This incident brings two classroom incidents to mind for me. One was the time we were escorted to the VCR room (because that's what we had in those days, one VCR for the entire school) to watch footage of the Holocaust. Probably half of my class were Jewish, and they were given notice and invited not to attend if they might find it distressing. I can't be sure, but I don't recall anyone backing out, and given class dynamics among young teenagers I don't find that surprising in the least.
I fail to see how an invitation not to attend something that will be perceived as deliberately provocative and marginalising of one's identity could go down any differently.
The other incident is an English teacher reading out a narrative of the lynching of an alleged black rapist to a class of youngish teenagers. The narrative went into graphic detail about the victim's penis and what happened to it. We didn't get any prior notice of that and I have wondered since that day what the teacher's actual motivations in reading it out to us might have been.
Which is to say that the power dynamic in a classroom setting is not something to be abused.
Coming late to this discussion, but I was talking about this yesterday to my student-age children, all educated in the French state system but with a religious (Catholic) education of sorts in the parish, and parents and a broader family who are active in their parishes...
They said they had seen the Charlie cartoons at the time of the original incident and didn't think they were all that offensive... so even they don't seem to "get" how much this sort of thing can shock/offend. And if they don't, how are people with no religious awareness going to get it? (Note, I am not suggesting that being shocked/offended excuses murder).
When I asked them - having had the same thought as Eutychus - did they really think middle school age kids would leave a classroom if it was going to mark them out as "the religious ones" they said they hadn't thought of that, and agreed it wasn't as easy as all that.
An article in Le Monde yesterday (subscribers only) reported, based on an investigation of his online discussions in the weeks leading up to the murder, that the murderer was actively looking for someone to kill for offending his religion, and had two other possible targets before his final victim but couldn't find their addresses.
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.
Right. Because I used that term you've taken where I'm coming from to be the opposite of where I am. I'm not using it as a tactic to distance us from them. That we are not collectively, historically, culturally responsible (but not 'guilty', which is meaningless) for, with them. That he is not just a meaningless anomaly in isolation. If that's what you're implying. I embrace the killer's humanity. I do not question their sanity; there is no evidence of mental illness in such behaviour. As for agency, only a human being could commit such a complex righteous act.
I'm not in the business or robbing them of anything, so happy to row back on a trigger for you.
But agency, rationality and humanity are overstated, overrated. We are animals and failure to understand that basis of our our thinking and behaviour isn't helpful.
The point of the class was free speech. Showing examples of free speech that is potentially offensive is a reasonable thing.
I agree. However (a) he would have been well aware of the earlier consequences of printing the pictures and (b) one would presume that the students would have known about them, so perhaps he could have discussed the matter without actually showing them.
Just to be clear,what I found disquieting about the discussion of halal meat (and kosher) on special shelves in French supermarkets was certainly not that they were there but that there was discussion about them being there at all. Why shouldn't they be there ?
If we can have shelves dedicated to those who wish specifically Polish products or Asian products why can't we have shelves dedicated to halal meat ?
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.
I have a poster on the wall of my classroom, that some people think is offensive. Do you think I should take it down?
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."
Well, it would never get to that point, because showing porn to kids would run you afoul of the law.
But suppose someone wanted to show allegedly sexist advertising to a class, to debate whether or not it was degrading to women, but some kids from conservative backgrounds weren't allowed to see that sorta stuff.
Just to be clear,what I found disquieting about the discussion of halal meat (and kosher) on special shelves in French supermarkets was certainly not that they were there but that there was discussion about them being there at all. Why shouldn't they be there ?
If we can have shelves dedicated to those who wish specifically Polish products or Asian products why can't we have shelves dedicated to halal meat ?
Because to more Western sensibilities than just vegetarians, the method of slaughter is problematic.
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.
I have a poster on the wall of my classroom, that some people think is offensive. Do you think I should take it down?
Perhaps yes, perhaps no. It may be that seeing the poster aids the teaching.lesson. In the case we're discussing, I can't understand how seeing the picture could assist.
Just to be clear,what I found disquieting about the discussion of halal meat (and kosher) on special shelves in French supermarkets was certainly not that they were there but that there was discussion about them being there at all. Why shouldn't they be there ?
If we can have shelves dedicated to those who wish specifically Polish products or Asian products why can't we have shelves dedicated to halal meat ?
Because to more Western sensibilities than just vegetarians, the method of slaughter is problematic.
Most Halal is pre-stunned so the method of slaughter barely differs from mainstream.
Kosher does ban pre-stunning. Funnily enough it's always Halal that people get excited about. The reason for this fairly obvious - at this point in time the Fash are more anti-Muslim than they are anti-Semitic.
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.
It seems to me that thinking this is an adequate solution is a considerable failure of empathy or of trying to understand the other point of view.
If the teacher proposes showing the class anti-semitic or racist images as part of the lesson it's not really a solution to propose that Jewish people or black people leave the room. It would be preferable - if unworkable - to suggest that anyone who is unrepentantly anti-semitic or racist leaves the room.
As I've been trying to say, the problem of offence is not viewed by those who are offended as a problem of their private subjective sensibilities. To think that that's what the problem is is already to dismiss them and their point of view as unimportant.
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.
I have a poster on the wall of my classroom, that some people think is offensive. Do you think I should take it down?
Perhaps yes, perhaps no. It may be that seeing the poster aids the teaching.lesson. In the case we're discussing, I can't understand how seeing the picture could assist.
Well, I'm not quite seeing why viewing the picture is less helpful in this case.
I suppose if the objection is that any image of the Prophet is offensive, you maybe wouldn't need to show the cartoon, just tell the students that it's a picture of Mohammed, and that'll be all they need to know.
But it's being alleged that there is something about this one image in particular that is offensive, over and above the person portrayed, then yeah, I would think viewing the cartoon would be very helpful in drawing a conclusion.
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'm hesitating to see how Pride are punching down in this case.
As I say, if you frame the question as, should we avoid causing unpleasant subjective feelings to that group of thin-skinned people over there, and if so, how so, you're going to get the wrong answers.
Back to pornography for a sec, I do think it makes a difference whether you're talking about the genre as a whole being offensive, or a specific instance of it.
If everyone agrees that porn, by definition, is harmful, you can quite easily have a discussion about what to do about it, without showing any examples. That should be suitable for classroom debate.
