The Islamophobia Thread

My point still stands, though—the rule against depicting him definitely harms people.

I honestly think that in this regard, there is a bit of bothsiderism.

Murder is still murder. No matter how offensive you might find somebody painting on a piece of paper, there is no comparison between the two.

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Yeah, and I see a lot of people going "Well, the Charlie Hebdo people weren't exactly innocent, though..."

A friend of mine said "Look, I certainly don't support the terrorist attacks, but—" I interrupted and said "Such a relief to hear. Finally I know for a fact that you don't support terrorist attacks. I'm glad to hear that." (I got a laugh out of her for that.

That's my main problem with a lot of people—they made a cursory denouncement of the terrorist attacks just to be sure, and then went on a long tirade against the caricatures, which they were clearly more eager to criticize than mass murder.

That murder victims were publishing bigoted cartoons doesn't mean that it's wrong to just say "Murder is bad" without following it up with a "buuuuut..."

Edited by JamesJames on Oct 27th 2020 at 12:13:47 PM

"Punching bad is bad but mocking a vulnerable minority is not punching down" is identical in practice to "Punching down is not bad".

Furthermore, I'm not sure what you mean by "pope-like figure". Islam does not have a centralized church.

No, this isn't an acceptable standard. We can dislike multiple people. Murderous fundamentalists are bad, as are bigots who punch down.

Just because members of Charlie Hebo were murdered does not mean that I'm going to start liking them.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Oct 27th 2020 at 12:13:39 PM

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn

@ eagleoftheninth pretty much said the majority of what I wanted to express, so I will only complement what he said.

I can't speak as a Muslim -I am a Catholic; lapsed yes, but still-, but I can definitely speak as someone from a Third World country, and the issue of mocking Islam is that not only you are punching down on the Muslim minorities of the West, which is bad enough in itself, you are also punching down on the rest of the Muslim countries.

Now you might be wondering, how exactly is mocking the Prophet punching down on those countries? Aren't those countries mostly Muslim so shouldn't it be punching up?

Yes, Islam is majority on those countries so the logic of the dynamic of power between minorities and majorities doesn't apply, but here's the thing: How many of said countries are actually part of the First World? Qatar? The United Arab Emirates?

I think you are seeing where I'm heading, right? Most of the Islamic countries are part of the Third World, the countries which still struggle to maintain internal stability and whose population have to get by somehow, not to mention they barely have a say in what happens in the world at large and are mostly at the mercy of the big fishes.

And this is where I have to return to the "Religion is part of Culture" bit. I don't doubt that there might be some Muslims who are lapsed or simply do things by the rule rather than belief, but there's a difference between doing self-deprecating humour about the religion of your fellow citizens and someone from a privileged and rich country doing so.

Furthermore, you know how religion and economical class tends to intersect? Well, most of the time it is the poor who are the most religious in comparison to the people of the middle class or the rich so those pictures end up being a double punching down.

Does this mean that we should abandon Freedom of Speech? Of course not, it's a vital human right and nobody should take that away. What we should do however is to not look at things in a vacuum but rather at the whole picture.

Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.

First of all, Imma be a punctilio and point out that you mean "workers at," not "members of." It's a magazine, not a club. (And yes, I'm delightful at parties.)

And I'm not saying you have to love them. I'm saying that it's a problem that so many people criticized bigoted cartoons at more length, and with more vigor, than they criticized mass murder.

Here's the thing: The prohibition against depictions Muhammad doesn't apply to non-Muslims.

However, the prohibition against depictions doesn't just apply to making them, it also applies to owning them and looking at them.

Putting insulting depictions of Muhammad in a newspaper, knowing that this will get on the national and probably international news is pretty much equivalent to intentionally and knowingly serving a congregation of Jews (or, for that matter, of Muslims) a meal consisting entirely of pork products for no other reason than to insult and harass them.

Just because you don't believe it's harmful to them doesn't mean you're not intentionally forcing something on them that they believe is wrong.

Angry gets shit done.

Or in other words: Freedom of speech doesn't mean you have to be a dick.

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

To be perfectly blunt, as long as you don't do it for the specific purpose of making them break their religious rules, then that's their problem to solve, and not other people's responsibility.

