Anyone searching for sanity in the Batley Grammar school row can enjoy the news that pupils have rallied to save their teacher’s job. Sir was suspended for showing his class a cartoon of the Prophet Mohamed – the image that in 2015 Islamists took such offence to they murdered 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine that created and published the work. For a brief while lots of politicians chanted “Je Suis Charlie”. Now to show the cartoon to students at a secular school in the UK in an effort to get them thinking and foster debate gets you tossed from a job. The teacher is said to be in hiding.
Lots of people angered that the cartoon was shown protested at the school gates. The West Yorkshire school agreed with the protestors, calling the image “inappropriate”. Headteacher Gary Kibble apologised “unequivocally”. He is “investigating” the teacher.
The students are robust. They have rallied to the teacher’s defence:
“The religious studies teacher was trying to educate students about racism and blasphemy. He warned the students before showing them the images and he had the intent to educate them. He does not deserve such large repercussions. He is not a racist and did not support the Islamophobic cartoons in any manner. This has got out of hand and due to this the students have missed out on lessons.”
As ever, it’s not the open-minded, inquisitive children we should fret about, it’s the adults.
Image: In this Sept.19, 2012 file photo, Charb, the publishing director of the satyric weekly Charlie Hebdo, displays the front page of the newspaper as he poses for photographers in Paris. He was killed.
Remember all that ‘Je Suis Charlie’, the outpouring of solidarity after the deadly attack by Islamists on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The mag published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. On January 7 2015, in response Islamists murdered 12 people. This week Charlie Hebdo republished those cartoons, all 12 of them. “Tout ça pour ça,” says the headline – “All of that for this.”
Very soon 14 people will go on trial accused of helping the two Islamist attackers carry out their massacre. Hebdo has honoured the victims in the best way it can, by championing free speech and the right to cause offence – by mocking oppressive piety in all its guises, showing us how dumb humanity can be and that what we revere might just be another human with an active imagination. That does not mean you can be gratuitously offensive and rude. You need to make a point about shared humanity for satire to work best.
Too many who marched beneath the banners “Je Suis Charlie” are less champions of free thought and speech than they are against Muslims, possessed of monocular vision and the ugly inability to treat people are individuals, lumping all Muslims as something uniquely other and wrong.
People have asked the magazine to republish the images. And many doubtless just delighted in poking Islam and would be upset where their own beliefs caustically lampooned. But, as the magazine’s editorial says, the time was not right. There was no point.
“We have always refused to do so, not because it is prohibited – the law allows us to do so – but because there was a need for a good reason to do it, a reason which has meaning and which brings something to the debate,” it says. “To reproduce these cartoons in the week the trial over the January 2015 terrorist attacks opens seemed essential to us.”
Lead image: Pallbearers carry the casket of Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Bernard Verlhac, known as Tignous, decorated by friends and colleagues of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, at the city hall of Montreuil, on the outskirts of Paris, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015
A man has ben shot dead at Copenhagen’s Krudttoenden café, where a debate on free speech was underway.
The talk – called Art, blasphemy and the freedom of expression – featured an address by the French ambassador, the sight of Swedish artist Lars Vilks and the ghost of Salman Rushdie, who, though not there in person, was remembered for this being the anniversary of the fatwa that marked his life.
“I saw a masked man running past. A couple of police officers were injured. I clearly consider this as an attack on Lars Vilks.”
Speaking after the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo last month, in which 12 died, Vilks said: “This will create fear among people on a whole different level than we’re used to. Charlie Hebdo was a small oasis. Not many dared do what they did.”
Two gunmen escaped in a dark Volkswagen Polo and are still at large, according to local reports.
I was invited to Lars Vilks committee in Copenhagen to present Passion for Freedom London Art Festival. The committee is organized annually and happens on the anniversary of Salman Rushdie’s fatwa. The meeting started with a short introduction from one of the organizers followed by François Zimeray, the French ambassador, commemorating Charlie Hebdo and discussing the challenges that we face when it comes to the threats to freedom of speech and democracy in our countries.
