Taking Secularism a bit too far.

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  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    edited October 2020
    The French context is very important and the distinctive French approach to secularism can indeed run to abuses (eg. in disputes over veiling). Indeed anti-religious attitudes tied up with racism can lead to massive human rights abuses as we see in China with genocide against Uighurs. However there's also a danger of giving violent illiberal religious beliefs a new coat of respectability.

    Coercive confessional states run the gamut from ones where they mostly attack women's and LGBT rights in non lethal ways to ones where anyone not of the state sanctioned religion or charged with flouting or insulting it can be murdered, genocides are carried out against religious minorities, and human rights activists get jailed, tortured or murdered.

    Support for religious supremacist attitudes can be as dangerous as support for white supremacy. Women, LGBT and religious minorities of many kinds can all be put at risk by validating blasphemy as a concept to be respected, and by forcing teaching and education to respect it.

    Support for LGBT rights in itself has been represented by conservatives as a religious provocation - conservative Anglican bishops have used this exact same argument to fight LGBT rights in the church, lest it provoke offended Islamic fundamentalist groups to acts of terrorism and murder in African contexts.

    It's often forgotten that the overwhelming majority of the victims of this kind of violent Islamism with its taste for eradicating heretics and blasphemers are not white europeans but other muslims who are murdered for being the wrong kind of muslim, as well as other minorities such as the Yazidi and Arab Christians. So if those lives matter to us and not just white european ones then critical discourse about these dangers and teaching about them is vital.

    The danger is that today a teacher is killed for showing cartoons of a dead religious figure for discussion but tomorrow another is killed because they showed pictures of a same sex wedding ceremony or a photo of Saudi women's rights activist Loujain Hathloul or a sympathetic film about Ahmadis (a Muslim minority who face deadly persecution as heretics) and discussed the issues. It's very easy to put all that under the heading of blasphemy, provocation etc. and thus to close down space where reactionary supremacist religion and all its dangers can be discussed and critically examined.
  • No one had the right to not be offended. If you search a bit, there's any number of reporters who state they refrain from certain reporting due to threats or perceived threats

    A little different but: There's still a fatwa that encourages the killing is author Salman Rushdie.
  • stetson wrote: »
    Just so I understand, are you arguing that the teacher, in displaying the cartoon from the trial-period, was trying to join in the provocation?
    No, I'm not.

    I'm virtually certain he didn't see it as a provocation and was doing what he considered his civic duty in a responsible fashion.

    However, I also find it entirely believable that being immersed in the culture of secularist French state education he totally failed to grasp how proceeding as he did might be experienced on a visceral level by some fundamentalist Muslims and be seen as a complete provocation.

    I see this aspect not as his fault, but as a systemic failure on the part of French state education to understand, or seek to understand, the importance of the transcendent in human life.

    For my part, just by engaging with a Muslim extremist in jail, or standing on a platform alongside other religious leaders and putting my name to public condemnation of the Charlie Hebdo attacks I'm fully aware that I may have put myself on a target list. I'd do that again tomorrow, but I understand the risks and I somewhat understand how my stance may be interpreted.

    That said, I did not and will not say "Je suis Charlie" because I do not identify with the perpetrators of what I see as abuse of free speech.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    Louise wrote: »

    Support for LGBT rights in itself has been represented by conservatives as a religious provocation - conservative Anglican bishops have used this exact same argument to fight LGBT rights in the church, lest it provoke offended Islamic fundamentalist groups to acts of terrorism and murder in African contexts.

    AKA posturing like you're not taking sides one way or another, but are merely motivated by a disinterested concern for public safety.

    "I dunno, JC. Some of those Pharisees look like they're ready to riot. Maybe we should just let them stone the little slut to death."

  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »
    I kinda wonder why, if the killer was motivated by sociopolitical considerations, he didn't choose a more sociopolitical target.
    I don't think that being motivated by sociopolitical considerations and being motivated by religious offence are quite so distinct from each other or quite so determinate in themselves as I think you're supposing. I believe sociologists often think that a strong religious identity can arise in someone as a way of compensating for one's secular identities being treated as low status. Just because someone's immediate reaction is to religious offence doesn't rule out a sociopolitical context.

