Je suis Charlie

[meridannight]

the Muslim world is further down the ladder on the cultural/moral evolution. always has been when compared to European civilizations. they're in the 15th century compared to Europe. they don't understand the developed world any more a person from the Renaissance could. they're incapable of understanding because their cultural/social space simply does not have the concepts and necessary awareness for it.

hopefully they will catch up, they should catch up, because the trend should be moving towards a society that is gradually more and more inclusive, tolerant, and beneficial for all the people living there. but they are lagging seriously far behind the European civilizations that there is a noticeable gap between them. which is where most of the problems are arising from. but i don't think this will happen in my lifetime, their catching up. it's just gonna be more flavors of this.

the only solution to this situation is education of the Muslim population as a whole. and supporting whatever progress there is within their society. but you can't force this understanding on them, and you can't change the situation in any way that matters in a short span of time. it takes time.

good thing is, like somebody already realized here, their attempts will never work on Europe or America. you can't force a more advanced civilization to step down to a less advanced state. people who have experienced the freedom and diversity the European civilizations have, would experience such a resolution as intolerable. you can't unlearn what you have already learned. so, this is all useless as far as their purpose is concerned. it just makes them look like savages and brutes.

[Virge]

The obvious solution will be time.....in the same way that it took about 500 years for the protestants and the Catholics to stop killing one another and those of other faiths.....eventually the Wahabist fundamentalists will become a spent force as the medieval age they live in is erased once and for all.

One big fundamental but common mistake in that reasoning. Stop trying to measure and compare Islam to any other ideology. It does not have anything but superficial details in common with Judaism and Christianity. Your example of Protestants and Catholics taking 500 years to resolve to live in peace has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism directed at people it defines as nonmuslims. Also your 500 year period or Christians killing Christians doesn't even compare to the 1400 years of ruthless brutality between Shia and Sunni Muslims. The obvious answer is not giving them any more time. If you don't believe me on it trust the only real experts on the issue -- the secular Muslims who have escaped the Islamic world who are now speaking the truth about Islam. Educated women like Nonie Darwish and Wafa Sultan have paved the way for others.

What is the "obvious solution" [MENTION=21084]Virge[/MENTION]? I'm curious.

What happens if you leave a gangrenous toe on your foot?

[ShiftyNJ]

What happens if you leave a gangrenous toe on your foot?

No metaphors, what do you propose be done? According to Wikipedia there are 1.6 billion Muslims, 23% of the world's population.

[Iceblink]

The gunmen slaughtered many today, but they did not win this battle. They lost this battle by the very thing they were trying to destroy, the power of words. Within an hour this story was being told around the world and in the civilized world they were not winning sympathy. Most of the world saw them for evil that they are.

[trywait]

the pen is still mightier than the "sword" / terrorist gun. as tragic as it is and my condolences to the family, those extremists did not win. counter-intuitively, they solidified everyone together against their extremists views. we are more cohesive now than we were yesterday. and it is only spreading! especially, with social media!

liberty! freedom of expression!

[ck86]

RIP to the victims and condolences to their families
[MENTION=21084]Virge[/MENTION] I think we need to be careful to separate the fundamental Islamist from the more secular Muslim. I've got friends who are open minded and accepting but having lived in a country before where Islamic law is observed I know that they are a bit extreme to put it lightly. But kudos to those who are able to see through those views and think for themselves.

[Virge]

RIP to the victims and condolences to their families
[MENTION=21084]Virge[/MENTION] I think we need to be careful to separate the fundamental Islamist from the more secular Muslim. I've got friends who are open minded and accepting but having lived in a country before where Islamic law is observed I know that they are a bit extreme to put it lightly. But kudos to those who are able to see through those views and think for themselves.

I do my best to make that distinction with no room for misinterpretation.

There are Secular Muslims who have escaped from Islamic nations. I count 4 of them as close friends and mentors. Along with others like Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, Ed Hussain I've been able to construct an understanding of Islam from the inside.