But if someone is saying, eg. that last month's Playboy centrefold was especially repellent and should be banned, I don't think you can have a proper discussion about that without actually seeing the photograph in such a case(I personally do not trust verbal descriptions in such cases). Obviously, you could not do that in a school classroom.
I'm very late to this - but as a volunteer in ex-offender rehab I'm very interested in @Eutychus 's point about a 'purification' motive for jihad-ish behaviour. There have been a number of newspaper articles over here about guys described as 'former pot-smoker, DJ, small-time dealer' etc etc, and the tone of the articles has either been nonplussed, or has highlighted the apparent incongruity between the former lifestyle and the following extreme action. That kind of motive in a 'works, not grace' setup makes the beginnings of some kind of sense.
The point of the class was free speech. Showing examples of free speech that is potentially offensive is a reasonable thing.
I agree. However (a) he would have been well aware of the earlier consequences of printing the pictures and (b) one would presume that the students would have known about them, so perhaps he could have discussed the matter without actually showing them.
It the offence felt is the mere depiction of Mohammed or Allah, then no image is necessary. But if it is the way they are depicted, then showing is much more informative. I've seen racist imagery that can be described, but descriptions do not have the same impact as the viewing.
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."
This is a stupid example to begin with and even if it weren't, it would not be analogous to the issue at hand.
The idea of freedom of speech and the benefits of a secular society are not small things to be dismissed by such a simplistic objection.
The child ot parent who allegedly instigated this crime was not even present. Even if all the potentially offended children felt comfortable leaving, it was the act of showing the images, not who might have seen them which was viewed as a justification.
An article in Le Monde yesterday (subscribers only) reported, based on an investigation of his online discussions in the weeks leading up to the murder, that the murderer was actively looking for someone to kill for offending his religion, and had two other possible targets before his final victim but couldn't find their addresses.
ISTM, these killings are less about the supposed offender than they are about control.
The idea of freedom of speech and the benefits of a secular society are not small things to be dismissed by such a simplistic objection.
It's simplistic to say "he ought to show the images for the sake of freedom of speech". It ignores the context here. Freedom of speech does not exist in a vacuum. Similarly, in my view it's misguided to exploit freedom of speech to deliberately create offence and inflame sentiment. Which I think is what Charlie Hebdo did the second time around, to coincide with the trial.
Do you mean there's something clichéd about aligning Islam with orthopraxy; or that the minor-criminal-turned-jihadi trope is common enough to be a cliché; or something else?
(b) one would presume that the students would have known about them, so perhaps he could have discussed the matter without actually showing them.
Charlie Hebdo printed those pictures more than five years ago, at a time when the students in question would have presumably been in elementary school. I think it unlikely that many of the students would be familiar with the cartoons or their publication.
The idea of freedom of speech and the benefits of a secular society are not small things to be dismissed by such a simplistic objection.
It's simplistic to say "he ought to show the images for the sake of freedom of speech". It ignores the context here. Freedom of speech does not exist in a vacuum. Similarly, in my view it's misguided to exploit freedom of speech to deliberately create offence and inflame sentiment. Which I think is what Charlie Hebdo did the second time around, to coincide with the trial.
The idea that those who do not think images of the Prophet and Allah are forbidden should adhere to the stricture anyway is a challenge to free speech and freedom itself. Whilst there is an argument that Charlie Hebdo went further than necessary, that they engage the topic will necessarily cause offence at some level.
And positing that this is about anything other than control is incorrect.
Do you mean there's something clichéd about aligning Islam with orthopraxy; or that the minor-criminal-turned-jihadi trope is common enough to be a cliché; or something else?
The idea of freedom of speech and the benefits of a secular society are not small things to be dismissed by such a simplistic objection.
It's simplistic to say "he ought to show the images for the sake of freedom of speech". It ignores the context here. Freedom of speech does not exist in a vacuum. Similarly, in my view it's misguided to exploit freedom of speech to deliberately create offence and inflame sentiment. Which I think is what Charlie Hebdo did the second time around, to coincide with the trial.
This is true. That some things deliberately inflame. (pornography can be aimed at doing that but it's mostly today about, er, inflammation with single purpose). Art can be subversive and specifically designed to provoke. It's a subject which has been long discussed. It's also why we debate other symbolic representations. Like the current statue protests in many countries.
Really at base, the issues with Mohammed pictures is that the western cultures are not willing that another culture dictate to them and make them change a fundamental value. Yes it offends but I'm back to that there's no right to not be offended. There's also the general rule of politeness and not being a jerk. But this is intersectional with art in the case of three Mohammed cartoons. They are about inflaming. Because religious strictures shall not dictate to secular societies. That's why the cartoons need to shown and reshown. It's the point.
The abortion issues are another theatre of the culture wars. That religion should dictate how social and sexual behaviour shall be organized, and how much central control over one sex's bodies.
Where previously creationism was also a battle ground.
Muslims/pro-life/anti-sexism groups have rights to individually and as a community to object to pictures of Mohammed, abortion, porn. But they haven't the right to control others' rights to use and engage in these things. The limit to this freedom is not about feeling offended, it's about harm. (Which is where the abortion debate is interesting: is a woman's life and rights important and do others have rights to the developing fetus over her rights.)
(b) one would presume that the students would have known about them, so perhaps he could have discussed the matter without actually showing them.
Charlie Hebdo printed those pictures more than five years ago, at a time when the students in question would have presumably been in elementary school. I think it unlikely that many of the students would be familiar with the cartoons or their publication.
Quoting this in response to @NOprophet_NØprofit. @Leorning Cniht are you paying attention? The most recent cartoon was published a few weeks ago, and it was published to coincide with the high-profile trial of surviving attackers and conspirators which had previously sparked another attack outside the former Charlie Hebdo offices. This is not just about something that happened years ago. It's current. Of course current events need to be discussed in the classroom but that is not a dispassionate context in which to show the cartoons.
religious strictures shall not dictate to secular societies. That's why the cartoons need to shown and reshown.
So the beatings shall continue until morale improves. And besides, societies might be secular, but people aren't. I'm still with Malraux. The challenge for secular society is to find room for the gods once more, not try to suppress and deride the need for them.