  • I have followed this thread with interest and appreciated many of the interventions especially those of Eutychus and Dafyd.
    The French Republic is not multicultural. Holders of French passports are not encouraged to be 'diverse' but rather to be citizens of the French Republic and to agree with or at the very least abide by both the rules and the guiding stars of the Republic - liberty,fraternity and equality.
    Like many other philosophical ideas each one of these seemingly excellent ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity can be taken too far or at least 'a bit too far' as suggested by the OP

    Liberty of expression does not, or at least should not allow one to denigrate another person nor indeed another person's sincerely held point of view. That would be a 'sin' against fraternity and equality.
    'Laicité' ,while it may or may not have the idea of a level playing field for all in the matter of religious belief ,does not always work out in practice. In public education in the past the ideas of christianity were simply silenced,if not indeed at times ridiculed. I can in a way accept ridicule as part of the level playing field but find it difficult to see silencing or airbrushing out as a part of the level playing field.

    'Communitarianism' is a word which I have just learned in the last few days. There is a feeling amongst certain French people that those who uphold the Islamic faith are more interested in the Islamic way of life rather than being citizens of the French Republic.
    I came across a report on one of the French National news broadcasts complaining about certain shelves in the supermarkets selling Halal products as well as Kosher products.
    One of those interviewed said that in her opinion it was okay to advertise Asian products, but not halal products in a secular state. It wasn't suggested that halal products should not be sold but there should not be a special shelf advertising them as such. Not for a moment would I suggest that this is the official view of the French state, but that even the subject was discussed seems to me a little bit disquieting.

    On another track I realise that I should perhaps not have used the word 'denigrate' as it is connected with 'negro' and means' to blacken'.
  • chrisstileschrisstiles Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    stetson wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    SusanDoris wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    I know that generally, we talk only about Anglo concerns, and we all try to respect each other's position about sacred and secular. It seems to me that while the French teacher was within his rights to take pride in his secularism it does not mean he had the right to offend a person of faith.
    I have not seen or heard anywhere that he had stated his intention to offend, and in particular to offend a person of faith.
    This is not the first time a French teacher has been killed for displaying caricatures of the prophet. Seems like some people have not learned from past experience.
    Perhaps the teacher felt that those who do such killings ought to have learnt that it is never right to kill someone for trying to teach about freedom of speech. in today's climate, it can be very dangerous for someone to stand up against those who would bully and control, and it is terrible that some die as a result of trying to do so.

    Ought? The killer felt bullied and controlled, had nowhere else to go. Education is a privilege. Being patronizing with it to marginalized minorities, to the disempowered, the poor, to second class citoyens, without actually addressing their material deprivation is bullying and controlling, gaslighting. By a still, just as much as always, culturally colonial power in Africa. 'Never mind all your actual felt social injustice, you need enlightenment above all.'. Fuck off.

    I kinda wonder why, if the killer was motivated by sociopolitical considerations, he didn't choose a more sociopolitical target. I mean, the National Front, to take just one example, certainly doesn't confine itself to spoofing the Prophet, but rather engages in all sorts of political shennanigans designed to harness governmental power against Muslim immigrants.

    I suspect that the way in which he would have constructed his identity (see both Eutychus and Dafyd's posts above) had much to do with target selection.

    Do you mean he constructed his identity as being that of a Muslim?

    I think it is more than that -- my observation is that when someone feels that their identity is beleagured they retreat towards the more singular aspects of their identity/culture/religion -- and for some Muslims that frequently ends up being either the prophet and/or the Koran (after all they've been repeatedly told that their culture is regressive, their ways are primitive, their families are barbaric etc - ironically, I wouldn't be surprised if this also drives them towards more fundamental -- and thus more 'pure' -- expressions of Islam).
  • Louise wrote: »
    The danger is that today a teacher is killed for showing cartoons of a dead religious figure for discussion but tomorrow another is killed because they showed pictures of a same sex wedding ceremony or a photo of Saudi women's rights activist Loujain Hathloul or a sympathetic film about Ahmadis (a Muslim minority who face deadly persecution as heretics) and discussed the issues. It's very easy to put all that under the heading of blasphemy, provocation etc. and thus to close down space where reactionary supremacist religion and all its dangers can be discussed and critically examined.

