04:35
@fredsbendtheGrinch He's pointing out some of the complexities of the issue. Murder is never OK, but these things don't happen in a vacuum. The terrorists did not pick Charlie Hebdo at random.
If you pick on ethnic and religious minorities, you're more likely to incite violence, because (a) they already feel like they're not getting a fair shake in society, and (b) they have fewer options for redress.
In the U.S., white Evangelicals and Catholics might boycott advertisers to pressure a magazine to back off from what they consider a controversial topic; Muslims don't have the numbers to launch an effective boycott.
1 hour later…
06:15
@curiousdannii Looks like the more reliable surveys suggest about 10% for France as a whole, and 10 to 15% in the Paris metro area.
Contrast that with my example above of U.S. Catholics and Evangelicals, who comprise somewhere around 25% of the population each, so that between them they make up about half the total population.
15 hours later…
21:29
All the violent pricks before them didn't really get much done. But without resorting to murder, Ghandi and King changed their nations.
@BruceAlderman American Indians are often the subject of ridicule, yet they remain largely non-violent. The same with pretty much every oriental asian.
@BruceAlderman Hebdo choose to ridicule a group that frankly needs ridiculing. That group is radical Islam. Then, ironically, radical islamists attack and murder half of them for ridiculing them.
Every group has the right to be the subject of ridicule. That is how a proper society works. And participants that resonate with a proper society respond in kind, that is, with words, statements, knowledge, and actions that address legitimate ridicule.
Though I'm sure Hebdo's publications are stuffed full of hyperbole and nonsense, I would bet there is also a kernel of truth to every statement.
The Kernel here is that radical Islamists are, at their, barbaric and plain stupid for believing that such violence can have a lasting effect on society. It's counter-intuitive, but history has shown that the old saying is more true than it sounds: The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.
Good, logical ideas prevail in a proper society. Radical Islam is neither good nor logical and will fail in time.
And the more places like Hebdo illuminating how stupid it really is write about it, whether insultingly or not, the closer radical islam is to its death.
So what I hear in that "thought experiment" is capitulation to violence. I hear the words of a wimp to scared to call this whole thing what it is. Evidence that Islam creates hate crime and the law should specifically address it and harshly punish it.
They're mostly white and are almost never the instigators in violent crimes, yet are regularly the ridicule of the more popular Protestant forms of Christianity.
Because Christian sub-culture in the USA is non-violent! White sub-culture in the USA is non-violent and favors reason and peace talks.
They're culture is influenced by literally thousands of years of wars and murder and honor killings all for the sake of their gods. They are the product of BCE era primitive nomads that refused the benefits of knowledge, reason, peace, and non-violent disagreement, in favor of ideas that cannot be proven, show little good for society, and encourage violence against even non-violent opponents.
And that society is bleeding over into proper ones, like France, and murdering people over cartoons.
They aren't even that popular as I understand it. Muslims have the right to neither buy nor read Hebdo.
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