What caused the most 'sitting out' or withdrawing from class in my school and in other members of my family's schools was religious worship (very mild Church of Scotland style school assembly - a legal requirement in non-secular Scotland) or Christmas stuff (like nativity plays) which was offensive to Brethren and Jehovah's witnesses. (The Brethren folk sat out school plays too. Relatives of mine joined the Baptists so cousin could take part in school plays). And then there's problems over sex education where just mentioning that gay people exist or discussing contraception can lead to 'sitting out'. The Lords prayer is blasphemy too, to lots of folks, gay people and women having control over their reproductive health are abominations to others. Things can't be neatly sorted into a big box marked 'Unoffensive' that everyone agrees on.
I was taught Third Reich history aged 16-17 with some primary source material made available and contextualised through books and documentaries and teaching which included Nazi racist cartoons and film clips. The clips with the rats from The Eternal Jew still come vividly to my mind when I think about how racist tropes work. It showed what racist propaganda was, how deadly it could be and how it works. It became evident with recent controversies where people missed Anti-semitism right under their nose that this kind of education is really necessary.
People need to be similarly informed on how blasphemy and coercive confessional states and the reactions to them work, which, if well taught, just might lead to them questioning whether blasphemy can also slip in by the back door in states that pat themselves on the back as totally secular. I'm not oblivious to the ironies involved... but you need primary sources and history teachers not afraid of being murdered to fully and properly have those discussions.
Yes I read it. We disagree. The cartoons are not racist nor particularly offensive otherwise except that they purport to represent a particular person. I'd allow the teacher should have shown selected cartoons. That's as far as I can consider. I'm fine with all of the directions in the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad
I particularly object to self censorship fears noted in the Wikipedia article: removal of pictures which show Mohammed from galleries.
I find plenty of things personally offensive. I've no right to impose. I try sincerely not to.
This may sound simplistic to some, but whether or not we think it is provocative for teachers to use classroom materials that some might find offensive, or might be offended to hear that other peoples' children were being shown it or encouraged to discuss it, that does justify or excuse any person claiming that means they're entitled to be so annoyed as to justify chopping anyone's head off.
Whatever the issues involved killing someone is still murder and is still wrong - come what may - that's it. Being a troubled or intense teenager doesn't make any difference. It doesn't excuse Anders Breivik and it doesn't excuse this young man.
The challenge for secular society is to find room for the gods once more, not try to suppress and deride the need for them.
This is not about "find(ing) room for the gods" this is about fundamentalists trying to exclude views that are not their own.
This is not about religious freedom, it is about religious restriction by (some of) the religious
Really at base, the issues with Mohammed pictures is that the western cultures are not willing that another culture dictate to them and make them change a fundamental value.
Are Western cultures willing that they not dictate to the other culture and make them change fundamental values?
Basically, religious cultures need to learn the value of free speech: the ideal that, regardless of political or religious belief, any multimillionaire with money to burn can set up and control a media company.
Yes it offends but I'm back to that there's no right to not be offended.
Nor is there a right to take offence? In fact, do members of secular cultures have a right not to have offence taken? If a member of a Western culture insults and bullies a member of a religious culture, does the member of the Western culture have the right that the member of the religious culture express their gratitude for the lesson in secular values?
Because religious strictures shall not dictate to secular societies. That's why the cartoons need to shown and reshown. It's the point.
They need to have their nose ground in the fact that we don't respect them until they respect us?
Muslims/pro-life/anti-sexism groups have rights to individually and as a community to object to pictures of Mohammed, abortion, porn.
Until they learn to stop objecting.
(Which is where the abortion debate is interesting: is a woman's life and rights important and do others have rights to the developing fetus over her rights.)
The suggestion that the fetus has any rights of its own being ruled out of court.
Whatever the issues involved killing someone is still murder and is still wrong - come what may - that's it. Being a troubled or intense teenager doesn't make any difference. It doesn't excuse Anders Breivik and it doesn't excuse this young man.
Who here is excusing him? I put him top in my list of those responsible upthread.
The challenge for secular society is to find room for the gods once more, not try to suppress and deride the need for them.
This is not about "find(ing) room for the gods" this is about fundamentalists trying to exclude views that are not their own.
This is not about religious freedom, it is about religious restriction by (some of) the religious
No, that's what you are trying to make it about.
To my mind this is about how France accommodates those it has chosen, in theory, to recognise as its citizens under its ethos of liberty, equality, and fraternity, including those of any faith and those of none. Try as it may, it will never achieve this by simply decreeing the core religious identity of any of those individuals non-existent or trivial. That to me is just as primitive, fundamentalist, and totalitarian.
Variations on this challenge are being faced across many countries. There is no excuse for such atrocities, but I don't believe the best means of mitigating their risk is to double down on an inflexible ideology, which is what I believe secularism (as opposed to secularity) is. The real battle in France right now is which of these two tendencies wins out. Right now, the secularists appear to have the upper hand, and that is a source of concern for religious freedom.
I'm reminded of a military strategy conference I was working at during which a senior US military advisor explained his strategy in Afghanistan: "we go to the Taliban and see if there's anybody willing to engage in discussion. If there isn't, we kill them all". At least they tried having the conversation first...
The cartoons are not racist nor particularly offensive otherwise except that they purport to represent a particular person.
How can you possibly judge how offensive they might be in the eyes of someone immersed for generations in a culture which puts depictions of the religious somewhere in the visceral/emotional realm of, say, hardcore child pornography? Decry their primitive patriarchal oppressive reactionary view all you like, you are not going to have any chance of integrating them or educating them out of that until you get a feel for what they feel and respect the depth of that feeling.
Shit, I wonder if this discussion would qualify for Epiphanies and if not, why not?
The cartoons are not racist nor particularly offensive otherwise except that they purport to represent a particular person.
How can you possibly judge how offensive they might be in the eyes of someone immersed for generations in a culture which puts depictions of the religious somewhere in the visceral/emotional realm of, say, hardcore child pornography? Decry their primitive patriarchal oppressive reactionary view all you like, you are not going to have any chance of integrating them or educating them out of that until you get a feel for what they feel and respect the depth of that feeling.
This. Do people want to change this and prevent it, or just vent righteous spleen? Mostly the latter, it would seem, on this thread.
I think it was the Warren Court who tried to address what is pornography. They could not come up with an answer except to say they would know it when they saw it. That was back in the time when American television was still portraying married couples in single beds. American television still has its limits, like portraying sex under the bedsheets.