    The extremist I'm talking to has a thing for trying to blow up swingers' clubs, apparently.

    The existence of a danger of "closing down space for critical examination of reactionary supremacist religion" does not mean one can launch into such a space in ignorance of the context. Your "reactionary supremacist religion" is some other people's core cultural identity. I would have thought you know how it feels when someone feels their core identity is being run roughshod over.

    Fraternity is supposed to be a French Republican value. Ask a few Chechens here, legal citizens and supposedly protected by the values of the Republic, how much fraternity they feel they get at the hands of the Republic.

    And if one should have the space you allude to, then one should also have space for critical examination of reactionary, intolerant, atheistic ideology which nicely describes the French state education system at its worst. What are the chances of it opening up that space? Slim.

  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    I know that generally, we talk only about Anglo concerns, and we all try to respect each other's position about sacred and secular.

    I don't want to see this devolve into a god/no-god debate, though.

    The French pride themselves on being a secular society to the point they discourage the wearing of any religious symbol or dress in public. From time to time this is challenged by religious people who do not want to violate their religious dictates. But I am wondering, in the case of the recent beheading of a French teacher for having shown caricatures of Mohammed in a class. It seems to me that while the French teacher was within his rights to take pride in his secularism it does not mean he had the right to offend a person of faith. This is not the first time a French teacher has been killed for displaying caricatures of the prophet. Seems like some people have not learned from past experience.

    What do you think?
    I think the beheading is an example why French secularism is so strong and not evidence of it being a cause.
    Though I think French governmental secularism is at times uneven and particularly harsh towards Muslims, the secularism itself is not the cause.

  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    But I am wondering, in the case of the recent beheading of a French teacher for having shown caricatures of Mohammed in a class. It seems to me that while the French teacher was within his rights to take pride in his secularism it does not mean he had the right to offend a person of faith.

    I accept that images of Mohammed are offensive to Muslims.
    This is not a universal Muslim belief and, IIRC, not a foundational belief as the earliest depictions of Mohammed are by Muslims.
  • Louise wrote: »
    He was extremely careful in his lesson plan to make sure anyone who might be offended could leave. The point was to have a serious discussion about the issues (something the teacher had done with other very serious issues like war and its remembrance and the issues around that). If you limit teaching and discussion of ethical issues by the standards of people who take offence even if they are given an opt out, you'd pretty soon be unable to teach anything to do with religion. One person's blasphemy and heresy can easily be another person's wholesome and orthodox doctrine.

    If people can't process the difference between a history class engaging with sources for discussion and a street preacher hurling sectarian positions in earnest, how would a history teacher be meant to teach the European Reformation or the wars of religion in France? People from the faiths involved will read stuff in the primary sources that could offend their faith. If you want to discuss serious matters, there need to be teaching spaces where people can engage with the sources and they need not to be policed by the most intolerant and dogmatic who don't want other people to be allowed to exercise their consciences.
    Exactly.
    The problem here is not the teacher. It is extremism and, if anything, the beheading is an argument for secularisation.
  • Forthview wrote: »
    'Communitarianism' is a word which I have just learned in the last few days. There is a feeling amongst certain French people that those who uphold the Islamic faith are more interested in the Islamic way of life rather than being citizens of the French Republic.
    The overlap with French people who approve of immigrants being ghettoised into shoddy council estates and being kept out of the best opportunities is probably quite big.

    I am sure that a retreat into a strong Muslim identity is in large part due to a history of blatant discrimination and rejection on the part of the French system.
    I came across a report on one of the French National news broadcasts complaining about certain shelves in the supermarkets selling Halal products as well as Kosher products.
    One of those interviewed said that in her opinion it was okay to advertise Asian products, but not halal products in a secular state. It wasn't suggested that halal products should not be sold but there should not be a special shelf advertising them as such. Not for a moment would I suggest that this is the official view of the French state, but that even the subject was discussed seems to me a little bit disquieting.
    What's disquieting? I can't see anything wrong with offering distinctively labelled halal products and there is no law in France against doing so. State-run canteens, on the other hand, rather obliquely refer to a menu sans porc (pork-free menu).

