Tauriq Moosa responds to a deplorable opinion piece by Anjem Choudary that accuses satirists of provoking violence.
Because free expression matters more than any one group’s feeling of offence. Because I imagine most Muslims are adults capable of handling criticism of their beliefs – even if they feel offended. Choudary is painting the picture right wingers want: an entire group of people, perched on the spring of outrage, ready to march with billboards at the slightest case of “offence”.
Muslims must speak out against this caricature and be on the frontlines defending free speech, even and especially if it offends them. And media spaces must improve and find better spokespeople.
Stephen Law responds to a pathetic analogy by Iqbal Sacranie, that insulting the Prophet is as bad as insulting a family member, and warrants a “punch in the nose”.
Religions and religious figures are mocked and lampooned for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it’s sometimes done for no other reason than to upset the religious. Let me be clear that I don’t approve of that (though I do defend the right of others to do it).
However, more often than not, the lampooning is done with intention of shattering, if only for a moment, the protective façade of reverence and deference that has been erected around some iconic figure or belief, so that we can all catch a glimpse of how things really are. At such times, lampooning can become great art.
I know enough Muslims (although they’re all fairly sensible, educated, secularized Muslims, so my sample is admittedly biased) to know that they aren’t cheering on murder and terror, and are generally appalled by the acts in France. But at the same time, I see our media pushing two images of Muslims: the “crazy” ones are chopping heads off and calling for death of the infidel, and the “moderate” ones are playing blame-the-victim and rationalizing terror as being “provoked”…by freakin’ cartoons.
Maybe it’s only fair — these are the same media that promote “moderates” on the American side who think a little waterboarding is justifiable, or talk about “surgical strikes” as if they’re humane, so maybe they’re just desensitized. But how about if we see more people speaking out that terror and war and destruction and murder in any cause are inexcusable? And how about more representation by people who think questioning the status quo is a good and honorable thing, rather than treating self-criticism, and religous and ideological criticism, as radical?
Hello OaringAbout or should I say Steersman, a slymepitter who is banned. Can you guess why I know its you? Hint, its your writing style and that you seem utterly incapable of using HTML, instead you include links in the footnote. Gives you away every time. Also the nautical theme for your name.
This from a slymepitter?
Bwahahahahahaha
Fuck off, steersman.
Throwaway (#5):
Who’s this “steersman”? Anyone I might know? Haven’t seen any of their comments, at least in this thread.
[LIAR. “OaringAbout” and “Steersman” are one and the same tendentious dishonest slymepit denizen. Bye. Don’t come back. –pzm]
Well, Its the very specific name. Its not just nautical themed, but very specifically about being in charge of moving the boat around. A steersman is the one who directs the boat, “oaring about” implies the same. You are of course far to invested in your own image to completely disguise yourself when ban evading.
In addition, its a very specific form that your footnotes take, along with a complete lack of simply linking things. Even if there is only a couple links allowed, many still embed the links.
Then there is the specific writing style. This I cant expound upon because its very much subconscious pattern recognition. But its very much the writing style of an odious and obtuse slympitter that was thankfully banned a long time ago. It is also the strong praise you are trying to get for the slymepit that sets off a major red flag, since Steersman was quite adamant about getting others to recognize the supposedly great and wonderful things the ‘Pit had.
Frankly, you are far to invested in the nature of your online persona to successfully ban evade. After all, how can you present your works to the Pit if the others cant recognize you here.
Y’know y’all can just do the Contact a Monitor thing.
If they were real points rather than dogwhistles we might bother, but you’ve basically poisoned your own image so much that we’d probably go outside to check if you told us the sky was blue.
@Tony 487
I’m sure they will go back to that stance as soon as she says something they disagree with. I’m guessing you can count that time in days.
This incident has made some odd allies (pseudo-allies?) of convenience. None of it will last long.
Oh, look, a Pitter.
Lovely.
These fuckstains just love going where they’re not wanted.
Grewgills @12:
Hell, probably less than that knowing those shitspigots.
****
I’m getting a kick out of this:
If you’re a Pitter, you deserve the scorn. It has been well-earned. Such a nice try at playing like there are people associated with the Pit who aren’t horrible human beings.
If someone is being an asshole and the owner of the space kicks them out, we dont have to listen to them when they come back wearing a wig and fake nose and take up the same arguments.
Now Its possible I am wrong and that you arent Steersman and for that I apologize. But you talk and express yourself very much like him, and many here dont want to have anything to do with that person or his popular hangout.