I can remember one time, though, when a graduate student was doing a presentation on sexually transmitted diseases to fellow graduates. This was before the time of PowerPoint, so he was using a slide projector. Once he was finished with his presentation, he took off the slide tray and returned the projector back to the AV people at the university. Problem was, he did not check to see if there was a slide still in the slot in the projector. The next person to borrow the projector was an eighth-grade teacher. He turned it on and immediately showed a shot of vaginal crabs to his students. Needless to say, the graduate student had some explaining to do.
It says something that the killer had three potential targets, and he killed the teacher only because he found out where the teacher was at.
The cartoons are not racist nor particularly offensive otherwise except that they purport to represent a particular person.
How can you possibly judge how offensive they might be in the eyes of someone immersed for generations in a culture which puts depictions of the religious somewhere in the visceral/emotional realm of, say, hardcore child pornography? Decry their primitive patriarchal oppressive reactionary view all you like, you are not going to have any chance of integrating them or educating them out of that until you get a feel for what they feel and respect the depth of that feeling.
Shit, I wonder if this discussion would qualify for Epiphanies and if not, why not?
We cannot accept complete 'cultural relativism'. We can be sensitive to the feelings of cultures not our own, and we can be polite. That's as far as it goes. Cultural sensitivity would also tell us that not all Muslims are against pictures of Mohamed. As much as the anti-abortion crowd do not speak for all Christians.
Parallel: it is also not okay for people to come to, say, a beach, and insist that the women not wear bikinis, or for a group to insist that the windows of a gym be made opaque because the visuals of the sweating bodies offend them.
We can and should accommodate when it is reasonable, but we cannot declare that completely legal content be off limits. -- which is where your comparison to "hard core child pornography" breaks apart. That is illegal content by worldwide agreement. Depicting Mohammad isn't.
Not all Muslims adhere to the currently more extreme versions of Islam which disallow pictures; my uncle who worked per-revolution Tehran described no such restrictions before the Shah fell, there were also no hijab etc. The current movements in Islam may or may not be the products of tradition, depending on where the people are from.
As for integration, retaining your own culture in the "cultural mosaic" rather than "melting pot" is what is promoted in Canada (with some controversy) since the 1970s. The requirement is to live within Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but also respecting Canadian laws and community standards. Thus: please pursue and promote your culture, and also conduct yourself to be part of the Canadian mosaic. Thus: depictions of Mohamed are okay. Now if you took them to your factory workplace and put them up on your assigned locker, you could and might be disciplined for this, or if you put them up or showed them in a manner intended to promote hatred that's not accepted, and might be prosecuted. We see no such intent with this teacher.
you are not going to have any chance of integrating them or educating them out of that until you get a feel for what they feel and respect the depth of that feeling.
Respecting a Muslim's desire not to have to see these images is fine. An example might be not using pictures of the prophet in adverts for electric shavers which go up on posters at bus stops.
Some people here seem to be saying that we should respect a Muslim's desire that nobody else should see these images. That's not respecting people; that's allowing them to dictate to you.
Louise gave some examples of schoolchildren sitting out lessons because of their parents' beliefs. Does that happen in France ? Is the difference between asking the parents and allowing the pupils themselves to decide any less respectful ?
We can and should accommodate when it is reasonable, but we cannot declare that completely legal content be off limits. -- which is where your comparison to "hard core child pornography" breaks apart. That is illegal content by worldwide agreement. Depicting Mohammad isn't.
The comparison I'm trying to make is not with respect to their legality or moral acceptability. It's trying to get across to you what I perceive the visceral reaction, hardwired to a sense of the transcendent, the divine, to be like for some people. Those people are out there. How do you propose to deal with them? Take the line of the US strategy consultant I referred to upthread? He made the comments with a perfectly straight face.
Not all Muslims adhere to the currently more extreme versions of Islam which disallow pictures; my uncle who worked per-revolution Tehran described no such restrictions before the Shah fell, there were also no hijab etc. The current movements in Islam may or may not be the products of tradition, depending on where the people are from.
In my view the return to a more traditional expression of faith is partly a broad tendency across many faiths right now that reflects a loss of self-identity, growing anxiety, and the general trend to build walls of all sorts rather than break them down.
In the case of Islam in France, I am fully convinced that this tendency is exacerbated by the constant, systemic marginalisation of largely Muslim immigrants, particularly the younger generations. In theory, the Republican Ideal has room for them; in practice, it mostly doesn't, and it certainly doesn't have room for the religious aspect of their identity. Given this rejection, it's hardly surprising that they have reasserted this in a quest for meaning and identity. I fully expect plenty more young rootless French people to become Muslims, and some of them to radicalise, unless and until France finds the "space for the gods" I keep going on about. Of course I think there are better solutions than taking that path, but I fully understand why they take it.
(I've been to Canada, and I can confidently assert that you are on a completely different planet to France when it comes to cutural integration of Muslims).
We see no such intent with this teacher.
If you look upthread you'll see I agree. But I also said that I believe the ideology he swam in made him wholly unable to gauge the reaction. I also believe he could have made his point without showing the images.
I continue to assert that Charlie Hebdo's renewed publication of such images is, ultimately, a threat to free speech and not some kind of glorious, principled stand.
Reading the history of Charlie Hebdo is interesting. Not so long ago, they dismissed a contributor for alleged anti-Semitism (and lost a wrongful dismissal case) and have also mocked those with Downs syndrome. They have attempted to suppress rival publications through the courts. The uses to which they put their right to free speech are rather selective and, I suspect, would not all be championed with such gusto by most posters here. I don't see many fine Republican principles at work here.
Louise gave some examples of schoolchildren sitting out lessons because of their parents' beliefs. Does that happen in France ? Is the difference between asking the parents and allowing the pupils themselves to decide any less respectful ?
I think one of the difficulties in this conversation is that very few of the contributors live in a country in which the State is truly secular, which makes it hard to understand what the implications of that are.
La République ne reconnaît, ne salarie ni ne subventionne aucun culte
(French Act of 9 December 1905); 'The Republic does not recognise, remunerate, or subsidise any faith group".