After a short introduction, Inna Shevchenko opened the panel and started to talk about Femen and her work. She also discussed her close friendship with Charb, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, and how they both stood strong exercising their right to freedom of expression. A few minutes into her speech we heard separate bangs… It sounded like a machine gun..
After the shooting subdued everyone started to come together. We decided to continue with the presentation…Everyone thanked us that we continued. We will not surrender; they cannot kill all of us.
Few of us in the UK had heard of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine, before so many of its staff were murdered by Islamists. David Cameron announced on Twitter that he was joining that ‘unity’ rally in Paris “to celebrate the values of Charlie Hebdo“.
Everyone was for free speech and a free Press. The French so love it their creepy sounding Minister of Culture hands state subsidies to French newspapers. With money comes control.
France’s two most prestigious newspapers, “Le Monde” and “Le Figaro”, received more than €16 million in government subsidies each… The catholic newspaper “La Croix” got over €10 million while the communist “L’Humanité” received almost €7 million in public subsidies, the Ministry’s website shows…
The regional daily “Ouest France” follows close behind Le Monde and Le Figaro on the on the list, receiving over €10.4 million in 2013…France’s press sector also benefits from a low 2.1% rate of VAT. In addition, French journalists enjoy advantageous tax privileges which are supposed to compensate for professional expenses… [full list here].
That freedom of the press looks a lot like state control.
Add to that the assaults on free speech on univerity campuses, the attempt to shut down debate on global warming, no debate on gay marriage and – well, you name it – and you wonder what Cameroa and every other leader who declared they are Charlie Hebdo thought they were supporting.
And so to the news that Wiltshire Police “have apologised after an officer visited a newsagent requesting details of customers who bought French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the Paris massacre”.
Compare and contrast the views of Amal Clooney, wife to actor George Clooney.
On January 11 2015, Amal was at the 72nd Golden Globes, an acting AGM at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
She sported a “Je Suis Charlie”, a nod to the journalists murdered for expressing an opinion.
Free Speech. No Buts.
On Janaury 28, Amal Clooney is a member of a legal team representing for Armenia at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, eastern France. Clooney is among the lawyers arguing at the European Court of Human Rights against a Turkish man convicted in Switzerland for denying the 1915 Armenian genocide. She is challenging a decision that ruled the manÂ’s right to free expression was violated.
Je Suis Charlie Hebdo. They just don’t want to be him.
Hey, it’s our right to demand an edn to free speech!
Lawrence Krauss, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Inaugural Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, on free speech:
Hate speech involves people, not ideas. No idea should be sacred in the modern world. Instead, in order for us to progress as a species, every claim, every idea should be subject to debate, intelligent discussion, and when necessary ridicule. Satire is perhaps one of the most important gifts we have to inspire us to re-examine our own lives and our own ideologies. If every other area of human endeavor is open to ridicule, then certainly so should religion. The notion that a cartoon, which presents an image of a historical figure, is so blasphemous to provoke violence is repugnant to anyone who believes that free and intelligent discourse is the basis of a civilized world.
This means that we need to encourage even ridicule of the sacred Qur’an in the public media. The more frequently and openly this appears, the less threatening it will seem, and the more acceptable it will be for believers to actually intellectually engage rather than emotionally and violently act.
They all are Charlie Hebdo. But none want to be him…
Pallbearers carry the casket of Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Bernard Verlhac, known as Tignous, decorated by friends and colleagues of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, at the city hall of Montreuil, on the outskirts of Paris, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015
The NUJ’s general secretay Michelle Stanistreet was on the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ march following the murders of Chartlie Hebdo staff. The NUJ made this announcement:
“This is not the first time that enemies of press freedom have attempted to muzzle journalists who use their pens to ridicule all purveyors of hatred. Beyond the massacre committed at Charlie Hebdo, the principles of liberty of expression are at stake: freedom to criticize, the caricature and to denounce. It is appropriate to quote Albert Londres: ‘Our job is neither to please people or to do them wrong, it is to use our pens to go to the heart of things even if it hurts.’…
“The extraordinary upsurge of solidarity in France and in many other European countries is a wonderful boost for defenders of these treasures liberties – above all the freedom of expression.”
