France steps up security at embassies as magazine publishes Prophet Mo cartoons

[Silent Hunter]

Seriously, these people have had five years to get the hint - don't publish cartoons showing Mohammed! It is not worth the damage it is causing to many innocent people.

[Silent Hunter]

They got the hint. The day you step back, fundamentalists win, and you can never take that step forward again. If anything, we should publish funny drawings of Muhammad in every newspaper everyday. Then people would start to understand how their prophet isn't any more sacred than any other and we have the right to make fun of him as we want.

They should never have stepped over that line in the first place.

[Silent Hunter]

Seriously, these people have had five years to get the hint - don't publish cartoons showing Mohammed! It is not worth the damage it is causing to many innocent people.

Yeah, I mean, they have the right to publish it, it's more of the ethics (or lack thereof) of knowingly and deliberating inflaming religious anger.

Precisely. People should have learnt that this. If you want to make of Islam, do it without drawing Mohammed - it just causes problems, because it's that offensive.

[Silent Hunter]

Look: It's a dumb and unnecessary thing to do, but that doesn't mean it should be forbidden. You're wanting to take civil and criminal action against people that are excercizing their rights in Western democracies.
And that's not something I'd ever be willing to compromise on, least of all to please an angry mob in the streets in Libya that has a lot of "growing up" to do, so to speak.

The people that are murdered by these angry mobs are a good reason to refrain from publishing things you expect would have that effect, but the responsibility ultimately lies in the people doing the killing, not the people peacefully using their freedom of the press.

Those people using their freedom of the press should know that what they publish has consequences. If those consequences led to the deaths of innocent people, then they have some responsibility on the moral level at least.

[Silent Hunter]

Charlie Hebdo can denounce Islamic extremism in a different manner without being so offensive. There is a difference between not kowtowing and deliberate provocation.

[Silent Hunter]

Charlie Hebdo can denounce Islamic extremism in a different manner without being so offensive. There is a difference between not kowtowing and deliberate provocation.

They denounce Islamic extremism by doing what they have always done: making goddamn satirical cartoons. That's their business, making cartoons. Whether they mock Islam, Catholicism, the French government or something else. If they stopped making cartoons about Islam-related stuff because some dickheads somewhere in the world could get offended, then it would be plain old censorship. Period.

They can make cartoons about Islam - just don't depict the Prophet. It's not hard.

[Silent Hunter]

Charlie Hebdo can denounce Islamic extremism in a different manner without being so offensive. There is a difference between not kowtowing and deliberate provocation.

They denounce Islamic extremism by doing what they have always done: making goddamn satirical cartoons. That's their business, making cartoons. Whether they mock Islam, Catholicism, the French government or something else. If they stopped making cartoons about Islam-related stuff because some dickheads somewhere in the world could get offended, then it would be plain old censorship. Period.

They can make cartoons about Islam - just don't depict the Prophet. It's not hard.

You really don't get it...

Yes, I do. Charlie Hedbo decided that just because it could this, it should. In the process, it is inflaming many of the people we need to defeat al-Qaeda. I'm all in favour of freedom of speech, but it must be used responsibly.

[Silent Hunter]

What is desirable might be another thing but I don't think we should embark on a policy whose goal is essentially to wind up extremists...

[Silent Hunter]

even if the satire happens to be stupid and unnecessary.   

That's the thing - it was stupid and it was unnecessary. I'm all in favour of satire (I subscribe to Private Eye), but not when it makes things worse.