French schoolchildren (or their parents) cannot, constitutionally, be asked to sit out lessons because of their beliefs because the French Republic, in its organisation, is willingly and voluntarily blind to the existence of religious beliefs. There is no administrative or ideological head space to ask such a question. In schools in particular, one leaves one's religion at the school gate, and as already stated, this fine principle has, due to the ideological way it's been ingrained, become as primitive a superstition as shaking hands across a threshold.
The 1905 law doesn't mean the State is atheistic. It means the state is agnostic. It means the State and matters of faith, by design, inhabit separate worlds.1 This works, up to a point, but when the institutions of the State cease to be agnostic, secular systems and start to become vehicles for secularist ideologies, which the French state education system undoubtedly is, the real problems begin2.
This is the problem Malraux was getting at when he talked about reintegrating the gods.
= 1The world of chaplaincy is a notable exception where the State does recognise ministers of religion. One of the reasons I'm so excited about prison chaplaincy is because I believe it offers an excellent model of how to "reintegrate the gods" (allow civil, secular society to engage with the transcendent) that has applications way outside prison walls.
2Which is why I'm worried about the plans to ban anything other than state-sanctioned education here. When a country feels that its state education system is the only legal option, and that system is functionally ideologically atheistic, things start to feel like Albania back in the bad old days.
We can and should accommodate when it is reasonable, but we cannot declare that completely legal content be off limits. -- which is where your comparison to "hard core child pornography" breaks apart. That is illegal content by worldwide agreement. Depicting Mohammad isn't.
The comparison I'm trying to make is not with respect to their legality or moral acceptability. It's trying to get across to you what I perceive the visceral reaction, hardwired to a sense of the transcendent, the divine, to be like for some people. Those people are out there. How do you propose to deal with them? Take the line of the US strategy consultant I referred to upthread? He made the comments with a perfectly straight face.
Not all Muslims adhere to the currently more extreme versions of Islam which disallow pictures; my uncle who worked per-revolution Tehran described no such restrictions before the Shah fell, there were also no hijab etc. The current movements in Islam may or may not be the products of tradition, depending on where the people are from.
In my view the return to a more traditional expression of faith is partly a broad tendency across many faiths right now that reflects a loss of self-identity, growing anxiety, and the general trend to build walls of all sorts rather than break them down.
This is a real phenomenon, though not restricted to religion. It is a big driver of Brexit and Trump and the racist expressions engendered by both.
Also, radicalisation is something fundamentalist sects do and it is completely independent of your posited repression. It is organised and focused. And it is a real problem, because freedom for their interpreation of religion is not their goal, but rather the lack of freedom to express anything else.
I will not argue that France is perfect in their secularism. I would totally agree that Muslims probably get a shorter shrift. But that is a long step away from France is the cause of the beheadings.
You want a cause that can be tied to the French society? That would be poverty. Oppression and poverty cannot feed a beast that is not there.
I continue to assert that Charlie Hebdo's renewed publication of such images is, ultimately, a threat to free speech and not some kind of glorious, principled stand.
That Charlie Hebdo mightn't be perfect is also a long way from shifting the blame of radicalisation towards France and away from the people who encourage it.
Islam was hardly oppressed in Turkey, but that didn't stop the fundamentalists from taking over.
I think it was the Warren Court who tried to address what is pornography. They could not come up with an answer except to say they would know it when they saw it. That was back in the time when American television was still portraying married couples in single beds. American television still has its limits, like portraying sex under the bedsheets.
You’re thinking of Justice Potter Stewart’s concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964). That case concerned whether Ohio could, consistent with the First Amendment, ban the showing in movie theaters of “The Lovers.” In a plurality (6-3) decision, a majority of the Court determined that the film was not obscene and therefore could not be censored, but no opinion (and no specific rationale) received the support of more than 2 justices.
In his concurring opinion (which no other member of the Court joined), Justice Stewart wrote:
I have reached the conclusion, which I think is confirmed at least by negative implication in the Court's decisions since Roth and Alberts, that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
Stewart’s “I know it when I see it” has become on of the best known phrases from the Supreme Court. But it is not, as it is often portrayed, a test of any kind for obscenity or pornography in general. It was the statement of one justice.
The comparison I'm trying to make is not with respect to their legality or moral acceptability. It's trying to get across to you what I perceive the visceral reaction, hardwired to a sense of the transcendent, the divine, to be like for some people. Those people are out there. How do you propose to deal with them?
There's no accommodating to such a thing. The feeling must be tempered by control of behaviour. And cultural education that imposition of such views is unacceptable.
I'm in record of disproving religiously affiliated schools and private schools. That's a good place to start.
Barnabas62Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
The discussion is staying in Purgatory pro tem. The dividing line between Purgatory and Epiphanies is a work in progress, I know an Epiphanies thread when I see it!
But the issue could be discussed in the Styx if anyone feels strongly about my judgment.
Also, radicalisation is something fundamentalist sects do and it is completely independent of your posited repression.
That's too much of a generalisation. Sects evolve both ways. Some go mainstream, some splinter and radicalise. Some engage in violent extremism; some don't (e.g. the Amish).
[radicalisation] is organised and focused. And it is a real problem, because freedom for their interpreation of religion is not their goal, but rather the lack of freedom to express anything else.
I think that's far too much of a generalisation too. I have not read anything about the attacker in this case, but I would be surprised if his story was about looking for a sense of purpose amid personal alienation with a dash of spirituality attached to legitimise acts of violence in his own internal narrative.
The radicalised people I have talked to have an unnerving mix of what appears to me to be a genuine fear of God and a complete lack of basic boundaries and ethics; the quest for purity and rather warped definitions of halal/haram make for quite a cocktail.
Higher up the chain of command, I suspect religious dogma is a figleaf for purely terrestrial political/power aims. At another military conference I worked for I learned that the some of the leading lights in Isis studied military strategy and history under one of its leading lights at Oxford university, i.e. read the same books as UK senior officers. The ground troops are useful idiots in their eyes.
I will not argue that France is perfect in their secularism. I would totally agree that Muslims probably get a shorter shrift. But that is a long step away from France is the cause of the beheadings.
I never said it was. The question is how to lessen the number of beheadings and act on the things we can control, not those we can't.
You want a cause that can be tied to the French society? That would be poverty. Oppression and poverty cannot feed a beast that is not there.
I don't disagree. But the way French society is, if you're oppressed and poor, Islam is waiting for you with open arms, and quite possibly not the most innocuous kind of Islam.