Let's say that they felt that way about pictures of any person or living thing. Nobody non-Muslim would argue that we should act in accordance with that rule. So why should it be different with Mohammed in particular?

Edited by JamesJames on Oct 27th 2020 at 12:25:50 PM

But is there a reason to print a picture of Muhammed other than to offend people who'd rather you didn't?

"I'm allowed to do this" is a pretty weak justification when someone points out something's a dick move.

Edited by Bisected8 on Oct 27th 2020 at 7:32:35 PM

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Make your target audience laugh with the drawings? The people who buy Charlie-Hebdo are not the ones offended by blasphemous contents.

Edited by Medinoc on Oct 27th 2020 at 8:33:27 PM

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

And who're they laughing at, then?

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Or as part of a course on free speech. Like the teacher whose head got chopped off.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Sure. Letting people know what the caricatures look like definitely has news value. Also, you could do it because, through caricature, you want to criticize some part of his teachings, like the Hell-for-all-the-atheists part.

Now, whether these are good reasons is for each of you to decide for yourselves. But it's pretty obvious, if you ask me, that news channels who showed the drawings did it because the drawings were relevant details of the story, and not because they wanted to harm Muslims.

Edited by JamesJames on Oct 27th 2020 at 12:34:30 PM

Depending on how cynical you are, Islam or Muslims.

Edited by Medinoc on Oct 27th 2020 at 8:34:25 PM

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Hey.

Just butting in to say that this thread is very informative. As a person from a heavily catholic nation, thousands of miles away from the Middle East and Europe, without the diversity of population that a first world nation attracts, who has lterally never met a single muslim person in my entire life, the opinions and posts of several people here are severely informative and thoughtful. They help me understand the issue behind several of the distant, foreign idiosyncracies that media glosses over, both historically and contextually.

Special kudos to eagleofninth

Still will call each and every single one of you gringos if I ever see you in person though.

Edited by Aszur on Oct 27th 2020 at 1:36:37 PM

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

By the way, I remember reading somewhere (back during the initial affair) that the initial cartoon outrage had been manufactured, by people inserting actual anti-arab, anti-muslim material along with the original ones from the newspaper before showing the lot to Muslim authority figures.

Edited by Medinoc on Oct 27th 2020 at 8:38:09 PM

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Islam doesn't allow depictions of religious figures in general. Attributing this rule to respecting Muhammad's personal wish to not be depicted doesn't make much sense. It retroactively applies to all figures and religious imagery in general.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

All that I have to say to that is "Islam bad, lol" isn't the brave stand people seem to think it is. You only need to look at hate crime statistics to confirm that.

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That's complex. Sure, it can be very profitable to hate Islam. There are lots of pundits who get to speak to millions of YouTube followers, millions of readers and millions of TV viewers about how they, the pundits, are "being silenced" (that is, don't reach even more millions of people, and aren't featured on even more TV shows).

With that said, it's not like you lose nothing by being an outspoken Islamophobe. Now, that's not always undeserved—if you always talk about how Muslims are horrible, then it's pretty reasonable for a principal of a school with a lot of Muslims to figure that hiring you might not be a good move. You wouldn't hire a militant vegan for a slaughterhouse.

Edited by JamesJames on Oct 27th 2020 at 12:50:41 PM

And lumping criticism and satire in with genuine bigotry isn't good faith either.

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I mean, they're not mutually exclusive.

Interesting arguments. How would you guys say this pertains to cults and sects? Mocking them would clearly be punching down, as they are not a majority anywhere. Or do their religious feelings not count?

Can we mock Scientology? Mormons? Jehova's Witnesses?

Very good point. Honestly, I have always found the difference between Cults and Religions negligible. It very much only comes down to the number of believers.

What many of them teach is pretty ridiculous, but it's not necessarily more crazy than what is in certain religious texts.

Edited by Forenperser on Oct 27th 2020 at 11:22:40 AM

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I'm an atheist, but that's horseshit.

What Scientologists believe was made up by a science fiction writer in the 50s using Scifi tropes and scientific misunderstandings from the 50s.

The world's major religions and, indeed, religions in general at the very least have the benefit of explaining inconsistencies with scientific discovery by positing the existence of the supernatural.

Angry gets shit done.