Should people avoid showing pictures of Muhammad, knowing the risks involved?
Is showing a picture of Muhammad needless provocation that can result in death or is it a valid expression of freedom of speech?
Samuel Paty, a French teacher, was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee after showing images of Muhammad in his class on freedom of speech, in relation to the 2015 Charlie Hebdo shootings (in which Islamic extremists attacked the offices of a French satirical newspaper because of its offensive depictions of the prophet Muhammad).
Paty received death threats after it became known what he was doing in his class and Muslim parents encouraged a protest. This refugee simply took things to the next level. And what he did was certainly not unprecedented.
How far does freedom of speech go? If you’re knowingly offending people and provoking extremists, do you a play a role in your own death? Is depicting Muhammad something we should technically be allowed to do but never actually do?
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18 Answers
I would say don’t do it. A simple matter of respect for another culture. Sure Muslims can be annoying but so can some Christian sects I won’t mention. How would we feel in our Western Culture if people from another culture were turning a crucifix upside down or vandalizing a manger scene? Crummy anology but it’s all I can think of. Live and let live.
As much as I want everyone to be free to have their own culture and religion, I kind of wish all the religious people who are eager to kill or die for purely religious reasons, would agree to meet in a giant arena armed only with medieval weapons, and would just fight to the death to determine whom of them God wants to survive. And not go after schoolteachers and comic strip writers. Sigh.
People aren’t rational, and defence of one’s group identity and its cultural aspects can be taken to zealously violent extremes—whether that is religious, nationalistic, or political.
I think it is a needless provocation.
It seems rather a waste of our “freedom of speech” if it’s just to antagonise and provoke an already maligned and marginalised group, which muslims are in much of the world.
In this particular case, I just don’t see the point in drawing Mohammed, or even discussing it as a topic. It’s obviously a sensitive issue for muslims (I know it’s a silly belief), and it’s so specific and targeted at one demographic group that it comes across as mean-spirited and antagonistic, and maybe even motivated by racism.
There’s just so many other things that are more important that one’s “free speech” could be put to—and it’s in the pertinent things that one may find that you really don’t have free speech.
A lot of people also were killed for opposing the christian church
Should they have just “shut their mouths”, too? Do you blame them for their own deaths?
Are you going to say that “they were asking for it”?
Of course not.
If you know and accept the risks, you should do it.
Also, we are not talking about a public speech, calling for muslims to be herded into camps and then gassed.
We are talking about satirical drawings in the context of being used as examples during a class on freedom of speech. And you have to ask yourself, when the “offended” decide that brutally beheading a guy is a justified response to that, where the fault really lies?
As the great philosopher James Anthony Patrick Carr once said, “Offence is taken, not given”.
I believe mocking or belittling religion is inappropriate, regardless of the religion. Not something I have ever done or will do.
I don’t go out of my way to display pictures of Mohammad, but I don’t censor myself either.
Like it or not, Mohammad is a fact. He lived, he was important, he started a religion. And just like you or I, he had a face, and arms and legs.
Drawing mocking cartoons of Mohammad is tacky (and sort of stupid), but a picture shown for factual reasons is, to me, legit.
No.
This is another fine example of why people need to get it through their heads that there is no “God!”
This is the 21st Century, people!!!
I agree that it was a provocation, but I don’t agree that it was needless. I don’t think that certain things should not be said or done because they might result in death. Death is not an appropriate consequence for offending Muslims and we should not accept zealous killing as a reasonable consequence of freedom of speech. I don’t agree with offending Muslims and I would not do it myself. But freedom of speech has never been about what we agree with. It’s about where we draw the boundaries in society. And like it or not, “blasphemy” is not restricted in the west nor do I think it should be. So I’m never going to think he “brought it on himself”. That is simply victim blaming. I don’t have to like Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons to defend their right to draw them and not be killed for doing so.
I believe in freedom of speech. But here’s the thing, freedom of speech comes hand-in-hand with responsibility. You have the right to express your opinion, and other people have the right to comment on your opinion. If you can’t handle people’s opinion, you shouldn’t voice your opinion, especially if it’s controversial. Charlie Hebdo is notorious for its aggressive humor. This is a trend I see in several other French comics, but this newspaper just takes it to the next level. I’ve seen it making fun of my country, not just Muslim. And sometimes I wonder if they are prepared to be criticized every time they publish a new issue. That said, I’m against any kind of violence toward them. It’s brutal, uncivil and just unnecessary. You have the right to be offended, but you don’t fight people you don’t agree with, that’s not how debate works.