So. The Sun caved into pressure from the righteous and dropped Page 3. Punters keen on tabloid news with a dash of topless stunna will be forced to read the Daily Star (or watch Sky TV with subtitles whilst surfing the web for bewitching breasts).
Sun readers have been saved from themselves. They will no longer see women’s naked breasts as arousing sex objects. They will go to arthouse cinemas and see naked breasts as part of the plot. They will see a star’s bare bosoms on the telly and understand that the plot demanded it. They will read National Geographic. They will know better.
Glamour mo-dels have been spared the shame of Page 3 and all those tawdry tabloid-readers’ eyeballs and raise their aspirations to, say a French beach, the top shelf or The Guardian.
What percentage of terrorists attack in Europe are perpetuated by Islamists?
So here are some statistics for those interested. Let’s start with Europe. Want to guess what percent of the terrorist attacks there were committed by Muslims over the past five years? Wrong. That is, unless you said less than 2 percent.
As Europol, the European Union’s law-enforcement agency, noted in its report released last year, the vast majority of terror attacks in Europe were perpetrated by separatist groups. For example, in 2013, there were 152 terror attacks in Europe. Only two of them were “religiously motivated,” while 84 were predicated upon ethno-nationalist or separatist beliefs.
But what of the fear of Islamists?
Can fear be linked to the arrest of Dieudonné M’bala M’bala? He was pinched for posting on Facebook “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” — a portmanteau of Charlie Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly, the racist who murdered four Jews in a Paris kosher store.
Robert Crumb has repsonded to the Mohammed Charlie Hebdo cover story. And Crumb knows all there is to know about religion. He wrote the Bible:
Crumb drew:
Aline [Mr. Crumb’s wife is the cartoonist Aline Kominsky-Crumb] saw something on the internet…All the big newspapers and magazines in America had all agreed, mutually agreed, not to print those offensive cartoons that were in that Charlie Hebdo magazine. They all agreed that they were not going to print those, because they were too insulting to the Prophet. Charlie Hebdo, it didn’t have a big circulation. A lot of French people said, “Yes, it was tasteless, but I defend their right to freedom of speech.” Yeah, it was tasteless, that’s what they say. And perhaps it was. I’m not going to make a career out of baiting some fucking religious fanatics, you know, by insulting their prophet. I wouldn’t do that. That seems crazy. But then, after they got killed, I just had to draw that cartoon, you know, showing the Prophet. The cartoon I drew shows me, myself, holding up a cartoon that I’ve just drawn. A crude drawing of an ass that’s labeled “The Hairy Ass of Muhammed.” [Laughs.]
Libération called me and said, “Crumb, can you do a cartoon for us? About what you think about this, you know, you are a major cartoonist, and you live in France.” So I thought about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I’m doing the dishes, or whatever, I was thinking, “What should I do for that cartoon … ” I had a lot of ideas. Other people come up with these, you know, clever cartoons that comment on it, like … This one guy did a cartoon showing a bloody dead body laying there, and a radical Muslim standing over him with a Kalashnikov, saying, “He drew first!” Stuff like that. That’s good, that’s clever, you know, I like that. But, me? I gotta like, you know, when I do something, it has to be more personal. I said, first: “I don’t have the courage to make an insulting cartoon of Muhammed.”
Then I thought, “OK, I’m the Cowardly Cartoonist … As a Cowardly Cartoonist, I can’t make some glib comment like that, you know? I have to, like, make fun of myself. So instead of drawing the face of Muhammed [laughs], I drew the ass of Muhammed. [Laughs.] But then I had myself saying, in small lettering, “Actually, this is the ass of my friend of Mohamid Bakshi, who’s a film director in Los Angeles, California.” So if they come at me, I’m gonna say, “No, look, it’s not Muhammed the Prophet, it’s this guy, Mohamid Bakshi.” So, you know.
[…] So, then Aline [Crumb’s wife] had this idea for another cartoon, which we also sent to Libération, a collaboration, that’s showing her looking at the drawing saying, “Oh, my God, they’re going to come after us! This is terrible … I want to live to see my grandchildren!” And then she has me saying, “Well, it’s not that bad. And, besides, they’ve killed enough cartoonists, maybe they’ve gotten it out of their system.”