    Since gathering official statistics on religious affiliation is against the constitution (you see the sort of problem we have here...) the best rule of thumb for calculating how many Muslims are in any given jail is to count the number of such meals served (although this probably wildly inflates the number as such meals are often rumoured to be better).

  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    This is not a universal Muslim belief and, IIRC, not a foundational belief as the earliest depictions of Mohammed are by Muslims.

    But we're not talking about a universal Muslim belief. We're talking about a vague hodgepodge of vaguely spiritual ideas, cultural identity, existential anguish, rejection, and a lack of appropriate boundaries, which have latched onto bits of Islam as a sort of higher justification for extremism. At least that's what emerges for me from my limited exchanges with people like the guy who killed the teacher.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    I don't think that it's wrong to satirise other people's religious beliefs as such. The problem is if you do so in a context where there is no meaningful opportunity for them to respond or satirise you back.

    If a French teacher had introduced positive imagery of Mohammad into a classroom AIUI the limits of free speech in French society would very quickly have come into play. AIUI that would be the case even if he had allowed a pupil to give a positive presentation about Mohammad. It's not a fair playing field.

    As has been said on the thread about riots, when people are unable to protest lawfully they protest unlawfully. Which doesn't make it moral or right, but makes it understandable.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    I don't think that it's wrong to satirise other people's religious beliefs as such. The problem is if you do so in a context where there is no meaningful opportunity for them to respond or satirise you back.
    Rubbish. The problem is a lack of perspective in those who think murder is an acceptable response to a perceived lack of respect.

  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Dafyd wrote: »
    I don't think that it's wrong to satirise other people's religious beliefs as such. The problem is if you do so in a context where there is no meaningful opportunity for them to respond or satirise you back.
    Rubbish. The problem is a lack of perspective in those who think murder is an acceptable response to a perceived lack of respect.
    I'm so glad you took the trouble to read my first post on this thread, and the last paragraph of the post to which you responded, before you dived in.

  • SusanDoris wrote: »
    Perhaps the teacher felt that those who do such killings ought to have learnt that it is never right to kill someone for trying to teach about freedom of speech. in today's climate, it can be very dangerous for someone to stand up against those who would bully and control, and it is terrible that some die as a result of trying to do so.

    Perhaps. Or perhaps I could, whilst unreservedly condemning the murderer and those who would support him, also claim that the act of reproducing cartoons that a segment of the population finds offensive, and showing those images in a class that some of that population are forced to attend, whilst effectively saying "ha ha, we have a secular society, I'm allowed to do this" was also a form of bullying.

    Like @orfeo said, we don't have to fall in to the binary trap here. It's quite possible for both showing the cartoons in this context to be wrong, and for murdering the teacher because of it to be more wrong.
  • Eutychus wrote: »
    What's disquieting? I can't see anything wrong with offering distinctively labelled halal products and there is no law in France against doing so. State-run canteens, on the other hand, rather obliquely refer to a menu sans porc (pork-free menu).

    Halal and pork-free mean different things, though. My understanding was that for non-pig meat to be halal, it had to be killed in a particular way.
  • @Leorning Cniht Yes, but at a school canteen level, pork-free is what the state offers and what is almost universally accepted by Muslims. If they have any further doubts, I think they just don't eat the meat in the dish, whereas proximity of pork might make the whole thing haram.
  • Or perhaps I could ... claim that the act of reproducing cartoons that a segment of the population finds offensive, and showing those images in a class that some of that population are forced to attend, whilst effectively saying "ha ha, we have a secular society, I'm allowed to do this" was also a form of bullying.
    But I thought he offered students the option to leave?

  • stetson wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    Making the poor, sick, deluded, deranged 18 year old murderous fool morally responsible is all very nice and liberal. We don't live in a liberal world. France is far from it. The order is reversed.