First OaringAbout, then me:
So in your original quote there are 2 important parts.
1) a comparison
2) it “means” something important that is obviously communicated – so obviously that one can only pretend to naïveté if one wishes to ignore it.
I asked for you to cite
1) a comparison, that
2) has “meaning” of real consequence, not the equivalent of “Ophelia and Maryam both seem to represent their ideas on the internet using the same character set as the Slymepitters”.
(“not” bolded by me here, but not in the original, for emphasis)
In fulfillment of this request for evidence of his earlier claims, OaringAbout cites…
That’s right, the only example OaringAbout could come up with was the exact, entirely hypothetical comparison that expressly WOULDN’T satisfy the conditions.
That would be rich enough – a dramatic concession that he’s clearly making criticisms up out of whole cloth.
But then OaringAbout has the gall to say:
[Bolding mine.]
Yes. Yes I do recognize someone deliberately misunderstanding and mischaracterizing others’ points.
The fact that you’re unwilling to step up, name names and quote actually blameworthy quotes and make real arguments about why those quotes are blameworthy says mounds about you. Your “many people here” broad based smears without any substance to differentiate one commenter from the next (how does the good commenter know that you don’t hold that commenter in contempt?) also shows, “A startling and stunning lack of empathy.”
That’s even before we get to the entirely likely fact that you’ve come into someone’s living room without permission after the owner has already thrown you out when you were going by the name steersman.
Your great sensitivity is communicated through your willingness to trespass, is it?* Take your pinniped oortings and fuck off to antarctica with them.
*I’ll happily take that part back if PZ verifies that you aren’t steersman, though I doubt that will happen.
Arawhon #15, then OaringAbout #17:
WTF? Amnesty international using Twitter who has never kicked Amnesty International off Twitter is like an obnoxious commenter on a private blog being banned and then using deception to gain access to the blog commenting platform expressly denied them by the owner of the platform? Because some person or government that didn’t like 1 tweet by AI also didn’t like another tweet by AI?
I gotta go with deliberately misunderstanding someone’s point again, unless you really are too stupid to make the distinction. Un/lucky for you, I consider you perfectly competent with English communication.
right, right…
Holy fuck! You think that anybody has the right to shoot anyone on this basis? An incident like this is so far from having anything to do with “having a right to do something questionably moral” your oorting has gone from obnoxious to nauseating.
Fuck off. Forever.
OaringAbout I have looked at the Slymepit and all I saw was a haven for racists, misogynists, homophobes, transphobes, harassers, sadists of the worst sort and other terrible people. Any space that doesnt moderate is quickly overrun with the worst sorts of people and the Slymepit was set up to cater exactly to those worst sorts.
I still think your Steersman. So Fuck Off back the shithole you came from.
I see we have a troll with an ax to grind right here. Propaganda you say? Seriously!? Well, the nazi’s did have extremely stylish uniforms and awesome BMW motorcycles. Oddly enough, they aren’t remembered for their fashion or design choices. I wonder if oarsman knows that it was the horde who named it the slymepit in the first place?
I am suddenly reminded of a cartoon I didn’t initially understand.
http://wondermark.com/1k62/
Ehm Steersman has been reported, so you might want to slack off
theoreticalgrrrl
Well, it’s not my bloody fault that you’re too full of yourself to even consider the possibility that you might be wrong.
grewgills
Let’s just drop it here. We can happily tally the US attrocities another day.
As for the term Slymepitters, I will admit that I’m using the term loosely, which I probably shouldn’t do, because I don’t actually check if they’re registered there or not. More in the sense of agreeing with them, being buddies with them, etc.
The people I noticed jumped at me on Twitter (heavens know why I hadn’t blocked them already)
Any suggestions as to how to refer to them?
Slightly OT
I’m really wondering how intentionally, i.e. knowing precisely that this person does not want that, violating somebody’s boundaries is NOT at least harassment.
@Giliell:
Well, I’ve always understood harassment to be a **repeated** pattern.
So you know you’re violating a boundary and do it anyway = behavior that’s got to stop
…then not stopping = harassment.
So… it could be not-harassment. Once.
But seriously, the oorts and more oorts don’t deserve any attention at all. This is, after all, someone who said:
And then tried to pretend that this single sentence employing the conjunction “unless” had no relationship between “guy in Texas who shot a prostitute because she didn’t provide […] services” and “because a person has a right to do something doesn’t mean … it is … moral”.