Pope Francis has a few words on free speech and the murder of journalists, police and Jews in Paris:
“If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.” …
“There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others. They are provocateurs. And what happens to them is what would happen to Dr. Gasparri if he says a curse word against my mother. There is a limit.”
The Sun is cheering for free speech. It is cheering for Ila Aghera, the “defiant” shopkeeper selling copies of Charlie Hebdo magazine to the many French speaskers and peopls who can say “Jew Suis Charlie” in her area. The Sun loves her:
A VILLAGE shopkeeper is defiantly selling the “survivors’ issue” of Charlie Hebdo despite fears she could be targeted by extremists. Ila Aghera, 54, made her brave stand as all three million copies of the satirical magazine sold out in France.
Does she charge more for carriage?
It was published as al-Qaeda chiefs behind last week’s massacre in Paris vowed further atrocities. And a London cafe owner refused to take down his Je Suis Charlie sign despite a death threat from a “raving” Islamist fanatic.
Live on Sky News we have free speech campaigner Caroline Fourest. She’s astounded that Sky won’t show the subject of their story: the cover of Charlie Hebdo.
So. She holds up the copy. And the camera recoils:
Even the BBC weren’t that cowardly…
PS – if you squint you make out copies of the Anarchist’s Cookbook, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and all of these songs on the shelves.
You can have Paris. But you free speech fundamentalists can never have Bristol University campus. The local Student Union’s “Safe Space” policy forbids free speech lest it fuddle a student’s minds and makes them confront ideas they don’t like.
Bristol University SU officer Alex Bradbook is here to protect the fragile:
Attorneys for The New York Times leave the Supreme Court in Washington on June 26, 1971 after presenting arguments against the government suit to prevent The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing articles on the secret history of the Vietnam War. They are, from left: Lawrence McKay; Floyd Abrams; Alexander Bickel, who presented the Times case before the court; James Goodale, Times Vice President and William Heggerty. (AP Photo/Charles Harrity)
Writing in the Huffington Post, Mehdi Hasan says he is ‘fed up with Free Speech Fundamentalists”.
You and I didn’t like George W Bush. Remember his puerile declaration after 9/11 that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”? Yet now, in the wake of another horrific terrorist attack, you appear to have updated Dubya’s slogan: either you are with free speech… or you are against it. Either vous êtes Charlie Hebdo… or you’re a freedom-hating fanatic.
Well, that’s what the mainstream media are telling us. The march for free speech in Paris soon mutated into a march for unity. (Marching right next to Francois Hollande: Ali Bongo of Gabon, who recently who recently “suspended” 3 newspapers. 1 for SATIRE).
The people who slammed Charlie Hebdo when its offices were firebombed were keen to be seen to declare “Jew suits Charlie”, the phrase being a shorthand for ‘look how good I am’. The West’s war on free speech was not over when racist Islamist goons raided the Charlie Hebdo offices and slaughtered the staff. Free speech remains a fragile right.
If you support campus speech codes, ban debate, participated in a campaign to get a TV or radio show off the air, then as Iowahawk says, “drop your #JeSuisCharlie sign”.
Charlie Hebdo understands the fashionable with their Hebdo-branded sandwich-boards.
Fran Lebowitz go to right:
“If people don’t want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?’ When I see someone wearing clothing with words on my first reaction is usually, ‘Ooo, I bet you’re really boring!’”
The magazine’s new cover sticks with Mohammed (as if they could choose another subject) and lampoons the weeping and righteous who use the magazine to advertise their sound morals. Others use the cover to show that they are sensitive to Muslims.
They all love Charlie Hebdo, but none are brave enough to be him.
@mlcalderone NYT runs big news on homepage — “Mohammed Is on Cover of Charlie Hebdo” — yet doesn’t show that newsworthy cover:
Hasan goes on:
…In the midst of all the post-Paris grief, hypocrisy and hyperbole abounds. Yes, the attack was an act of unquantifiable evil; an inexcusable and merciless murder of innocents. But was it really a “bid to assassinate” free speech (ITV’s Mark Austin), to “desecrate” our ideas of “free thought” (Stephen Fry)? It was a crime – not an act of war – perpetrated by disaffected young men; radicalised not by drawings of the Prophet in Europe in 2006 or 2011, as it turns out, but by images of US torture in Iraq in 2004.
