Pirate's Cove

Sally Kohn recently wrote an article regarding free speech coming with responsibility, an article I mostly agreed with. Free speech, free expression, free actions, they all can have consequences. Those consequences can be good, bad, or none. If you say or do something and are attacked, verbally, in print, of physically, you do not bear the blame, but you might, and I stress might, bear responsibility. If you know that an areas is dangerous to travel in, and you are mugged, you aren’t to blame, but you do bear responsibility for your action. Of course, in Liberal World, limiting free expression is very important

Terrorism doesn’t justify insulting Islam

The latest Charlie Hebdo cartoon, produced after last week’s horrific attacks on the Paris magazine’s offices, literally adds insult to injury. Admittedly a portrait in mixed messages, the cover reads “All is forgiven” above a drawing of the Prophet Mohammed, who is holding a “Je suis Charlie” sign. Who, exactly, is supposed to be doing the forgiving and who must be forgiven is not clear.

Zineb El Rhazoui, a writer with Charlie Hebdo, said the cover means the magazine’s journalists were forgiving the extremists for the killings. But the cover could also be interpreted as Mohammed saying he forgives the cartoonists in a way the terrorists, obviously, did not.

Wait, did she just admit that Islamists are violent?

But the cartoons are somewhat irrelevant. As Middle East analyst Juan Cole has argued, they were just an excuse for Islamic zealots to further widen and exploit the perceived gulf between Islam and “the West.” Cole writes, “Al Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.” Enter the cartoons.

In other words, we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

I unequivocally and unconditionally support the right to free speech. Unfettered free speech is essential to any democratic and pluralistic society. So I support the right of Charlie Hebdo to print the most outlandish, offensive cartoons it can come up with. And, to give another example, I support the free speech rights of French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala — even though I personally find his anti-Semitic jokes even more offensive and sick than any of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons I’ve seen.

Except, she’s saying that the latest cartoon should not have been published, because that’s mean.

The fascist right-wing and fundamentalist Islamists want the same thing: to convince Muslims and “the West” that there is an inherent divide between the two. The question for the rest of us — the ones who have free speech — is whether we feed the apocalyptic narrative or fight it.

There is an inherent divide. Islamists do want to destroy the West and institute a world wide Caliphate. Period.

A few fanatical Islamists have horrifically and unimaginably offended the world.

That’s no excuse for anyone to go on offending all Muslims. To do so only helps advance the terrorists’ goal.

In other words, submit to the will of Allah. Exactly what the Islamists want. What this kind of sloppy thinking does is tell Islamists that if they attack, they can get morons like Kohn to tell people to shut it down. This is an invitation to attack.

Of course, for Islamists, everything is an invitation to attack.

(Vodka Pundit) What do you suppose Kohn would be urging if the black-clad gunmen carried Bibles and had a penchant for dead lesbians?

Would she complain that “the media and ‘the West’ are still fixated on the slaying,” like she did in today’s column? Would she boast that she ” unequivocally and unconditionally support the right to free speech,” before urging people not to insult Jesus? Would she say that we must hold our tongues about the God of Dead Lesbians over the question of “whether we feed the apocalyptic narrative or fight it?” Would she say that the slaughter was “no excuse for anyone to go on offending” Christians, or would she launch a one woman jihad against them?

Good point.