    You have now made at least 2 attempts to say how the "murderous fool" is not morally responsible for murdering.

    I simply have nothing to say to you. If we can't even get a consensus that murder is morally a bad thing to commit, what is the point?

    Because there is a huge, huge difference between trying to explain some of the context in which a crime such as this occurred, and actually trying to just remove responsibility for the crime altogether.

    He can be as morally responsible as he likes with his 70 virgins. Why provoke mad dogs? The context is injustice as big as it gets. If you have nothing to say, then don't.

    "Mad dog"? Doesn't that kinda go against the spirit of arguing that he's motivated by concern over injustice?

    Or is that we're ALL mad dogs, in some veterinary metaphorization of the Fall?

    His sense of injustice is that of a mad dog, enraged by a whistle. The actual injustice is historically and culturally obvious, n'est ce pas? To project our privileged Hegelian deontology above his deranged duty and obligation as primary is utterly absurd.
  • Or perhaps I could ... claim that the act of reproducing cartoons that a segment of the population finds offensive, and showing those images in a class that some of that population are forced to attend, whilst effectively saying "ha ha, we have a secular society, I'm allowed to do this" was also a form of bullying.
    But I thought he offered students the option to leave?
    Yes he did, but remember your teenage days and imagine how you would have felt at that age in front of your classmates if your teacher said "now some of you might find this next bit unacceptable, and if you think that's the case, please leave the class now"

  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Circus Host, 8th Day Host
    Something I think has been overlooked here: prior to the horrific way the story ended, Samuel Paty was facing a disciplinary process over this lesson. Laïcité means that while no one's beliefs get priority, everyone's beliefs also ought to be respected. Emmanuel Macron has spoken about this being his understanding of the concept (not recently). To show offensive caricatures of Mohammed at the present time is not neutral. Why not offensive caricatures of the Pope?

    (Insert disclaimer about this being no excuse for brutal murder. )
  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    edited October 2020
    People often murder women or LGBT people or minorities because they feel or think their core identity of masculinity/conservative religion has been, in their view, ridden over or insulted. It doesn't make it harmless or right or excusable or something that mustn't be discussed in classrooms. Just as racism should be discussed, appeals to these identities being insulted as a rationale for murder needs to be discussed.

    The people whom the religious/traditional conservatives want to murder or otherwise shut up, still need defending and the legitimacy of murdering, repressing and censoring in the name of those values still needs to be discussed.

    Waving rainbow flags at pop concerts in various Arab countries has been considered a provocation worthy of state repression and an outrage to religion,  described by Dr Abbas Shuman, a high ranking cleric in Egypt as 'an act of moral terrorism'. Sarah Hegazy, the young woman who was famously photographed waving the rainbow flag at a Mashrou' Leila concert was hunted down, sexually assaulted (likely raped) and tortured in custody and later, when she managed to escape to Canada, took her own life. The core identity of the conservative religious homophobes who felt threatened by people challenging their values was relieved from the intolerable insult and provocation of a young queer woman waving a rainbow flag. There's a huge history of this kind of repression in the name of religion or traditional values, the victims are only very rarely French teachers.

    Defending non-coercive non-violent religious beliefs against an overly controlling racist state can be a good thing, but stuff like blasphemy accusations has a horrific history of being used to keep religious minorities,* dissidents, women and LGBT people in their place.

    Questioning or mocking the authority figures of religion who've said you're an abomination or ought to be executed or know your subservient place gets categorised as blasphemy and murdering the blasphemers becomes a meritorious act. I've spent a lot of time studying societies in which blasphemy was considered worth prosecuting and persecuting for and privileging it really does not produce progressive anti-racist egalitarian societies. Quite the reverse.



    *including atheists and secularists who still are highly persecuted minorities in some countries and communities
  • Something I think has been overlooked here: prior to the horrific way the story ended, Samuel Paty was facing a disciplinary process over this lesson. Laïcité means that while no one's beliefs get priority, everyone's beliefs also ought to be respected. Emmanuel Macron has spoken about this being his understanding of the concept (not recently). To show offensive caricatures of Mohammed at the present time is not neutral. Why not offensive caricatures of the Pope?

