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Je suis Charlie

oggbashan said:
Unlike the UK where discrimination by race, colour or religion is illegal, discrimination against Muslims and Algerians is widespread in France. That has led to whole communities that might have had money thrown at their schools but the students know they are unlikely ever to get a decent job, or be treated fairly. ...

An educated Muslim in the UK knows that he/she can be whatever he/she wants to be. Combining progression in a career with their own religion and community's practices might be an irritation or even an obstacle but the individual can choose how far to compromise the differing expectations.

A French Muslim, particularly from the banlieus, is unlikely to have the opportunity to choose between career and religion.
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The French system is based on the principle of sécularisme while the British system is based on multiculturalism. This is particularly evident in the two countries' education systems.

For the French, you should be French citizen first and foremost. Your religious creed is a private matter, not one of citizenship. The French Education minister knows what a school will be teaching on any given day anywhere in the world, as the curriculum is strictly controlled at a central level. Therefore, the French state's reaction to issues of religious identity is to try to sweep it under the carpet: it shouldn't matter, make it not matter.

For the British, being a citizen means that the state will respect a number of private human rights and ensure other citizens do so too. These have been particularly strongly supported under the previous Labour administration through a series of acts including the Race Relations Act 2000, the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and the Human Rights Act 1998 which sought to bring under one legal umbrella a number of legal provisions about an individual's rights. In British schools, there has been a lot of work done for decades to allow for teaching children in a way which will take into consideration their cultural and home circumstances, so that the school culture isn't a monocultural block preventing children learning. Early accounts of the multicultural approach criticised it as 'saris, samosas and steel drums': a celebration of superficial cultural 'fun' things, rather than political anti-racist action in education. I was also of the opinion that multiculturalism would be more insulting than helpful, and have seen some horrible examples of kids encouraged to wear silk pyjamas and do a dragon dance - not sure how that's going to help us understand the economic power of China today. Even so, in my experience, multiculturalism has genuinely led to a much better environment for children in schools.

The issues were vividly brought out in the two nation states' different approaches to girls wearing headscarves in school. France banned this, leading to ridiculous scenes where Head Teachers told girls: 'if it's a bandanna, it's just fashion, try to make it look like a bandanna not a headscarf'. Britain respected the right of pupils to wear religious symbols such as headscarf and (Sikh) bangles - although not the kirpan (sacred Sikh dagger), especially since this can be reduced to a small symbolic ornament rather than a full-on bladed weapon.
 
My eldest daughter deals with multiculturalism on a daily basis. She works in a London primary school as a specialist for children whose native language is not English, particularly if they have other issues as well.

Her first London school had a mix of Turkish and Greek children, between them totalling about a third of the intake. The parents were still fighting about the division of Cyprus. Although she has moved on, the Greek parents are blaming the Turkish parents for the refugees leaving Turkey for Lesbos - "It's a conspiracy". The rest of the school has a mix of nationalities. White English is a real minority.

At the end of 2014 she was a supply teacher in a school that had just carried out a survey of languages spoken in the children's homes. They had counted 70 different languages, not including dialects that were almost incomprehensible to others supposedly speaking the same language.

My youngest granddaughter attends a pre-school. The largest minority group there is Japanese. Although she proudly announces that she is "three and three quarters" she can say Hello, Goodbye, Please, Thank you and other phrases in Japanese with the correct intonation. She can do nearly as much in Mandarin. But she is popular with the other children because she speaks "proper English".

We just wish she would stop speaking sometimes!
 
R. Richard said:
Not according to Daesh they aren't real Muslims.
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According to most Muslims, all the rest aren't real Muslims. Christians would be nearly as bad at defining who are 'real Christians' except that they have stopped killing each other over the differences.
 
NaokoSmith said:
The French system is based on the principle of sécularisme while the British system is based on multiculturalism. This is particularly evident in the two countries' education systems. ....
Click to expand...

Islam is not compatible with free speech, at least when it is about Allah. The Quran commands that people fomenting disbelief in Allah be put to death. It's not a bounded command, like you find in other religions' writings; it's not tied to some historical time or race of people. It's a hard edged requirement that killing be done. It's in 2, in the 140s, if memory serves; I can look it up if anyone really cares. (Note: I don't own an arabic interlinear. I'm relying on translations). It's not poetical, or open to reinterpretation, it's definitive and entirely literal. It's not the only section of the Quran that demands violence in the name of Allah, but this one clearly covers and sanctions what happened.