In *most* Islamic nations Secular Muslims do not openly exist except by concealing themselves from their own neighbors and families. However most of them still openly and honestly sympathize with what we would call extremist views and have been indoctrinated into Islam's ideological propaganda since childhood. Also, simply to survive, most *secular muslims* in Islamic nations support which ever political power happens to impose the most impending danger to them at any moment. This is a sad survival tactic that has been ingrained into Islamic culture over 14 centuries of being continually victimized by their own religious and political leaders. I have great sympathy for them but also understand they are powerless to determine their own destinies except by *submission* to those happen to be in power at any given moment. Because of their lack of power, their long culture of placing survival above convictions and their sympathies with the true fundamentalists, the secular Muslims in Islamic nations do not figure into any immediate equation to change the face of Islam.

Also Islam as a religion is several steps below Islam the 7th century Bedouin tribal ideology that dominates all aspects of life under Islamic rule. That's another subject that leads to many things westerners have trouble conceiving of.... for instance... For the past 14 centuries Muslims have followed the example set by Mohammed generation after generation in marrying first cousins in spite of the consequences to any offspring. Read this summary of it. Pakistanis in the UK have 3% of the births but are responsible for 33% of all genetic diseases and 74% of infant deaths due to genetic deformities. 75% of them are married to first or second cousins simply because of the rigid 7th century bedouin ideology that dominates their culture and minds.

As for the fundamentalists, they are the Muslims who would make Allah's prophet most proud since they are the ones who rigidly follow his words in the same manner Mohammed himself lived them in his lifetime.

[Virge]

I am angry because...as I pointed out on another board...this was an attack on free speech and I have taken alot of crap because I defend Fred Phelps and his right to say anything he wanted...despite the fact that I hated everything he stood for and everything he said...so I have no use for these people or their actions and I am walking a fine line..trying to keep an open mind...but not today. I want to be angry and I don't want to be fair.

Je suis Charlie

You should feel angry so go with it. As for being fair, fuck that. Fair doesn't even factor into the equation when discussing Muslims (in the UK) where over 40% of them believe people who mock Islam should be punished/killed. I'm sure it's higher in France. What extend "fair" to people with no concept of it?

[Hardheaded1]

Although our hearts are broken to see such a waste of humanity that is evident in Paris, we cannot have two classes of people, or three, or four.

Whereas the goal of terrorism is to use a shock attack to provoke the needed response, it is nonetheless a minor incursion. Technically, 9/11 was a minor incursion in comparison to something like the CIA toppling Central American governments as a "favor" for capitalist banana companies.

And be clear about it. A minor incursion does not mean that deaths were not significant, or the psychological impact was not a serious wound. But the real damage is what is to be assessed.

On one side of the equation, there will be arguments that the carnage will be chilling on satirical journalism. Whereas that is true for some in the industry, it seems very unlikely with the degree of indignation, patriotism, and liberté that is being raised.

On the other side will be the sobering realization that words DO hurt people, and when journalists use freedom of speech, a concept alien to some of our neighbors in Europe and Canada by the way, to make attacks intended to inflame a population, then perhaps it is more than disingenuous to be even a little surprised when that population indeed becomes inflamed.

All satire is not equal. It is one thing to mock a political leader, to deride policies, or to lampoon a nation's hypocrisy. It is quite another to depict a Muslim as little more than a sand-nigger, to caricature an entire population in a similarly demeaning cartoon the equal of a sambo or yard-monkey. If the comparisons seems racist, then that is appropriate, as there is a great deal of veiled racism rising in Europe as it struggles to deal with the obvious culture clash with its recent immigrants from a region that it has long treated as colonial.

What is too conveniently being swept away in this blanket condemnation of Islam is the legacy of exploitation, first by Europe, then the U.S., of the Islamic countries. This includes Arabic, African, Indian, and Oceanian populations. This long history has become more relevant as the wealth of the first Muslims, the Arabians, has afforded them the means to stand up and put feet on their resentment of Western imperialism.