    Well, I believe the Charlie Hebdo itself has printed offensive cartoons of Christian figures on a regular basis. A caricature of the Three Persons Of the Trinity engaged in a sex orgy with one another comes to mind.

    Not sure what anti-Christian stuff, if any, Paty had shown his students. If the school library has Voltaire's Candide or Baudelaire's Les Fleurs Du Mal, just for starters, that would certainly qualify as offensive to Xtians.

  • Dafyd wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    I kinda wonder why, if the killer was motivated by sociopolitical considerations, he didn't choose a more sociopolitical target.
    I don't think that being motivated by sociopolitical considerations and being motivated by religious offence are quite so distinct from each other or quite so determinate in themselves as I think you're supposing. I believe sociologists often think that a strong religious identity can arise in someone as a way of compensating for one's secular identities being treated as low status. Just because someone's immediate reaction is to religious offence doesn't rule out a sociopolitical context.

    Yes, but if it's at the point where the guy's justified secular concerns have been so sublimated into religious aggresion that he priotitizes attacking the infidels over attacking the people who are really causing him problems, what exactly are we supposed do to accomadate him?

    Okay, so Joe Lunchbucket in the Rust Belt loses his factory job to outsourcing, and responds by doubling down on the hardcore fundamentalism and chucking rocks at the local Pride marchers.

    What should Pride do about that? Stop their marches so as not to antagonize Joe, who's so far gone that he doesn't even remember how he lost his job in the first place?
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    All of which boils down to this question:

    Where / when / how do human groups acquire a "right" to live their lives free of encounters with the offensive?



  • Ohher wrote: »
    All of which boils down to this question:

    Where / when / how do human groups acquire a "right" to live their lives free of encounters with the offensive?

    Well, I think there's a good case to be made that a teacher, in the employ of the government, should not go out of his way to antagonize students by showing them provocative material that's not required for the lesson.

    Though I suppose from the POV of the offended student, it might not matter if the scandalous material was placed into the curriculum by the government for legitimate educational purposes, or if the teacher was just doing his own thing in order to be a jerk.

  • stetson wrote: »
    Okay, so Joe Lunchbucket in the Rust Belt loses his factory job to outsourcing, and responds by doubling down on the hardcore fundamentalism and chucking rocks at the local Pride marchers.

    What should Pride do about that? Stop their marches so as not to antagonize Joe, who's so far gone that he doesn't even remember how he lost his job in the first place?

    I think it's fairly easy to distinguish between, for example, people getting offended by Pride marches because they find two shirtless guys kissing offensive, and people getting offended by a display that portrays the last supper as a gay orgy.

  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Ohher wrote: »
    Where / when / how do human groups acquire a "right" to live their lives free of encounters with the offensive?
    Do we avoid using the n-word of black people because they have a right to live their life free of encounters with the offensive? That would imply that it's ok to use the n-word of black people if they're out of the room. Is it ok to use the word if we warn them and invite them to leave the room first?

    I think the question about people living their lives free of encounters with the offensive is not what it boils down to. I think that's a mischaracterisation of the problem.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Louise wrote: »
    I've spent a lot of time studying societies in which blasphemy was considered worth prosecuting and persecuting for and privileging it really does not produce progressive anti-racist egalitarian societies.
    Yes, but just because a group is punching down in one context doesn't mean that ridicule of that group in another context isn't also punching down. In contexts the very same group can be both punching up and down.

    Also, the idea that because people are offended unreasonably in some contexts doesn't mean that they can't be reasonably offended in others: conservative male Orthodox Jews are pretty patriarchal and homophobic, but that doesn't make anti-semitic caricatures of conservative male orthodox Jews ok.

    The question I think isn't whether people are offended but whether they are excluded.

  • Dafyd wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Dafyd wrote: »
    I don't think that it's wrong to satirise other people's religious beliefs as such. The problem is if you do so in a context where there is no meaningful opportunity for them to respond or satirise you back.
    Rubbish. The problem is a lack of perspective in those who think murder is an acceptable response to a perceived lack of respect.
    I'm so glad you took the trouble to read my first post on this thread, and the last paragraph of the post to which you responded, before you dived in.
    The beheading was unlikely to have been caused by the lack of opportunity to respond in kind.