See:
Note here that “analogy” seems to mean “premise,” “assertion,” or “point” to OaringAround, despite OA’s insistence that I “seem to have some difficulty with” understanding analogies.
This is one dishonest bag of garbage, and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Nor should anything else OA writes.
CD
Hmmm, that smells a bit of “I get to grope at least one tit” to me. It’s this conflation of intentional and unintentional. Sure you can unintentionally violate somebody’s boundaries, and I haven’t anybody seen labelling a situation where the person could reasonable not have known that the bahaviour is crossing a boundary* as “harassment”
*For example a conversation that gets increasingly more personal until somebody says “uhm, this is too personal for me”. As opposed to “hey sexy stranger, I like your tits, do you want to fuck me?”
Intentionally violating a boundary is always done with the intent do hurt that person, victimise them and tell them that their boundaries are not respected. It is an act of aggression. What should we call that?
If it’s a physical boundary crossing, I’d call it trespass. If it’s a bodily boundary that was crossed, I’d call it assault. If it’s a verbal boundary … I always struggle with that. I don’t like the “verbal violence” frame that some people use. You could certainly use your words and call it “an act of aggression,” though. That would be perfectly fair and accurate.
I’m certainly not condoning or apologizing for the “I get to grope at least one tit” mindset, wherever it occurs. Assault is still assault.
It’s just possible to only assault someone once, and I had always used terms other than harassment for that. The rationale, from my perspective, is that repeated “low-level” assaults have an impact disproportionate to a single occurrence of the same that simply “happened again”. Harassment was used to point out the importance and effects of deliberately repeating the harmful behaviors over and over, so that both society and the law would take it seriously when in the past they had dismissed such behavior because each individual violation could be rationalized away as “minor” and not worth disciplinary proceedings/arrest/making a fuss/whatever.
So I just tend to be careful with how I use harassment. But that, I know, is the perspective that has actually worked professionally in the anti-sexual violence movement. Not everyone uses the word that way.
CD
Understood /End OT
+++
Ahhh, did I mention that so far I was pleasantly surprised by the German politicians and media?
Thanks to our biggest tabloid, I can go back to being a cynic
Today’s frontpage
Translation:
The minister said: We shouldn’t be afraid
The headline says: Europe is Afraid!!!!!
Hello all,
sorry if this is going to be a slightly longish post, but it took me a while to come to terms with my feelings about this mess of a thread.
I have been a year-long reader of Pharyngula and feel like I must now bid “adieu” to a website which I always enjoyed reading. The reaction to this post, in particular by Gilliel, is the reason for my farewell.
I read a lot of Charlie Hebdo in my younger years and I can certainly understand why people would find them tasteless, mysoginist, maybe even (although I don’t agree with this) racist at times, although I put a lot of this down to the medium of cartooning itself, which often relies on stereotypes to get across a message in one picture.
What is however either woefully ignorant or deliberately and maliciously misinterpreted is how we have gone from “some of their material makes me uncomfortable” to “they are basically der Stürmer”, as if this were self-evident.
For example
Gilliel@3
This is just wrong : if ever there was a tireless opponent to the FN, it was Charlie Hebdo, just look at the thousands of caricatures attacking the movement and its leaders. Jean-Marie le Pen, the founder of the FN is well aware of this, since he has declared himself #jenesuispascharlie, saying he regrets the murders but these people weren’t his allies.
Gilliel@465
Well if I were in agreement with Jean-Marie le Pen, I’d probably pause too…
Furthermore
Gilliel@3
Maybe they got that reputation because they started being left wing in about 1968 and consistently stayed so for decades, unlike some smug sneering internet commenters.
This post is too long already, but I felt like I needed some closure after what is to me a momentous decision.
Gilliel@527
I think you might want to take this to heart yourself…
It’s been a fun ride, adieu
I”m sure you will recover completely from the horror of learning that using racist or sexist stereotypes does in fact constitute racism and sexism.
Good job Giliell, we have one less sealion oorting about with their faux concern. ( why can’t anyone spell your nym?)
I thought it was considered good form to use pseudonyms/nicknames when quoting people …
Having said that, I do apologise for having misspelt Giliell’s pseudonym and would ask you to mentally replace it by the correct spelling if you happen to read my post.
le grand duduche@32, emphasis mine
I don’t recall any comment, in this thread or anywhere else on Pharyngula, that stated this or anything similar.