Islam is unique in this characteristic; in other religions you can find historical accounts of people being put to death for blasphemy and the like, but they are connected to a given time and place, or race. In Islam it's unbounded. Anyone, anytime, anywhere. This isn't surprising; Muhammad was fond of war as a solution to problems, as other sections of the Quran make clear.

This is why the attack on Charlie was inevitable (and entirely justifiable within Islam.) Why Charlie thought they could yank the chain of a religion with millions of adherents, a violent history and a requirement to kill those fomenting dissent isn't clear to me. I'm not saying they had it coming. I am saying that if you're going to do satire against the closely-held beliefs of a few million people you should understand the possible ramifications. All Charlie managed to do is get people killed and stir up worldwide violence. They aren't heroes; satirists in general aren't. They only look good in contrast with the religious system that executed their members.

Anyone who thinks I'm standing up for Islam needs to rethink. I have no use at all for the Islamic religion. But I have sufficient understanding to know that if you're going to flip off either Allah or Muhammad, you should expect to die - and that doesn't make you a martyr. It makes you a dupe who plays into the hands of terrorists, who are more than ready to capitalise on Islam's uniquely exploitable beliefs.

This only matters to me because I live in a country that's debating accepting refugees. We have to (in my opinion) accept them. This is a legitimate humanitarian crisis and these people need help. Christian churches should be tripping over themselves to help out - they've been complaining for years that it's hard to get missionaries into parts of the middle-east (at least without fatalities) and now the mission field is coming to them.

But we don't practice unlimited religious freedom in my country. We talk about freedoms and we have them, but it's limited. Arriving Muslims looking to live here have to be presented with a stark choice: you leave behind the parts of the Quran that require you to kill, or you're going somewhere else. You can't freely practice all of Islam here. Your Allah is not akbar than law in this country. Do not stay if that is unacceptable.
 
Maybe it's time to flip this thread into the political forum.
 
HandsInTheDark said:
Islam is not compatible with free speech, at least when it is about Allah. The Quran commands that people fomenting disbelief in Allah be put to death.
Click to expand...
Yeah, yeah, and the Bible demands the death penalty for homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13), bestiality (Exodus 22:19; Leviticus 20:15-16), adultery (Leviticus 20:10), prostitution and rape (Deuteronomy 22:24). It also says "Thou shalt not kill."

Fundamentalism is the bane of religion. Religious texts are poetry -- truths are expressed there through metaphor. People who try to interpret them literally get tangled up in paradox, and they also completely miss the point of the texts.

Terrorists are not motivated by religious zeal. They are manipulated dupes, who have been broken down to an infantile state of mind by a combination of intolerable material circumstances and clever brainwashers. They are often provided with a synthetic belief structure, which might be concocted from any number of things: religion, chauvinism, racism, or Hollywood films (like "The Basketball Diaries".) But trying to explain terrorism as an outgrowth of any of those things is mistaken and futile.
 
HandsInTheDark said:
. . . We talk about freedoms and we have them, but it's limited. Arriving Muslims looking to live here have to be presented with a stark choice: you leave behind the parts of the Quran that require you to kill, or you're going somewhere else. You can't freely practice all of Islam here.
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Something which I believe should be drilled into all foreign migrants.
 
At least in the States, current immigrants get drilled a whole lot more and better in what they have to do to be here than those already in the States get (which itself is a bit of a pity).

But, again, this thread has definitely moved to being purely political.
 
AlwaysHungry said:
Yeah, yeah, and the Bible demands the death penalty for homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13), bestiality (Exodus 22:19; Leviticus 20:15-16), adultery (Leviticus 20:10), prostitution and rape (Deuteronomy 22:24). It also says "Thou shalt not kill."
Click to expand...

"Thou shalt not kill" is a mistranslation of the original Hebrew, "Thou shall not murder."
 
SecondCircle said:
The difference being?
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Apparently when it's sanctioned by God/Allah (which it is in select cases), it's OK. The kicker is so few understand that God/Allah are just different terms for the same deity--all three religions (Hebrew, Christian, Islam) have the same deity root.
 
sr71plt said:
Apparently when it's sanctioned by God/Allah (which it is in select cases), it's OK. The kicker is so few understand that God/Allah are just different terms for the same deity--all three religions (Hebrew, Christian, Islam) have the same deity root.
Click to expand...

I agree.
 
R. Richard said:
In a war, you kill. In society, you murder.
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More specifically, murder is a killing done without social sanction; society/religion said no and you did it anyway. But society/religion can sanction a killing, which is why soldiers don't face death sentences for being soldiers, and why self defense in general can be a legitimate thing.