That Charlie Hebdo mightn't be perfect is also a long way from shifting the blame of radicalisation towards France and away from the people who encourage it.
Islam was hardly oppressed in Turkey, but that didn't stop the fundamentalists from taking over.
Erdogan is certainly a problem. But Macron seems to be painting himself into a corner with him in the aftermath of this episode.
The comparison I'm trying to make is not with respect to their legality or moral acceptability. It's trying to get across to you what I perceive the visceral reaction, hardwired to a sense of the transcendent, the divine, to be like for some people. Those people are out there. How do you propose to deal with them?
There's no accommodating to such a thing. The feeling must be tempered by control of behaviour. And cultural education that imposition of such views is unacceptable.
Again, education has to start with pedagogy, and that involves empathy, otherwise it's indoctrination. The system is not willing to start where these people are. The need is not to accommodate the violent extremism but to accommodate the individuals, with their intrinsic rights as such, in whom violent extremism may take root. Not invite them to leave your classes.
I'm in record of disproving religiously affiliated schools and private schools. That's a good place to start.
I'm in favour of state education, the requirement of the State to provide education, and the French constitutional requirement for children to receive instruction. However, I am not in favour of the state having a total monopoly on both education and instruction.
Comments
I fail to see how an invitation not to attend something that will be perceived as deliberately provocative and marginalising of one's identity could go down any differently.
The other incident is an English teacher reading out a narrative of the lynching of an alleged black rapist to a class of youngish teenagers. The narrative went into graphic detail about the victim's penis and what happened to it. We didn't get any prior notice of that and I have wondered since that day what the teacher's actual motivations in reading it out to us might have been.
Which is to say that the power dynamic in a classroom setting is not something to be abused.
They said they had seen the Charlie cartoons at the time of the original incident and didn't think they were all that offensive... so even they don't seem to "get" how much this sort of thing can shock/offend. And if they don't, how are people with no religious awareness going to get it? (Note, I am not suggesting that being shocked/offended excuses murder).
When I asked them - having had the same thought as Eutychus - did they really think middle school age kids would leave a classroom if it was going to mark them out as "the religious ones" they said they hadn't thought of that, and agreed it wasn't as easy as all that.
Right. Because I used that term you've taken where I'm coming from to be the opposite of where I am. I'm not using it as a tactic to distance us from them. That we are not collectively, historically, culturally responsible (but not 'guilty', which is meaningless) for, with them. That he is not just a meaningless anomaly in isolation. If that's what you're implying. I embrace the killer's humanity. I do not question their sanity; there is no evidence of mental illness in such behaviour. As for agency, only a human being could commit such a complex righteous act.
I'm not in the business or robbing them of anything, so happy to row back on a trigger for you.
But agency, rationality and humanity are overstated, overrated. We are animals and failure to understand that basis of our our thinking and behaviour isn't helpful.
If we can have shelves dedicated to those who wish specifically Polish products or Asian products why can't we have shelves dedicated to halal meat ?
I have a poster on the wall of my classroom, that some people think is offensive. Do you think I should take it down?
Well, it would never get to that point, because showing porn to kids would run you afoul of the law.
But suppose someone wanted to show allegedly sexist advertising to a class, to debate whether or not it was degrading to women, but some kids from conservative backgrounds weren't allowed to see that sorta stuff.
Movie's starting. I'll return to this later.
Because to more Western sensibilities than just vegetarians, the method of slaughter is problematic.
Perhaps yes, perhaps no. It may be that seeing the poster aids the teaching.lesson. In the case we're discussing, I can't understand how seeing the picture could assist.
Most Halal is pre-stunned so the method of slaughter barely differs from mainstream.
Kosher does ban pre-stunning. Funnily enough it's always Halal that people get excited about. The reason for this fairly obvious - at this point in time the Fash are more anti-Muslim than they are anti-Semitic.
If the teacher proposes showing the class anti-semitic or racist images as part of the lesson it's not really a solution to propose that Jewish people or black people leave the room. It would be preferable - if unworkable - to suggest that anyone who is unrepentantly anti-semitic or racist leaves the room.
As I've been trying to say, the problem of offence is not viewed by those who are offended as a problem of their private subjective sensibilities. To think that that's what the problem is is already to dismiss them and their point of view as unimportant.
Well, I'm not quite seeing why viewing the picture is less helpful in this case.
I suppose if the objection is that any image of the Prophet is offensive, you maybe wouldn't need to show the cartoon, just tell the students that it's a picture of Mohammed, and that'll be all they need to know.
But it's being alleged that there is something about this one image in particular that is offensive, over and above the person portrayed, then yeah, I would think viewing the cartoon would be very helpful in drawing a conclusion.
As I say, if you frame the question as, should we avoid causing unpleasant subjective feelings to that group of thin-skinned people over there, and if so, how so, you're going to get the wrong answers.
If everyone agrees that porn, by definition, is harmful, you can quite easily have a discussion about what to do about it, without showing any examples. That should be suitable for classroom debate.
But if someone is saying, eg. that last month's Playboy centrefold was especially repellent and should be banned, I don't think you can have a proper discussion about that without actually seeing the photograph in such a case(I personally do not trust verbal descriptions in such cases). Obviously, you could not do that in a school classroom.
I think you left that sentence incomplete?
The idea of freedom of speech and the benefits of a secular society are not small things to be dismissed by such a simplistic objection.
The child ot parent who allegedly instigated this crime was not even present. Even if all the potentially offended children felt comfortable leaving, it was the act of showing the images, not who might have seen them which was viewed as a justification.
Do you mean there's something clichéd about aligning Islam with orthopraxy; or that the minor-criminal-turned-jihadi trope is common enough to be a cliché; or something else?
Charlie Hebdo printed those pictures more than five years ago, at a time when the students in question would have presumably been in elementary school. I think it unlikely that many of the students would be familiar with the cartoons or their publication.
And positing that this is about anything other than control is incorrect.
The latter.
Really at base, the issues with Mohammed pictures is that the western cultures are not willing that another culture dictate to them and make them change a fundamental value. Yes it offends but I'm back to that there's no right to not be offended. There's also the general rule of politeness and not being a jerk. But this is intersectional with art in the case of three Mohammed cartoons. They are about inflaming. Because religious strictures shall not dictate to secular societies. That's why the cartoons need to shown and reshown. It's the point.