Radicalised by images of US torture they murdered Jews? We can add “being Jewish” to the list of “provocations” then. And the killers shouted: “The prophet has been avenged.”
Please get a grip. None of us believes in an untrammelled right to free speech.
None of us? Charlie Hebdo does. All of the people carrying “Jew Suis Charlie” signs do. Well, no of course they don’t. That’s just fashion, like wearing a Katherine Hamnett Me-shirt. Carrying a “Je suis Charlie” sign declaring #Illridewithyou or #bringbackourgirls (and pity fashion victim Michelle Obama for that display of indulgence) is vanity; wearing your beliefs as something you can pull on and off as the mood takes.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher greets fashion designer Katharine Hamnett, wearing at-shirt with a nuclear missile protest message, at 10 Downing Street, where she hosted a reception for British Fashion Week designers. Ref #: PA.16297039
And irony of ironies:
French comedian Dieudonne has been arrested for allegedly defending terrorism in a Facebook comment referencing last week’s attacks in Paris.
Free speech no buts.. He should not be arrested.
Playing on the slogan “Je suis Charlie”, the comedian wrote: “Tonight, as far as I’m concerned, I feel like Coulibaly.” Amedy Coulibaly is accused of murdering a policewoman and then storming a kosher supermarket, shooting dead four shoppers.
Hasan:
We all agree there are always going to be lines that, for the purposes of law and order, cannot be crossed; or for the purposes of taste and decency, should not be crossed. We differ only on where those lines should be drawn.
And yes. How we decide those lines is by testing them and with open debate. So. We are all for free speech.
Has your publication, for example, run cartoons mocking the Holocaust? No?
The Holocaust was industrial mass murder. Well, to those who believe it happened; to those who believe the Jews are worthy of it (they never learn); to those who put on the anti-Semitic Holocaust cartoon show:
More than 200 Holocaust cartoons from around the world are on display at a museum in the Iranian capital, Tehran. Organisers of the exhibition say they are testing the West’s commitment to freedom of speech. A competition to choose the drawings was announced in February, in response to caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by European newspapers. Israel’s Holocaust authority, Yad Vashem, criticised the exhibition, calling it a “flashing red light”.
The drawings were chosen from nearly 1,200 entries received from various countries including the United States, Indonesia and Turkey. One of the cartoons shows the Statue of Liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in one hand and giving a Nazi salute with the other.
No Jews murdered the cartoonists who mocked the victims of the atrocity that was the Holocaust. The Holocaust it not a religious figure. Unless Hasan says it is. Unless the Holocaust now defines the Jews more than their Covenant with God. If Jews can be portrayed as barbaric murderers and child abusers who never learned the ‘lesson’ of the Holocaust, maybe they can be rendered less. Rather than being the victims of industrial mass murder, they can be sub-humans who, you know, were asking for it.
Holocaust denial is rife in the Middle East. So too is anti-Semitism. There are so many parallels between the imagery used by classic anti-semitism and anti-Zionist propaganda:
After the Holocaust proved the victimhood of the Jewish people, Antisemitism and the Antisemitic memes of the image-codes needed to evolve into a holocaustresistant form which would deny Jewish victimhood. Moral Inversion Codes invert the horrors by depict the victims as the perpetrators. Thus the Jew becomes the Nazi or the terrorist suicide bomber, rather than their victim.
When you’re a Jew you look for codes.
Echoes:
The blood libel form twelfth century in Norwich. The story went that Jews had killed a twelve year old Christian boy named William for Passover. ed.