It's odd that anyone would need this explained. There are handfuls of people who think that any taking of life is automatically wrong, but it's nothing close to a majority view, either historically or in this era.
 
HandsInTheDark said:
More specifically, murder is a killing done without social sanction; society/religion said no and you did it anyway. But society/religion can sanction a killing, which is why soldiers don't face death sentences for being soldiers, and why self defense in general can be a legitimate thing.

It's odd that anyone would need this explained. There are handfuls of people who think that any taking of life is automatically wrong, but it's nothing close to a majority view, either historically or in this era.
Click to expand...

I think its more odd that killing another human can be broken down into justification. Killing is kind of just, well, killing. Regardless of the sanction. Socially there's lines drawn, yes. There's different reasons why we kill each other but I'm not so sure that we should readily emrace the act just because society deems it's fine in given scenarios. Self defense can be out of necessity, but is still a very unfortunate thing that it would have to come to someone dying. There are people in the world right now that justify killing according to their religious santions, and I don't think a lot of societies really embrace those acts.

Which is kind of the point, in this case. Desert books sanction killing other human beings, and depending on which one you uphold, taking another person's life is A Ok.

As far as our intelligence has advanced, as much as we have overcome and learned in our time on this earth, we still justify killing one another. This is what is odd to me. Apparently it was true when said, "the death of one is a tragedy. The death of millions is just a statistic."
 
SecondCircle said:
I think its more odd that killing another human can be broken down into justification. Killing is kind of just, well, killing. Regardless of the sanction. Socially there's lines drawn, yes. There's different reasons why we kill each other but I'm not so sure that we should readily emrace the act just because society deems it's fine in given scenarios. Self defense can be out of necessity, but is still a very unfortunate thing that it would have to come to someone dying. There are people in the world right now that justify killing according to their religious santions, and I don't think a lot of societies really embrace those acts.

Which is kind of the point, in this case. Desert books sanction killing other human beings, and depending on which one you uphold, taking another person's life is A Ok.

As far as our intelligence has advanced, as much as we have overcome and learned in our time on this earth, we still justify killing one another. This is what is odd to me. Apparently it was true when said, "the death of one is a tragedy. The death of millions is just a statistic."
Click to expand...

An eye for an eye is a powerful, and in my view very destructive, philosophy, but it is still behind a lot of our laws, even in the US. And it's not easy - many in California, for example, are trying to get rid of capital punishment, for many reasons, some better than others. One of the main people against getting rid of capital punishment is a guy whose daughter was kidnapped and killed. Her (confirmed) murderer has been on death row for many years...

It's hard to tell someone like that father that killing another human will not do anything to fill the hole left by his daughter. I would imagine his come-back would question whether the guy was actually human, and/or whether such a human deserves being called human and given the considerations we give humans. I haven't followed the case that closely.

Killings on behalf of religion are in an entirely different ball game for me, but then I'm an avowed atheist. A friend tells me he considers atheism a religion of sorts, and I can see why. The one thing I will not do is go kill someone because they don't believe in my god. Nor do I think that's ever justified. But in self-defense? If someone tries to kill me because I don't subscribe to their delusion? I would try all I could not to, but ultimately yea, I'd probably be willing to kill. And I would argue for my right to defend myself.
 
legerdemer said:
An eye for an eye is a powerful, and in my view very destructive, philosophy, but it is still behind a lot of our laws, even in the US. And it's not easy - many in California, for example, are trying to get rid of capital punishment, for many reasons, some better than others. One of the main people against getting rid of capital punishment is a guy whose daughter was kidnapped and killed. Her (confirmed) murderer has been on death row for many years...

It's hard to tell someone like that father that killing another human will not do anything to fill the hole left by his daughter. I would imagine his come-back would question whether the guy was actually human, and/or whether such a human deserves being called human and given the considerations we give humans. I haven't followed the case that closely.

Killings on behalf of religion are in an entirely different ball game for me, but then I'm an avowed atheist. A friend tells me he considers atheism a religion of sorts, and I can see why. The one thing I will not do is go kill someone because they don't believe in my god. Nor do I think that's ever justified. But in self-defense? If someone tries to kill me because I don't subscribe to their delusion? I would try all I could not to, but ultimately yea, I'd probably be willing to kill. And I would argue for my right to defend myself.
Click to expand...

My position isn't to claim that killing doesn't wind up happening out of necessity or in accordance with social law.