The abortion issues are another theatre of the culture wars. That religion should dictate how social and sexual behaviour shall be organized, and how much central control over one sex's bodies.
Where previously creationism was also a battle ground.
Muslims/pro-life/anti-sexism groups have rights to individually and as a community to object to pictures of Mohammed, abortion, porn. But they haven't the right to control others' rights to use and engage in these things. The limit to this freedom is not about feeling offended, it's about harm. (Which is where the abortion debate is interesting: is a woman's life and rights important and do others have rights to the developing fetus over her rights.)
Quoting this in response to @NOprophet_NØprofit. @Leorning Cniht are you paying attention? The most recent cartoon was published a few weeks ago, and it was published to coincide with the high-profile trial of surviving attackers and conspirators which had previously sparked another attack outside the former Charlie Hebdo offices. This is not just about something that happened years ago. It's current. Of course current events need to be discussed in the classroom but that is not a dispassionate context in which to show the cartoons.
So the beatings shall continue until morale improves. And besides, societies might be secular, but people aren't. I'm still with Malraux. The challenge for secular society is to find room for the gods once more, not try to suppress and deride the need for them.
I was taught Third Reich history aged 16-17 with some primary source material made available and contextualised through books and documentaries and teaching which included Nazi racist cartoons and film clips. The clips with the rats from The Eternal Jew still come vividly to my mind when I think about how racist tropes work. It showed what racist propaganda was, how deadly it could be and how it works. It became evident with recent controversies where people missed Anti-semitism right under their nose that this kind of education is really necessary.
People need to be similarly informed on how blasphemy and coercive confessional states and the reactions to them work, which, if well taught, just might lead to them questioning whether blasphemy can also slip in by the back door in states that pat themselves on the back as totally secular. I'm not oblivious to the ironies involved... but you need primary sources and history teachers not afraid of being murdered to fully and properly have those discussions.
I particularly object to self censorship fears noted in the Wikipedia article: removal of pictures which show Mohammed from galleries.
I find plenty of things personally offensive. I've no right to impose. I try sincerely not to.
Whatever the issues involved killing someone is still murder and is still wrong - come what may - that's it. Being a troubled or intense teenager doesn't make any difference. It doesn't excuse Anders Breivik and it doesn't excuse this young man.
This is not about religious freedom, it is about religious restriction by (some of) the religious
Basically, religious cultures need to learn the value of free speech: the ideal that, regardless of political or religious belief, any multimillionaire with money to burn can set up and control a media company.
Nor is there a right to take offence? In fact, do members of secular cultures have a right not to have offence taken? If a member of a Western culture insults and bullies a member of a religious culture, does the member of the Western culture have the right that the member of the religious culture express their gratitude for the lesson in secular values?
They need to have their nose ground in the fact that we don't respect them until they respect us?
Until they learn to stop objecting.
The suggestion that the fetus has any rights of its own being ruled out of court.
Who here is excusing him? I put him top in my list of those responsible upthread.
No, that's what you are trying to make it about.
To my mind this is about how France accommodates those it has chosen, in theory, to recognise as its citizens under its ethos of liberty, equality, and fraternity, including those of any faith and those of none. Try as it may, it will never achieve this by simply decreeing the core religious identity of any of those individuals non-existent or trivial. That to me is just as primitive, fundamentalist, and totalitarian.
Variations on this challenge are being faced across many countries. There is no excuse for such atrocities, but I don't believe the best means of mitigating their risk is to double down on an inflexible ideology, which is what I believe secularism (as opposed to secularity) is. The real battle in France right now is which of these two tendencies wins out. Right now, the secularists appear to have the upper hand, and that is a source of concern for religious freedom.
I'm reminded of a military strategy conference I was working at during which a senior US military advisor explained his strategy in Afghanistan: "we go to the Taliban and see if there's anybody willing to engage in discussion. If there isn't, we kill them all". At least they tried having the conversation first...
How can you possibly judge how offensive they might be in the eyes of someone immersed for generations in a culture which puts depictions of the religious somewhere in the visceral/emotional realm of, say, hardcore child pornography? Decry their primitive patriarchal oppressive reactionary view all you like, you are not going to have any chance of integrating them or educating them out of that until you get a feel for what they feel and respect the depth of that feeling.
Shit, I wonder if this discussion would qualify for Epiphanies and if not, why not?
This. Do people want to change this and prevent it, or just vent righteous spleen? Mostly the latter, it would seem, on this thread.
I can remember one time, though, when a graduate student was doing a presentation on sexually transmitted diseases to fellow graduates. This was before the time of PowerPoint, so he was using a slide projector. Once he was finished with his presentation, he took off the slide tray and returned the projector back to the AV people at the university. Problem was, he did not check to see if there was a slide still in the slot in the projector. The next person to borrow the projector was an eighth-grade teacher. He turned it on and immediately showed a shot of vaginal crabs to his students. Needless to say, the graduate student had some explaining to do.
It says something that the killer had three potential targets, and he killed the teacher only because he found out where the teacher was at.
We cannot accept complete 'cultural relativism'. We can be sensitive to the feelings of cultures not our own, and we can be polite. That's as far as it goes. Cultural sensitivity would also tell us that not all Muslims are against pictures of Mohamed. As much as the anti-abortion crowd do not speak for all Christians.
Parallel: it is also not okay for people to come to, say, a beach, and insist that the women not wear bikinis, or for a group to insist that the windows of a gym be made opaque because the visuals of the sweating bodies offend them.
We can and should accommodate when it is reasonable, but we cannot declare that completely legal content be off limits. -- which is where your comparison to "hard core child pornography" breaks apart. That is illegal content by worldwide agreement. Depicting Mohammad isn't.
Not all Muslims adhere to the currently more extreme versions of Islam which disallow pictures; my uncle who worked per-revolution Tehran described no such restrictions before the Shah fell, there were also no hijab etc. The current movements in Islam may or may not be the products of tradition, depending on where the people are from.