Somehow, in the West, we like to remember our recent progress in extending human rights to select minorities to be some trumping badge of virtue, that we are only who we are today, that we are not who we were just 30 or 50 or 150 years ago. Unfortunately, that is a bit like entering your neighbor's home, killing the man there, taking his home, wife, and possessions, and then later "seeing the light" of living peacefully. In the long memory of cultures and peoples, the West is sitting ensconced in the home it took from Arabia and others, opining about freedoms and liberté, while sitting atop the wealth very recently extracted by force of arms from the "developing world."

When the resentment of this "developing world" boils up and gives rise to militant terrorism, it becomes too easy to focus on the decapitation du jour, or a hijacking (in the 70's), or an assassination squad.

And, although there is nothing good to say about any massacre, it should be remembered that the journalists were targeted because they saw themselves at war with the ideologies that radical Islam espouses, including terrorism. Note that the French people on the street were not, the French government heads were not, and the competing state religion of France, Roman Catholicism, was not. The terrorists attacked their overt enemy. Whereas the solidarity of the nation if France is admirable, it is sadly true that this same outrage is not afforded French or UN or American soldiers who are fighting the same war with terrorism, yet have not the expectation of impunity that the fifth estate seems to have.

In a war, people die. If the journalists posting caustic satire believe it is worth dying for, then that is admirable. Our nations already have charters stating that the nations also endorse these values. However, we should be very careful before confusing the actions of a militant minority of terrorists with actual national policies. Going to war for a dozen, or even 5,000, and affecting certain millions, needs to be based upon actual necessity, not the hotblooded sentiments of the moment.

To Virge's credit, he is not expressing such hotness, only the same view he has promulgated for some time in his reckoning of the world. As he is learned, experienced in warfare, travelled in the very conflict in question, I respect his view, even though I very respectfully disagree.

Finally, American antipathy for France is notorious, recently revived during divergence of policies concerning the Mideast and North Africa. That friction should be seen for what it is, sibling rivalry. We owe our very nationhood to French philosophies, to military aid in our Revolutionary War, and our love of the concepts born in the French Revolution. However, beneath it all, that rivalry is not where our sentiments lie. We have an appropriate bias for our brothers and sisters in France, and we stand with them in solidarity in this moment of outrage. They are our nearer kin in this conflict. Our fathers died for them in the trenches in the Great War. Our fathers died for them on the Normandy beaches in the second terrible war. We pray that we will not see their like again. We owe it to the lives lost then to work for peace today.

[Rareboy]

the Muslim world is further down the ladder on the cultural/moral evolution. always has been when compared to European civilizations. they're in the 15th century compared to Europe. they don't understand the developed world any more a person from the Renaissance could. they're incapable of understanding because their cultural/social space simply does not have the concepts and necessary awareness for it.

hopefully they will catch up, they should catch up, because the trend should be moving towards a society that is gradually more and more inclusive, tolerant, and beneficial for all the people living there. but they are lagging seriously far behind the European civilizations that there is a noticeable gap between them. which is where most of the problems are arising from. but i don't think this will happen in my lifetime, their catching up. it's just gonna be more flavors of this.

the only solution to this situation is education of the Muslim population as a whole. and supporting whatever progress there is within their society. but you can't force this understanding on them, and you can't change the situation in any way that matters in a short span of time. it takes time.

good thing is, like somebody already realized here, their attempts will never work on Europe or America. you can't force a more advanced civilization to step down to a less advanced state. people who have experienced the freedom and diversity the European civilizations have, would experience such a resolution as intolerable. you can't unlearn what you have already learned. so, this is all useless as far as their purpose is concerned. it just makes them look like savages and brutes.

There was a time when they were very far ahead in the moral, cultural, moral and philosophical evolution. Unfortunately, the Wahabists seem to be winning the day and spreading a fundamentalist doctrinal system of mores and interpretation of the Koran. Rather like if a sect of Christianity was to put the old testament above the new and to demand strict adherence to Bronze age judaic codes of punishments and laws.