About this specific killing, I don’t know the full context. But if the professor just showed the image as an example without any emotion attached to it, then I’d say the killing is unjustified. The guy was basically shooting the messenger. It’s also ironic that Charlie Hebdo makes fun of other people yet no one have provoked any violence except for Muslim people.
But then again Muslim people are known to be overprotective of their religion. I’d say provoking them really isn’t necessary. You can’t have a rational talk with someone who is overly attached to their belief and it has already been proven. A civil conversation can only be possible between two people who respect each other.
I would love to hear a Muslim’s opinion on this if any jellies would be open to that.
@Mimishu1995 But if the professor just showed the image as an example without any emotion attached to it, then I’d say the killing is unjustified.
So there’s a situation in which the killing would be justified? I’m not trying to troll, but that is the implication of this statement.
@KNOWITALL I would be interested as well. I’ve asked on another site where I know there are Muslim members, so I’ll report what they say if I get an answer.
@Demosthenes Great idea, thanks. Hopefully a few stay on this site, we could use the diversity and new jellies.
@Demosthenes No, murder has never been justified. But there would be a degree of responsibility on the professor’s side, in the opposite scenario. Now I’m not trying to be insensitive, but the attack on Charlie Hebdo was a warning of what extremist Muslims are capable of, like many other incidents with Muslims. So in the scenario of the professor’s agreeing with Charlie Hebdo and provoking Muslims, he must have had to know the risk he was taking, seeing what happened to their office. So like I said before, freedom of speech comes with responsibility. If the professor was indeed provoking people, he had a part in the uproar of Muslim parents. The murder was an unfortunate consequence of the uproar. The murder was horrible and I felt for the professor, but that doesn’t mean he is totally innocent. Again, I don’t know the context of this incident, so I’m thinking of two possible scenario here
I’m for freedom of speech, but sometimes it’s not worth trying to talk to someone who doesn’t live by logic.
Right, that’s why I did want to talk about risk. I’m sure many of us would consider the risk to not be worth it. There’s a difference between what should happen and what will happen. I’m reminded of a story of a young man who didn’t heed his grandmother’s warnings about the dangers of walking this particularly rough neighborhood alone. He said “this is America, I should be able to go wherever I want.” He’s right, but then he was shot in a drive-by. No one’s arguing the killing was justified. But he was warned and he took a risk, that cannot be denied. (This is something I saw in a documentary about gangs in L.A.)
IMHO absolutely avoid that hot-button act.
@KNOWITALL I’m not a Muslim, but I can give you my opinion on the specific issue that made fun of my country, if that’s good for you :)
First, here’s the issue
I first came across the issue in a Facebook comment on the Notre-Dame fire. The commenter said that we shouldn’t feel sorry for the burning and for the French in general because they made fun of the country during the conflict with China in the 70s, along with an image of that issue.
The words on the cover can be translated as “Go on, the yellow”, and the drawing depicts an extremely stereotyped version of Chinese and Vietnamese. The two people look like they are biting each other like some kind of animals. So now you have the skin color card, the stereotype, and the dehumanization. I didn’t learn much about the war being depicted at school, but from what I could see, that war was stupid and unnecessary, all because China wanted to fight over nothing. Well, that was from a Vietnamese’s perspective, so you can easily see how the picture’s content is “offensive” in our eyes. It is basically making fun of us for defending our country and putting us in the same group as China. The tone of the title doesn’t help either. It’s as if the picture is telling both side to go die and no one would care.
If I wasn’t familiar with the kind of humor in French comics, I would have been severely offended like that commenter. Fortunately I am and I quickly realized that this was just the aggressive humor in action again. Still it left a little bad taste in my mouth. Looking back at the comment on Facebook, it was very similar to the 2015 incident, just without the violence. Someone got offended by the newspaper’s humor and wanted to fight back. In 2015, it was physical violence, and on Facebook on that day, it was apathy to the church’s burning.
This also gave me a moment of very disturbing introspection. After the Charlie Hebdo attack, many people in my country changed their avatar to the Je Suis Charlie thing and voiced their sympathy to the tragedy. But then some time later someone saw the issue about my country, and they shifted their opinion. People are sympathetic to Charlie Hebdo until it is them that got featured in their news, despite the fact that the newspaper’s sole existence is to make fun of everything. That really made me think about the act of being offended.
There was another attack today, in Nice. Several people were stabbed in a Catholic church by someone reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar”. Macron is deploying troops across the country. I’m afraid is going to get much worse before it gets better.
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