  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    Dafyd wrote: »

    Also, the idea that because people are offended unreasonably in some contexts doesn't mean that they can't be reasonably offended in others: conservative male Orthodox Jews are pretty patriarchal and homophobic, but that doesn't make anti-semitic caricatures of conservative male orthodox Jews ok.

    No, but if the conservative male orthodox Jews are using the Hebrew scriptures to justify discrimination against women and gays, that makes the Hebrew scriptures fair game for satire.



  • It doesn't mean you have to explicitly quote or portray that satire in front of a class including Jewish pupils, though. And I can imagine the howls in France in particular if such a thing were to be envisaged.
  • The point of the class was free speech. Showing examples of free speech that is potentially offensive is a reasonable thing.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »
    Ohher wrote: »
    All of which boils down to this question:

    Where / when / how do human groups acquire a "right" to live their lives free of encounters with the offensive?

    Well, I think there's a good case to be made that a teacher, in the employ of the government, should not go out of his way to antagonize students by showing them provocative material that's not required for the lesson.

    Though I suppose from the POV of the offended student, it might not matter if the scandalous material was placed into the curriculum by the government for legitimate educational purposes, or if the teacher was just doing his own thing in order to be a jerk.

    I don't see how the situations you raise in your response address the question I'm raising, though.

    In my own country (US), we claim we have majority rule (it's not, in fact, at all clear that we do, but set that aside for the moment). It's likely (or at least possible) that, if polled, more US residents would claim to be Christian than otherwise if all they had to choose from was Muslim / Christian / Jewish / nonbeliever.

    This putative "Christian majority" does not and cannot impose Christian rule ) (whatever that would look like after several dozen Christian denominations hacked that together) because this country's Constitution expressly prohibits that in Article 1 of its Bill of Rights:

    "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    The point of the class was free speech. Showing examples of free speech that is potentially offensive is a reasonable thing.

    Reasonable blasphemy.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »

    Well, rightly or wrongly, the cartoons WERE published, and when somone decided to respond to the cartoons by commiting mass murder in Paris a few years back, that sort of made them into a current event. Current events being something generally considered suitable for discussion in a classroom context.

    Do you need to show the cartoons to have the discussion? Perhaps you should also be showing photos of the various dead bodies, close up, as well
  • Re: depicting the last supper as a "gay orgy"

    I admit I would find that as deeply offensive. It really does not have to be a same-sex orgy and I would find it just as offensive. However, there is a difference in my religion which teaches turning the other cheek and forgiveness and a religious philosophy that puts a heavy emphasis on retribution.

    While I am asking if the teacher took the lesson on freedom of speech a bit too far, in no way do I want to defend the actions of the assassin. Why is it some fundamentalists go to such extremes? I think it testifies to the precariousness of their religion. But this is not just a Muslim problem. I can find similar examples in fundamental Christianity as well, especially during the Civil Rights Era in the US.

  • Is there a commonality between a Muslim who beheads someone for showing a picture of the Prophet, and a Christian who blows up an abortion clinic or shoots up a gay nightclub?
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Martin54 wrote: »
    His sense of injustice is that of a mad dog, enraged by a whistle.

    Reducing people to animal behaviour is completely inappropriate. It robs them of agency, of rationality, and of humanity.

    And it's a frequent tactic used in relation to terrorism.

  • mousethief wrote: »
    Is there a commonality between a Muslim who beheads someone for showing a picture of the Prophet, and a Christian who blows up an abortion clinic or shoots up a gay nightclub?

    I would say yes. Like the young man who shot up the church in Charlottesville as well.

  • Gee D wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »

    Well, rightly or wrongly, the cartoons WERE published, and when somone decided to respond to the cartoons by commiting mass murder in Paris a few years back, that sort of made them into a current event. Current events being something generally considered suitable for discussion in a classroom context.