It is difficult indeed to see human monsters guilty of atrocities alive and well. It would seem fit that they be put to death. Correct? Better to thin the herd, yes? To rid the poison? But then... what does that make us? If we are willing to do the same things that they did? That discussion on capital punishment is an endless revolving door. Truth is difficult to handle. Cancer exists. We will all die. It's likely we will experience heartbreak. These are truths that won't go away. No matter how ugly. The truth that would be hard to tell that family? Your little girl is dead. Nothing will change that. Nothing will make that feel better. Not even killing the killer. She will still be gone. The old adage... if you plan to fight monsters, be careful you not become one yourself. Hate leads only to more hate. Nothing else. A tough pill to swallow, but no less true.

Hmm? Atheism? A religion? That's sort of laughable. In the words of a popular atheist, "that's like calling bald a hair color." This is a silly notion. The word, literally means, "not theistic." Not playing sports... is not a sport. The misconception there is when folks see organized atheists such as the American Atheist Society and think that such an organization is a doctrine that supports what ALL atheists believe. Which isn't true.

I acknowledge that most religious people aren't fanatics or extremists that adhere closely to what their doctrine permits or would enforce. (Stoning someone for working on Sunday, for example.) But what's written, is there. And it's there to be interpreted by any and all who would wish to subscribe to it, and in any way they see fit to interpret said writings. How can one honestly be angry or even surprised that an Islamic extremist would kill a person who didn't believe what they do? Is it not there in the text? Are they not abiding by their religious law? That's kind of the problem. That an "interpretation" can draw a divide between "murder" and killing another human being. That one form of killing another human being should be viewed as permissible and the other not.

Killing a person even for good reason doesn't make it any more noble. Were it to come to my life and the life of an assailant, yes I would murder the living shit out of that assailant. But killing is killing. You still blasted a hole through another living breathing being. You still squeezed the air from their throat. You still killed a son, a father, or a daughter. Doesnt matter what uniform they wore or didn't. Doesn't matter their belief, their mental state, or their perceived depravity.

It seems acceptable in war. The world over, if you ask anyone they'll tell you war is hell. Yet this seems a passing fancy. A bit of trivial knowledge we readily forget when we are constantly willing to hurl our countries at one another in a bout of slaughter that will wind up as a statistic. We forget the stares of our grandfathers. And I suppose it would depend on what side of the fence you sat on. What luck that we weren't born in the "wrong" region and raised to believe the "wrong" ideology. Heaven forbid we think those extremes were right.

Reminds me of the talk of "villains" in our stories. Villains are never so one dimensional as "evil for evils sake". Nay, believe it or not, the villains we see in the real world? They think THEY are the heroes. Fighting and killing in the name of what is noble and true. We have to ask ourselves, where do we each fall in this scale? When are we someone else's villain? And how can we claim to be so very different from what we think is a villain if we do the exact same shit they do?

I killed someone's daughter. I killed someone's little girl. I did that. The old woman didn't care who I was or why I did it. She didn't care if it wasn't on purpose. She didn't give two fucks what uniform I was wearing, or what old men were talking about very far away. Her daughter was dead. I don't know if the little girl was cute or ugly or if she resemble her parents. Her face was gone. Why did I do that? Why did it even happen by accident? What the fuck was I thinking?

Freedom. That's why.

I'm a rational human being, so I can acknowledge the facts. I can tell myself why those events happen. I can justify what happened, why it wound up that way. I can say that we got the guy we meant to, and that's all that was supposed to happen. But what does that really fucking change in the end? Is that supposed to make anyone feel better? Someone's daughter is gone. She's a statistic now.

I'm told this kind of thing is ok. This stuff happens. It's not our fault. It had to be done. It's fine when you're hunting monsters. But what no one has ever been able to explain to me is where we draw the line at what we define as a monster. When are monstrous acts deemed as "fine".
 
Generally speaking we kill when we must, when no reasonable alternative exists. I learned this principle in combat.

About a year ago the state released a killer who murdered her mother back in 1998. One boy who helped her do it got life, and the other boy who helped her is on death row. But Missy is out, and just had a baby. Ma got murdered because young Missy was fucking the boys and Ma caught her.

Prison isn't all that bad unless you make special efforts to piss everyone off. About the worst that happens to cons is transferring them around. Cons are fools for stability and routine. Many cons use prison to get medical attention and rehab to return to the street. The average con gets many times more money than his kids and baby mams get from welfare. Prison is designed to keep the con a happy camper. Plenty get regular female sex from prison staff.

I don't know why we love killers so much.