Michael Howard – then Tory leader
The Guardian
The Sydney Morning Herald – not an Israeli but a Jew
Norway’s Dagbladet showed this:
JPOST: ln Schindler’s List, one of Norway’s largest newspapers recently published a political cartoon comparing Prime Minster Ehud Olmert to the infamous commander of a Nazi death camp who indiscriminately murdered Jews by firing at them at random from his balcony. The caricature by political cartoonist Finn Graff appeared on July 10 in the Oslo daily Dagbladet. It has prompted outrage among the country’s small Jewish community and led the Simon Weisenthal Center to submit a protest to the Norwegian government. In the cartoon, Olmert is likened to SS Major Amon Goeth, the infamous commandant of the Plaszow death camp outside of Krakow, Poland, who was convicted of mass murder in 1946 and hanged for his crimes. While in charge of Plaszow, Goeth would go out to the balcony on his villa, and engage in target practice by aiming his telescopic rifle and firing at random at Jews imprisoned there, often killing them. The scene was famously depicted by director Steven Spielberg in his 1993 film, Schindler’s List..
The same paper came up with this. The demon at the head (and like that fork) and the woman at the feet are both blood-soaked Jews.
‘Mistreatment? No, this is a tradition, an important part of our belief.’
The accusation is that Jews are barbaric. But the same goes for Muslims, who also cricumcise boys. One glance at their genitals indicate that they are subhumans, unworthy of mercy. Jews should abandon their ‘barbaric’ customs and adopt a civilised way of life. Deprive Jews of the empathy normally felt for human beings.
A decree by the Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV commanded Jews to leave their sons uncircumcised or face death. This decree against the ‘barbaric’ behaviour of an ‘uneducated’ people, issued by an imperial civilisation, was part of a comprehensive campaign to destroy the Jewish way of life. The revolt against the decree, led by Judah Maccabee, is still considered one of the defining moments of Judaism.
It is difficult to make sense of the strong views held by campaigners and policymakers who seek to criminalise and pathologise the circumcision of Jewish and Muslim boys. Last Tuesday, a resolution passed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe condemned male circumcision as a ‘violation of the physical integrity of children’. Unlike Antiochus IV, these parliamentarians did not use the narrative of a civilisational mission against barbarism to justify their assault on people’s way of life; instead they used the apparently neutral language of health and child protection to legitimise their crusade. The Council’s resolution called on governments to ‘clearly define the medical, sanitary and other conditions to be ensured for practices such as the non-medically justified circumcision of young boys’.
The Council’s attempt to stigmatise circumcision coincides with a growing campaign against circumcision in Scandinavia and Germany. In recent weeks there has been a veritable culture war against this age-old practice. Most of the time, the crusade is conducted in a very politically correct language which avoids any explicitly culturally loaded terminology. In this vein, the German Social Democratic parliamentarian Marle Rupprecht argued that the Council’s resolution, which she supports, ‘does not intend to stigmatise any religious community or its practices’. As far as she is concerned, it’s all about the child – and if the campaign against circumcision inflames anti-Semitism, well, that is a price worth paying for this holy cause, apparently
Having picked out the Jews – always the Jews – as the West’s scared cow (attack them and attck all the West holds dear; the Jewish State a scapegoat for globalization and modernity), Hasan concludes:
Let’s be clear: I agree there is no justification whatsoever for gunning down journalists or cartoonists.
That a pretty low bar: murder is wrong.
I disagree with your seeming view that the right to offend comes with no corresponding responsibility; and I do not believe that a right to offend automatically translates into a duty to offend.
A duty to challenge is what makes us free.
When you say “Je suis Charlie“, is that an endorsement of Charlie Hebdo‘s depiction of the French justice minister, Christiane Taubira, who is black, drawn as a monkey? Of crude caricatures of bulbous-nosed Arabs that must make Edward Said turn in his grave?
Lampooning racism by reproducing brazenly racist imagery is a pretty dubious satirical tactic….
It’s for these reasons that I can’t “be”, don’t want to “be”, Charlie – if anything, we should want to be Ahmed, the Muslim policeman who was killed while protecting the magazine’s right to exist. As the novelist Teju Cole has observed, “It is possible to defend the right to obscene… speech without promoting or sponsoring the content of that speech.”
Ahmed was an innocent victim. Was he shot because he was a Muslim? The Jews were shot dead because of their religion. The Charlie Hebdo staff were shot dead for their beliefs. Hasan makes no mention of that. Instead anti-Semitism – which is murderous and very real – is again used as a weapon to show that those Jews get special treatment:
And why have you been so silent on the glaring double standards? Did you not know that Charlie Hebdo sacked the veteran French cartoonist Maurice Sinet in 2008 for making an allegedly anti-Semitic remark?