As for integration, retaining your own culture in the "cultural mosaic" rather than "melting pot" is what is promoted in Canada (with some controversy) since the 1970s. The requirement is to live within Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but also respecting Canadian laws and community standards. Thus: please pursue and promote your culture, and also conduct yourself to be part of the Canadian mosaic. Thus: depictions of Mohamed are okay. Now if you took them to your factory workplace and put them up on your assigned locker, you could and might be disciplined for this, or if you put them up or showed them in a manner intended to promote hatred that's not accepted, and might be prosecuted. We see no such intent with this teacher.
Respecting a Muslim's desire not to have to see these images is fine. An example might be not using pictures of the prophet in adverts for electric shavers which go up on posters at bus stops.
Some people here seem to be saying that we should respect a Muslim's desire that nobody else should see these images. That's not respecting people; that's allowing them to dictate to you.
Louise gave some examples of schoolchildren sitting out lessons because of their parents' beliefs. Does that happen in France ? Is the difference between asking the parents and allowing the pupils themselves to decide any less respectful ?
In my view the return to a more traditional expression of faith is partly a broad tendency across many faiths right now that reflects a loss of self-identity, growing anxiety, and the general trend to build walls of all sorts rather than break them down.
In the case of Islam in France, I am fully convinced that this tendency is exacerbated by the constant, systemic marginalisation of largely Muslim immigrants, particularly the younger generations. In theory, the Republican Ideal has room for them; in practice, it mostly doesn't, and it certainly doesn't have room for the religious aspect of their identity. Given this rejection, it's hardly surprising that they have reasserted this in a quest for meaning and identity. I fully expect plenty more young rootless French people to become Muslims, and some of them to radicalise, unless and until France finds the "space for the gods" I keep going on about. Of course I think there are better solutions than taking that path, but I fully understand why they take it.
(I've been to Canada, and I can confidently assert that you are on a completely different planet to France when it comes to cutural integration of Muslims).
If you look upthread you'll see I agree. But I also said that I believe the ideology he swam in made him wholly unable to gauge the reaction. I also believe he could have made his point without showing the images.
I continue to assert that Charlie Hebdo's renewed publication of such images is, ultimately, a threat to free speech and not some kind of glorious, principled stand.
Reading the history of Charlie Hebdo is interesting. Not so long ago, they dismissed a contributor for alleged anti-Semitism (and lost a wrongful dismissal case) and have also mocked those with Downs syndrome. They have attempted to suppress rival publications through the courts. The uses to which they put their right to free speech are rather selective and, I suspect, would not all be championed with such gusto by most posters here. I don't see many fine Republican principles at work here.
I think one of the difficulties in this conversation is that very few of the contributors live in a country in which the State is truly secular, which makes it hard to understand what the implications of that are.
(French Act of 9 December 1905); 'The Republic does not recognise, remunerate, or subsidise any faith group".
French schoolchildren (or their parents) cannot, constitutionally, be asked to sit out lessons because of their beliefs because the French Republic, in its organisation, is willingly and voluntarily blind to the existence of religious beliefs. There is no administrative or ideological head space to ask such a question. In schools in particular, one leaves one's religion at the school gate, and as already stated, this fine principle has, due to the ideological way it's been ingrained, become as primitive a superstition as shaking hands across a threshold.
The 1905 law doesn't mean the State is atheistic. It means the state is agnostic. It means the State and matters of faith, by design, inhabit separate worlds.1 This works, up to a point, but when the institutions of the State cease to be agnostic, secular systems and start to become vehicles for secularist ideologies, which the French state education system undoubtedly is, the real problems begin2.
This is the problem Malraux was getting at when he talked about reintegrating the gods.
=
1The world of chaplaincy is a notable exception where the State does recognise ministers of religion. One of the reasons I'm so excited about prison chaplaincy is because I believe it offers an excellent model of how to "reintegrate the gods" (allow civil, secular society to engage with the transcendent) that has applications way outside prison walls.
2Which is why I'm worried about the plans to ban anything other than state-sanctioned education here. When a country feels that its state education system is the only legal option, and that system is functionally ideologically atheistic, things start to feel like Albania back in the bad old days.
Also, radicalisation is something fundamentalist sects do and it is completely independent of your posited repression. It is organised and focused. And it is a real problem, because freedom for their interpreation of religion is not their goal, but rather the lack of freedom to express anything else.
I will not argue that France is perfect in their secularism. I would totally agree that Muslims probably get a shorter shrift. But that is a long step away from France is the cause of the beheadings.
You want a cause that can be tied to the French society? That would be poverty. Oppression and poverty cannot feed a beast that is not there.
That Charlie Hebdo mightn't be perfect is also a long way from shifting the blame of radicalisation towards France and away from the people who encourage it.
Islam was hardly oppressed in Turkey, but that didn't stop the fundamentalists from taking over.
In his concurring opinion (which no other member of the Court joined), Justice Stewart wrote:
Stewart’s “I know it when I see it” has become on of the best known phrases from the Supreme Court. But it is not, as it is often portrayed, a test of any kind for obscenity or pornography in general. It was the statement of one justice.
I'm in record of disproving religiously affiliated schools and private schools. That's a good place to start.
But the issue could be discussed in the Styx if anyone feels strongly about my judgment.
Barnabas62
Purgatory and Epiphanies Host
I think that's far too much of a generalisation too. I have not read anything about the attacker in this case, but I would be surprised if his story was about looking for a sense of purpose amid personal alienation with a dash of spirituality attached to legitimise acts of violence in his own internal narrative.
The radicalised people I have talked to have an unnerving mix of what appears to me to be a genuine fear of God and a complete lack of basic boundaries and ethics; the quest for purity and rather warped definitions of halal/haram make for quite a cocktail.
Higher up the chain of command, I suspect religious dogma is a figleaf for purely terrestrial political/power aims. At another military conference I worked for I learned that the some of the leading lights in Isis studied military strategy and history under one of its leading lights at Oxford university, i.e. read the same books as UK senior officers. The ground troops are useful idiots in their eyes.
I never said it was. The question is how to lessen the number of beheadings and act on the things we can control, not those we can't. I don't disagree. But the way French society is, if you're oppressed and poor, Islam is waiting for you with open arms, and quite possibly not the most innocuous kind of Islam.
Erdogan is certainly a problem. But Macron seems to be painting himself into a corner with him in the aftermath of this episode.
I'm in favour of state education, the requirement of the State to provide education, and the French constitutional requirement for children to receive instruction. However, I am not in favour of the state having a total monopoly on both education and instruction.