Several years ago a guy in California grabbed a teen, raped her, and amputated her arms with an axe. California released him to probation in Tampa. Here he grabbed a woman, raped her, murdered her, and died in prison from cancer.

I don't get why we love killers so much.

H.L.Mencken said hangings are catharis for the citizens who must live in a commun ity of criminals. Hangings give people hope for justice.

But we love killers too much.
 
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SecondCircle said:
My position isn't to claim that killing doesn't wind up happening out of necessity or in accordance with social law.

It is difficult indeed to see human monsters guilty of atrocities alive and well. It would seem fit that they be put to death. Correct? Better to thin the herd, yes? To rid the poison? But then... what does that make us? If we are willing to do the same things that they did? That discussion on capital punishment is an endless revolving door. Truth is difficult to handle. Cancer exists. We will all die. It's likely we will experience heartbreak. These are truths that won't go away. No matter how ugly. The truth that would be hard to tell that family? Your little girl is dead. Nothing will change that. Nothing will make that feel better. Not even killing the killer. She will still be gone. The old adage... if you plan to fight monsters, be careful you not become one yourself. Hate leads only to more hate. Nothing else. A tough pill to swallow, but no less true.

Hmm? Atheism? A religion? That's sort of laughable. In the words of a popular atheist, "that's like calling bald a hair color." This is a silly notion. The word, literally means, "not theistic." Not playing sports... is not a sport. The misconception there is when folks see organized atheists such as the American Atheist Society and think that such an organization is a doctrine that supports what ALL atheists believe. Which isn't true.

I acknowledge that most religious people aren't fanatics or extremists that adhere closely to what their doctrine permits or would enforce. (Stoning someone for working on Sunday, for example.) But what's written, is there. And it's there to be interpreted by any and all who would wish to subscribe to it, and in any way they see fit to interpret said writings. How can one honestly be angry or even surprised that an Islamic extremist would kill a person who didn't believe what they do? Is it not there in the text? Are they not abiding by their religious law? That's kind of the problem. That an "interpretation" can draw a divide between "murder" and killing another human being. That one form of killing another human being should be viewed as permissible and the other not.

Killing a person even for good reason doesn't make it any more noble. Were it to come to my life and the life of an assailant, yes I would murder the living shit out of that assailant. But killing is killing. You still blasted a hole through another living breathing being. You still squeezed the air from their throat. You still killed a son, a father, or a daughter. Doesnt matter what uniform they wore or didn't. Doesn't matter their belief, their mental state, or their perceived depravity.

It seems acceptable in war. The world over, if you ask anyone they'll tell you war is hell. Yet this seems a passing fancy. A bit of trivial knowledge we readily forget when we are constantly willing to hurl our countries at one another in a bout of slaughter that will wind up as a statistic. We forget the stares of our grandfathers. And I suppose it would depend on what side of the fence you sat on. What luck that we weren't born in the "wrong" region and raised to believe the "wrong" ideology. Heaven forbid we think those extremes were right.

Reminds me of the talk of "villains" in our stories. Villains are never so one dimensional as "evil for evils sake". Nay, believe it or not, the villains we see in the real world? They think THEY are the heroes. Fighting and killing in the name of what is noble and true. We have to ask ourselves, where do we each fall in this scale? When are we someone else's villain? And how can we claim to be so very different from what we think is a villain if we do the exact same shit they do?

I killed someone's daughter. I killed someone's little girl. I did that. The old woman didn't care who I was or why I did it. She didn't care if it wasn't on purpose. She didn't give two fucks what uniform I was wearing, or what old men were talking about very far away. Her daughter was dead. I don't know if the little girl was cute or ugly or if she resemble her parents. Her face was gone. Why did I do that? Why did it even happen by accident? What the fuck was I thinking?

Freedom. That's why.

I'm a rational human being, so I can acknowledge the facts. I can tell myself why those events happen. I can justify what happened, why it wound up that way. I can say that we got the guy we meant to, and that's all that was supposed to happen. But what does that really fucking change in the end? Is that supposed to make anyone feel better? Someone's daughter is gone. She's a statistic now.

I'm told this kind of thing is ok. This stuff happens. It's not our fault. It had to be done. It's fine when you're hunting monsters. But what no one has ever been able to explain to me is where we draw the line at what we define as a monster. When are monstrous acts deemed as "fine".
Click to expand...

Youre a moron, and so is your pally above.
 
And je suis the Annapolis Capital Gazette. Five journalists murdered for publishing the truth... but something tells me the guy who repeatedly called for vigilantes to shoot journalists isn't going to be treated like the terrorist that he is.
 
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