Always the Jews.
…Muslims, I guess, are expected to have thicker skins than their Christian and Jewish brethren.
If only the Jews has rhino hides it might have stopped the Islamists’ bullets.
You could see Jews and Muslims and blacks and browns as the Others, who fight for a place in Europe. But easier to compare and copntrast. Easier to show your own side as the bigger victims.
And then – for the third time – Hasan shows how Jews get preferential treament:
Weren’t you sickened to see Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of a country that was responsible for the killing of seven journalists in Gaza in 2014, attend the “unity rally” in Paris? Bibi was joined by Angela Merkel, chancellor of a country where Holocaust denial is punishable by up to five years in prison, and David Cameron, who wants to ban non-violent “extremists” committed to the “overthrow of democracy” from appearing on television.
You could pick any number of World leader whose committment to free speech and freedom credentials would wilt under scrutiny. But he picks the one Jew. You could pick on Turkey, a nation leading the world in journalist imprisonment.
But he picks the Jew. He picks the Holocaust.
Pick. Pick. Pick. Until it bleeds…
But it was all about free speech. And free speech with no buts. Voltaire proclaimed: “I disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.”
So. Say it. We’ll exhange views. No-one will get hurt. It’s good to talk…
The Charlie Hebdo cover is all over the web. For those of you have not yet seen it, it’s here below. Charlie Hebdo manages to reproduce the character at the centre of the controversy (no choice there) whilst mocking the people who before the massacre slammed the magazine for causing offence and now brandish the legend ‘I am Charlie’ as a advert to their own good morals. Who needs a cross on a necklace when you have a Charlie Hebdo magazine tucked under your arm?
Three million copies of the so-called “survivors’ edition” are being printed. The usual print run is 60,000. So. Buy a copy and show off your commitment to free speech. But, better still, exercise it.
The cover shows Muhammad shedding a single tear under the headline: “All is forgiven”. He holds the message: “Je suis Charlie.”
We go live to Paris, where CNN are by a kosher supermarket where people have been murdered. Some, like the French Preesident, say the attack on a kosher supermarket was driven by rabid anti-semitism.
But CNN seeks to clarify. Chris Cuomo is talking to grocery expert Isa Soares. It turns out that the kosher supermaket is a Muslim supermarket. It’s not anti-Semitism, after all:
The Charlie Hebdo massacre and murders at a kosher supermarket in Paris got everyone talking about free speech.
(Their love of free speech ‘no buts…’ won’t last. The Paris free speech rally has morphed into a “unity” rally led by people with no interest in free speech. Gabon’s state-run media regulatory agency, the National Communications Council, suspended three newspapers in 2013, one of them a satirical work. That’s Gabon’s President Ali Bongo on the Paris march. Also marching was US campus censor Eric Holder and:
Let’s hope someone holds up a Charlie Hebdo cartoon and vomits on them all. If this is who you allow to lead a march to support free speech, you’re doing it wrong.)
But what about the racism?
Why-oh-why was the kosher store targetted? Anyone got the foggiest? Want to guess? The gunman and four hostages died at the Hypercasher supermarket near Porte de Vincennes. Yohan Cohen was murdered when he went for jihadi Amedy Coulibaly’s gun. Yoav Hattab died trying to grabbing one of two weapons held by the racist killer.
In all, Islamists murdered 17 people. Since then the BBC has written the following stories on Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. There have been attacks on Muslim places of worship and stores. Blessedly, the nutters have not hurt anyone.
BBC reports on the Anti-Semitic nature of the assaults:
January 10: “Charlie Hebdo hunt: Bloody end to sieges”
French President Francois Hollande not the BBC used the term:
“We must be implacable towards racism,” he added, saying that the supermarket attack was an “appalling anti-Semitic act”.
Well, if he says attacking a kosher supermarket was based on anti-Semitism, then we won’t argue.
That’s ONE story on anti-semitism.
BBC reports on Islamophbia since the assaults:
Total: 6 stories.
Does that seem odd to you? The real murders of Jews is less racially motivated than the largely perceived violent backlash against Muslims?