They opposed the FN using tactics that reinforced racist stereotypes and anti-muslim bigotry. Basically what you’re saying is not incompatible with what Giliell said.
Since you read French, you may be interested by some of the links I posted above, basically expanding Giliell’s points, but written years ago by French people who knew Charlie very well (Olivier Cyran and Mona Chollet left Charlie in 2000-2001).
duduche, just wanted to add that your third paragraph shows that you actually agree with us on the general picture. Note that I too have read this kind of literature, and can still appreciate it to some extent; but I don’t forget that it’s because I’m privileged as fuck, so I am in no position to argue that PoCs “shouldn’t feel offended because the intent wasn’t racist”. (Not saying that’s what you argued, but that’s a common answer to the accusation that CH’s cartoons are problematic.)
‘We vomit’ on Charlie’s sudden friends: staff cartoonist
By ‘new friends’ he means paragons of free speech like Putin and other state leaders who routinely suppress freedom of speech in their own countries.
Based on Steersman, er I mean Oaringabout’s recommendation I read the post by Kathleen Johnson at patheos. Was that supposed to be an impressive list and something we should follow? It had a very “both sides” feel, it was vague on many points(clickbait?) and ending with saying we should band together like the religious right because we have momentum. Maybe I don’t get it because I’m not part of “the movement” but telling everyone to get along for the greater good rings hollow when I’m not sure what the intended great good is supposed to be. Then the first two comments complaint about MRAs being listed as a problem . . . and that’s why I don’t read patheos.
le grand duduche
Now I’m on a power-trip!
Seiously, you quit reading PZ’s blog, because of what I write? That does not make much sense to me.
I’m sorry, PZ, I cost you a reader.
Just a general tip: It does not well in establishing good faith when you start out like a lot of sea-lioning trolls: trying to stablish your credentials as a long time readerwhen nobody knows who you are.
*le sigh*
Saying somebody contributed to a climate does not mean somebody actively sought to create that climate. That’s what we usually mean when we say “intent isn’t magic”. A lot of people who, in their heart of hearts, don’t think they’re racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. contribute to a climate that still fosters these things.
Hmm, now think about some of the covers that portray swarthy men of North African / Middle Eastern descent as dangerous terrorists. If there’s a broad consensus from the “left wing” CH to the FN that this is a stereotypical terrorist, don’t you think it might be seen as an agreement?
If that’s supposed to be a jab at me then you actually managed to make me smile. Because, you know, 1968 was more than a decade before my birth. But coincidentially, it’s also the generation that raised me. And yeah, I’m pretty tired of their sense of infallability, their unexamind misogynistic attitudes that are ok ’cause they’re “feminists” and their patronising racism because they’re “pro-immigrant”.
Here’s a really good test: If the group you claim to be supporting doesn’t feel supported by you, but on the contrary marginalised, excluded and with added insult to injury, then you’re not doing it right.
I’m glad to have provided you with some entertainment. Bless you!
rq
There’s lots of Tweets showing which hypocrites show up for free speech. OTOH, given that this expression of free speech is happening in a country that banned pro-Palestine protests during the latest Gaza massacre, it has some beautiful irony.
sff9
I forgot to thank your for your correction on my link about the pregnant woman. It looked to me like it had happened in the aftermath of the attack on CH.
Yes, yes they fucking do…. all the time (i probably saw about 6 or 7 different instances of it yesterday alone…), and they get angry if anyone dares to point it out.
I think we are all guilty of this, but at least some people have the absolute minimum decency to listen when it’s pointed out.
Yeah, that was Steersman. IP checked.
Yeah, he’s a longwinded liar, which is what got him banned here in the first place, years ago, and I guess the rebuke still burns.
@PZ, #42:
OaringAbout who wanted an apology for my asserting that OaringAbout likely (not certainly) = Steersman turns out to actually = Steersman?
Shocked.
Shocked I am to find sockpuppeting employed by such a respectable pinniped.
…If you’ll excuse me, I have to deal with a Mountie who’s ticketing my eyeballs for rolling over 200 kph…
As I already mentioned elsewhere, he’s like the vampires who think that everybody else is too stupid to find out who they really are if they spell their name backwards.
Giliell@40, you’re welcome. I wouldn’t have noticed either, if it weren’t for one comment on the article you linked.
Giliell @39
It’s quite amazing the number of “long time readers” who make their first appearance on this blog to announce that they’re never coming back because reasons.