with you completely and my reading of this thread leads me to suspect most other people here do too.

I just don't go along with the notion that asshats who took part in this cartoon drawing convention deserved to be murdered or that murder is in anyway an appropriate reaction.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I'm surprised more people on this site aren't in favor of what these artists were doing. After all, if looting and burning local stores is a valid way to express dissatisfaction with the police, as so many here seemed to think, then having a get together specifically to troll religious extremists has to count as a valid way to express dissatisfaction with religious extremists who kill people for drawing cartoons.

 

[Phrossack]

Heh, I think you may mistake some people pointing out that defamation of a religious figure never warrants murder with actual defense of the defamation.

I agree with you completely and my reading of this thread leads me to suspect most other people here do too.

I just don't go along with the notion that asshats who took part in this cartoon drawing convention deserved to be murdered or that murder is in anyway an appropriate reaction.

Nah, I'm not criticizing the murder-criticizers (I'm one of them, and even said it doesn't warrant murder!). I'm criticizing those who shout "FREEEEDOOOOM!" and draw offensive cartoons out of solidarity with the caricaturists. The caricaturists are bullies and trolls, not valiant heroes of free speech who should be praised, and let's not pretend otherwise. Yeah, they have the right to insult people for little reason, and yeah, they may even sincerely believe that they're risking their lives for free speech.

But there's no valid point to be made by making obscene caricatures of Muhammad. If you want to make a cartoon that has a hypocritical imam saying Islam is a religion of peace while showing the tombstones of victims of Islamist violence, or a list of Islamist terrorist groups, or Koranic suras that advocate slavery and war, go for it. That's a perfectly valid, legitimate criticism to be made. But if you draw, say, Muhammad having a gay orgy, you're not making any point or criticism. You're only drawing it at all because you want to insult people and prove that you have the right to be as big a [jerk] as you can be without breaking a law. My defense of such caricaturists extends to the point of saying that it's not illegal and they shouldn't be killed for it, and it stops there. No praise. No seeing them as heroes.

 

[Tycho Brahe]

I think there is a valid point in blasphemous satire. The point is, that no thought scould be above criticism. No ideology should be untouchable.

Ridicule is the most efficient weapon against totalitarian ideologies. Islam isn't a totalitarian ideology, but it is used as such by some muslims.

Charlie Hedbo isn't islamophobic. It isn't bullying. It's challenging an agenda, and that is healthy and necessary.

 

[JollyRoger]

I'm surprised more people on this site aren't in favor of what these artists were doing. After all, if looting and burning local stores is a valid way to express dissatisfaction with the police, as so many here seemed to think, then having a get together specifically to troll religious extremists has to count as a valid way to express dissatisfaction with religious extremists who kill people for drawing cartoons.

They are trolling religious moderates also though. The Americans in this crowd are the same people that think Christians are being persecuted for a lot less.

 

[uppi]

Ridicule is the most efficient weapon against totalitarian ideologies. Islam isn't a totalitarian ideology, but it is used as such by some muslims.

Is it? When has ridicule ever changed anything?

I rather see it as a way to cope with things you are powerless to change.

 

[Zkribbler]

I'm not sure why you felt the need to use scare quotes there. Free speech absolutely covers attempts to be deliberately offensive. This is the United States, not Saudi Arabia.

"nsulting or 'fighting words,' those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] … have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem." ...The U.S. Supreme Court in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire.

I submit that the amount of security hired by the organizers indicates that they were aware their event could well "incite an immediate breach of the peace," and therefore, the drawing fit the legal definition of fighting words. The purpose of the event was at minimum an effort to humiliate a religious minority and possibly an attempt to incite violence.

IMHO, the organizers have committed negligent homicide.

That having been said, it cannot be denied that, out of two million American Muslims, only two were unstable/immature enough to take the bait. These two committed murder and lost their own lives because of their stupidity.

 

[El_Machinae]

That's true, but one could say that they "called for it".

Maybe in a "come at me, bro" sense.

 

[BvBPL]

Murphy's words aside, the fighting words exception is not "well-defined" in the least.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

They are trolling religious moderates also though. The Americans in this crowd are the same people that think Christians are being persecuted for a lot less.

I'm an American in this thread! And I think the notion that Christians are in any way persecuted in this country is laughable.

 

[JollyRoger]

I'm talking about the one's that showed up for the artfest (myself excepted).

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Murphy's words aside, the fighting words exception is not "well-defined" in the least.

And I don't see how that ruling would apply here anyway. This was not an "immediate breach of the peace". They didn't knock on these guys' doors and wave the pictures in their face. These guys had to plan and go out of their way to respond to it.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I'm talking about the one's that showed up for the artfest (myself excepted).

Ah, that makes sense, thanks for clarifying.

I bet there had to at least a few who were there for free speech issues though, right?

 

[ParkCungHee]

I think there is a valid point in blasphemous satire. The point is, that no thought scould be above criticism. No ideology should be untouchable

How do you feel about A. Wyatt Mann's cartoons then? Valid Point?