Jews are under threat in France. Only Jews – and this is true for the UK – pray behind guards and fences. Do men with walkie-talkies patrol your church or mosque at prayer time? Is your local Jewish school behind barbed wire? It is in the UK and it is in France.
Teacher Isaac Berg was in the kosher supermarket at the Porte de Vincennes 15 minutes before Friday’s hostage-taking.
“We’re afraid, but what more could the government do to protect us?” he said. “Our schools and places of worship have already been guarded for the last two years. People wouldn’t want a police escort to go shopping.”
In Toulouse in 2012, Mohammad Merah murdered a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school, pulling an eight-year-old girl by her hair to shoot her in the head.
In 2014:
French President Francois Hollande has spoken out against an “unbearable” assault on a young couple near Paris which ministers say was anti-Semitic. The two victims, a woman aged 19 and her boyfriend, 21, were tied up in his family’s flat and the woman was raped.
Their lawyer said three men had burst into the flat, telling the boyfriend: “You Jews, you have money.”
In 2014, a French jihadist was accused of murdering four people in a gun attack on the Jewish museum in the Belgian capital, Brussels.
Since the Paris attacks, the Guardian has written 25 stories in Islamophbia, including:
Charlie Hebdo: Norway didn’t give in to Islamophobia, nor should France. The Charlie Hebdo killers want to provoke anti-Islam sentiment among the public, just as Anders Breivik did. But France must resist
Muslims fear backlash after Charlie Hebdo deaths as Islamic sites attacked
Muslims in Europe fear anti-Islamic mood will intensify after Paris attacks
And two on anti-semitism:
Paris’s Jewish community retreats in shock after deadly end to siege – Residents of neighbourhood where policewoman was shot dead say gunman Amedy Coulibaya intended to target Jewish school
Charlie Hebdo: first they came for the cartoonists, then they came for the Jews
What about the right-wing Press?
Well, the Sun has produced one stopry on Anti-Semitism, which is just that quote again:
But the girlfriend of Islamic extremist gunman Amedy Coulibaly is believed to still be on the loose after the attack which French President Francois Hollande described as a “dreadful anti-Semitic act”. Police have said Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, is “armed and dangerous”.
And two menions of Islamphobia:
Shereen Nanjarani notes in her column: “Wednesday’s attack will only stir up more Islamophobia. And that’s what the terrorists want.”
Well, that and to kill Jews.
NY Daily News blurs cartoon of Mohammed, leaves hooked-nosed Jew
The other mention in the Sun is this:
THE partner of murdered Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier has described him as “a real hero”.
Jeanette Bougrab was with vehement left-winger Charbonnier – known as Charb – despite having been a minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative government.
She said: “Stephane was an exceptional person, a real hero, a hero I loved in spite of our very different political views.
“A war has been declared in France. If you have a pencil, someone will kill you. He knew he was under threat, but he still declined government protection for Charlie Hebdo. He was accused of every sin and nobody defended him. Securalism is the fight against fundamentalist, he was ready to die for his ideas. But today those who defend secularism are accused of Islamophobia.”
First they came for Charlie Hebdo. Then they came for the Jews. Then people threw stones at the headquarters of Germany’s Hamburg Morgenpost, which had reprinted Charlie Hebdo’s Mohammed cartoons.
The paper says an incendiary device was thrown into the cellar. Some files were burnt. No-one was hurt.
You looking for a hero for the Charlie Hebdo story? Look no futher than Dutch cartoonist . When yold that Prince Harry, the Queen, The Pope, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin are now ‘Je Suis Charlie Hebdo’, responded:
“We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends.”
Brilliant.
“It really makes me laugh. A few years ago, thousands of people took to the streets in Pakistan to demonstrate against Charlie Hebdo. They didn’t know what it was. Now it’s the opposite. But if people are protesting to defend freedom of speech, naturally that’s a good thing.”
Let’s see how long this love of free speech lasts…
Spotter: Dutch daily Volkskrant.
Photo: Prince Harry signs a book of condolence at the French Embassy in Knightsbridge, London for the victims of the terrorist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, with photos of the 12 victims above.