Wednesday, January 07, 2015

The importance of satire to freedom and liberty

Kudos to the Drudge Report for providing us with the cartoon that enraged Islamic terrorists, who planned and carried out the attack in Paris yesterday. Here is the cartoon.

Anybody know how to translate it into English? Every news source in the free world should publish the cartoon.

The French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was targeted yesterday by Islamist terrorists, sounds similar to our The Onion. Ivan Plis writes that the magazine has a long history of mocking religions.
The magazine also posted a cartoon of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to its Twitter feed earlier today.

The magazine has also been critical of France’s Catholic-aligned political right, often expressed through parodies of Jesus, Mary, the pope and other Catholic figures. Last week’s cover promised “The True Story of Baby Jesus,” based on infancy narratives from outside the Biblical canon. In the cartoon, the holy infant appears in a flash between the legs of his mother, spread apart as if in gynecologist’s stirrups.
I'm sure it is just a matter of time before Christian terrorists open fire on the magazine. Wait, maybe not. That may be one difference between Christianity and Islam: Christian terrorists confine themselves to blowing up abortion clinics.

One of the cartoonists killed on Wednesday, known professionally as “Charb,” had said that the magazine’s goal was to make “Islam as banal as Catholicism,” so it is acceptable to scrutinize and ridicule it.

Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier) had been under police protection ever since appearing on a “wanted” list in Inspire, the digital magazine of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. He was famously quoted during the 2012 controversy as saying “I would rather die standing than live kneeling.” Besides Charb, three other cartoonists were reportedly killed in Wednesday’s attack.

Maybe a concealed carry permit would have been more effective than police protection?

Most interpretations of Islam prohibit any depiction of Muhammad, and many Muslim-majority countries have laws against “defamation of religion.”
I might add that those laws don't seem to prohibit defamation of Christianity or Judaism, now do they?

The shooters shouted “Allahu akbar” and “The prophet is avenged” while carrying out their attack. Terror analysts also noted that they made a one-finger hand gesture, signifying Islam’s emphasis of God’s oneness, that is often featured in propaganda videos of the Islamic State terror group.
Read more here.

One thing this story makes clear to me is that I should continue to place high value on American sources of satire, such as Manhattan Infidel, Scrappleface, Iowahawk, and The Onion.

1 comment:

Richard Gadsden said...

"100 lashes if you don't laugh"