    Do you need to show the cartoons to have the discussion? Perhaps you should also be showing photos of the various dead bodies, close up, as well

    Well, if the photos of the bodies, in and of themselves, became the object of contention, then yes, I think you could make an argument for showing them in class.

    Suppose someone were to say "That picture of the Viet Cong guy being shot in the head is horrible, and should be banned from being published or displayed!" In a classroom discussion dedicated to debating the guy's proposals, it would probably make sense to show them.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    Is there a commonality between a Muslim who beheads someone for showing a picture of the Prophet, and a Christian who blows up an abortion clinic or shoots up a gay nightclub?

    I read that an anti-abortion extremist shot and killed a Doctor in Wichita some years ago. It's certainly analogous, as I'm sure you are pointing out.
  • Simon Toad wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    Is there a commonality between a Muslim who beheads someone for showing a picture of the Prophet, and a Christian who blows up an abortion clinic or shoots up a gay nightclub?

    I read that an anti-abortion extremist shot and killed a Doctor in Wichita some years ago. It's certainly analogous, as I'm sure you are pointing out.

    And anti-abortion violence is actually at a LOW ebb these days, compared to the 80s and 90s.

    There's a book on the subject called Wrath Of Angels, by James Risen and Judy Thomas. Very interesting read.
  • The doctor murdered in Wichita in 2009 was George Tiller. That book I mentioned above, which dates from the late 90s, has a bit of stuff on the previous unsuccsesful attempts on Tiller's life.
  • stetson wrote: »
    Simon Toad wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    Is there a commonality between a Muslim who beheads someone for showing a picture of the Prophet, and a Christian who blows up an abortion clinic or shoots up a gay nightclub?

    I read that an anti-abortion extremist shot and killed a Doctor in Wichita some years ago. It's certainly analogous, as I'm sure you are pointing out.

    And anti-abortion violence is actually at a LOW ebb these days, compared to the 80s and 90s.

    There's a book on the subject called Wrath Of Angels, by James Risen and Judy Thomas. Very interesting read.

    Yeah the gays are the current target of choice. Also Blacks and Jews of course, as recent events have shown.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »

    Well, rightly or wrongly, the cartoons WERE published, and when somone decided to respond to the cartoons by commiting mass murder in Paris a few years back, that sort of made them into a current event. Current events being something generally considered suitable for discussion in a classroom context.

    Do you need to show the cartoons to have the discussion? Perhaps you should also be showing photos of the various dead bodies, close up, as well

    Well, if the photos of the bodies, in and of themselves, became the object of contention, then yes, I think you could make an argument for showing them in class.

    It's hard to see how the photographs could become such an object, just as I find it hard to see that seeing the offensive cartoons here aids the discussion of the class one bit. The fact of there being an offensive cartoon is relevant but not an examination of the cartoon itself.
  • SusanDoris wrote: »
    Perhaps the teacher felt that those who do such killings ought to have learnt that it is never right to kill someone for trying to teach about freedom of speech. in today's climate, it can be very dangerous for someone to stand up against those who would bully and control, and it is terrible that some die as a result of trying to do so.

    Perhaps. Or perhaps I could, whilst unreservedly condemning the murderer and those who would support him, also claim that the act of reproducing cartoons that a segment of the population finds offensive, and showing those images in a class that some of that population are forced to attend, whilst effectively saying "ha ha, we have a secular society, I'm allowed to do this" was also a form of bullying.

    Like @orfeo said, we don't have to fall in to the binary trap here. It's quite possible for both showing the cartoons in this context to be wrong, and for murdering the teacher because of it to be more wrong.
    As I understand it, there was plenty of notice given and those who felt they needed to do so could absent themselves from the class.

  • SusanDoris wrote: »
    As I understand it, there was plenty of notice given and those who felt they needed to do so could absent themselves from the class.

    "OK class, today we're going to discuss the evils of pornography. To make sure we're clear what it is we're talking about, I'm going to be screening a few clips off Pornhub. If you find that offensive, you are exempted from attending class. Pay no attention to any of your classmates making fun of you as prudes. Thank you."
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