Atheism Corner

Humanity in Progress

Charlie Hebdo Has the Solution

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The French magazine “Charlie Hebdo” is at it once again, its people told the press yesterday that they plan to take out the weekly edition with caricatures of the prophet Mohammed and go another round with the local French muslims, who by the way burned the offices of Charlie Hebdo last time the magazine published offensive content.

This could be the solution to the everlasting hurtful feelings of some Muslims, simply getting them used to the sort of creative critic the rest of the world enjoys for a hundred years now, maybe it is their persistent exclusion from this sort of films/magazines/novels that creates this violent insane response across so many Islamic countries.

In any case it is remarkable that more and more people are joining in on the fight for free speech and opinion, and the right to state your mind, no matter how “offensive” someone finds it, people can easily learn to live with opinions that they do not like, even hate. This is turning to be an expansive month,first we needed to back Tom Holland’s documentary on Islam‘s origins by buying his books, now we need to head to the newsstand to buy a new copy of Charlie Hebdo

New Mohammed Cartoons by Charlie Hebdo Out This Week

The West Battered Person Syndrome

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This “Battered person syndrome” which is actually and originally called battered wife syndrome is exactly how Islamic anger is met through out the Western world, here is what it means (form the Wiki page) –

Additionally, repeated cycles of violence and reconciliation can result in the following beliefs and attitudes:
▪ The abused thinks that the violence was his or her fault.
▪ The abused has an inability to place the responsibility for the violence elsewhere.
▪ The abused fears for his/her life and/or the lives of his/her children (if present).
▪ The abused has an irrational belief that the abuser is omnipresent and omniscient.

And there you have it. Now you know how to call every person out there that thinks that it is more important not to aggravate the believers and limit the expressions of others, these are people who think that its always the West fault, that responsibility for violence does not lie with the people who commit it, people who live in constant fear and thinks that the opposition is too strong to deal with.

This is why, every time Islamists pick up reasons for inflicting violence and damage on others, world leaders stand up and say that we should not do anything to upset Muslims, because even the stupidest thing, said in the most remote and non Muslim corner of this world would, under the right circumstances, send them into a frenzy of blood and riots.

We say it is more simple to do it our way, we say whatever we want, whoever wants listens and can object, anyone is free to be offended and live with it, no one will turn time back to the dark middle ages and limit our thoughts and speech.

 

Is This How a Religious War Looks Like?

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It ultimately comes to this, we are used (or at least we think) to wars being the consequence of long and troubled diplomatic arguments, or the eruption of pre-existing pressure between countries or communities, the current situation is either one, and is in fact a simple extension of an ever growing sense of hostility between the West and Islam.

The current crisis (that poorly produced 14 minute teaser) had not blown up as soon as it was made public, the film was uploaded to YouTube months ago, it also did not have the same effect through out the Arab Muslim world, it started with Egypt and Libya, only to be slowly followed by other countries. It is not by chance that the two “champions” of protests were Egypt and Libya, those two countries that toppled a regime and quickly formed religious governance.

The players here are moving their blocks now, the repeated attacks of Islam upon the way that Western civilizations manage their citizens liberties have now reached a boiling point, but do not mistake this current demonstrations as just a violent way to simply try and land blows on the US or Europe, it is all done in the name of faith, of defending Islam from non believers, the nationality or continental support of the so called crime (of expressing ones opinion on any matter) has nothing to do with any of that.

Even the news that the actual producer of the film is an Egyptian Copt did not calm down the Cairo protestors, even though this is one of them (well, he is a copt) and not an American infidel, did not make the mob turn to its own streets, amazingly the riots continue – with the same target in mind.

The last statement president Obama made about Egypt is that important one of all, Egypt is not an ally of the U.S. and not considered an enemy, he said, Egypt is walking on that thin line between being a full blown enemy of the West and just being not friendly.

The president probably did not want to say these things, not after he had fully supported the Muslim brotherhood campaign in Egypt, but was left no real choice when twits from the US Cairo embassy met ones of the official brotherhood site, where the english tweets were comforting and peaceful and on the same time the arabic tweets and site content encouraged the riots and glorified the violent demonstrations.

Obama Calls It As It Is – Egypt Is Not A Friend

 

How to Know When Free Speech Is Real

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This one is going to be easy, you know free speech when it hits you, when you hear something you really do not like hearing, when the person in front of you has an opinion that is contradictory, even to the degree of offensive to yours. Free speech is not out there for all of us to enjoy, its out there for everyone to use and play with, for the idea that nothing will go unchallenged, that every idea out there will be contested, that any one of us will have a chance to know more because people are not afraid to speak their minds.

Free speech can be easily tracked to show how this is one of the major things that moved our civilization to a point that everyone could contribute, and present the free world its opinion, given that the idea expressed is not calling for the murder or people.

So unless you want to tell everyone that they should kill someone you can enjoy free speech and you can express your mind, and this is so dear to us in the west that we know we must protect it, and the founding fathers understood that at an age without internet and without computers, without a fax machine and fast printers, without RSS feeds and content syndication networks, which means that it is much more important today – and if there is one single thing that is precious to defend today is free speech – do not forget it.

If someone says something you do not like hearing, listen carefully and consider the arguments, wait for your turn to talk but do not close your ears to the claims of the other person, celebrate free speech and defend it always.

Free speech - The U.S. constitution