https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting
This is a sensitive topic for some people, so please do your best to have civil discussions. Let’s do better than the average social media.
Satire should be staunchly defended. Some people may find it offensive and they can go fuck themselves.
Satirical publications are often the last free press able to publish in authoritarian governments and have often played a critical role in communication to weaken oppressive regimes.
We can all occasionally suffer jokes in bad taste in exchange for freedom of the press.
if it was far-right satire i would feel pretty shit about it but it should probably still be allowed (?)
Yup, far right satire should also be allowed.
Granted, the only comedy the far right knows is the one joke so it’s a stretch to call it satire.
totally agree, it’s always horrid hateful propaganda
Yeah the right was never good at satire, they kinda only know how to punch down and aren’t creative enough to satirize well.
Not saying Monty Python were far right, but this is hillarious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlmGknvr_Pg
While I agree with Satire should be staunchly defended, I can’t see a way for that to happen when you hit a nerve with a greathammer repeatedly.
So as a society we can show our full stance besides satire, but showing a stance, even with millions of people, could stop them getting killed by a two radicals? It appears not.
So what should we do, put State Police in front of their door? I think police standing in front of every satire outlet would be a satire itself.
A week ago I was in line to check out and there was a young woman in a hijab. When she turned to help me I saw her entire face and hands (all I could see really) had acid burns all over.
The paradox of tolerance will never be something I struggle with once The Fall happens. Regardless for whichever religion seeks to lynch me.
How did you know they were acid burns as opposed to the many other things that could burn someone?
The “Paradox of Tolerance” is only a paradox if one starts with the ridiculous assertion that tolerance is a universal good.
My god are there people who think like this? Hahaha
One of the four seasons
More like 1720 but who’s counting LMAO 🤣
“Islamists” are politically far-right - paleoconservatives, theocrats, fascists.
I don’t see how this is an opinion about satire or religious satire.
So they Charlie hebdo shooting was over a cartoon of the Islamic religious figure against the artists at a French newspaper.
The above comment is describing the state of mind and beliefs of the attacker.
I am aware of the charlie hebdo shooting and why they claimed they did it. But I don’t see how the above statement relates to it, besides the loose connection of “islamists”. Are they saying there are enough violent islamists that one should fear repercussions? Or are they dismissing the islamists’ views by labeling them as paternal conservatives? It’s really just a statement about islamists, and not about the freedom of satire.
But I don’t see how the above statement relates to it
So that is called “willful ignorance” and the weight of not being able to see the relation is YOUR burden to bear.
It correlates quite nicely and you’re throwing a fit because you disagree emotionally.
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone. – Frank Wilhoit
There are paradoxes in the system, but rest assured that these religions, the Abrahamic ones and other World religions, are all conservative in their construction.
You are not going to find the answers to the paradoxes, you’re not going to find the equilibrium. I’m certainly not going to give you the solutions in some obscure comment, this kind of stuff requires shelves of books and papers.
Note that if you think the satire magazine is some dangerous fascist organization posting their propaganda in order to recruit for an underground militia type organization, you have to prove that. It’s not too difficult to prove or disprove, but that can be a skill in of itself, something all moderators everywhere should have.
Here’s one of their covers satirizing French racists:
See Hamtramck, MI. They took over the local government and banned pride flags. The mayor is an Islamic Trumper. It makes no sense to me.
“I got mine here in the US, so fuck the rest of you all!”
I’m religious, and I think that people should be absolutely free to satirize religion if they want to. What someone else believes isn’t my affair, I definitely think my faith has lots of room for improvement from an organizational perspective, and there are plenty of religious ideas I think are toxic and wrong. Why shouldn’t we have nuance and differing opinions? Why should anyone have the right to hurt others through their religious practices? We should be criticizing those things and calling them out and trying to make them stop, whether we practice religion or not. I think the treatment of women and queer people by a great deal of religious groups is wrong and should be criticized. I don’t think government and religion should be intertwined at all. Just because I practice in a faith doesn’t mean my faith is the authority on anything, but universally we should not be hurting others.
They sold millions of them here in France though but yeah you’re right. Especially the Danes who backed down then and again.
Yes, collective punishment is always a good response that has never backfired.
That has nothing to do with collective punishment
Sorry, I thought you meant as a response to the murder of the Hebdo staff by the two brothers and their accomplice.
How did you mean it?
In respect to their Muslim readers. Whatever you think, for Muslims, including me, it’s profane to picture Mohammad, as much it’s profane to picture Jesus fucking Peter in the ass.
Even if there’s no reasoning behind it, respecting 1.8 billion people’s sensibilities should be the niceness I’d like to see in the world.
[…], as much it’s profane to picture Jesus fucking Peter in the ass.
Christians were upset and made a lot of noise about it, but didn’t kill or even beat up anyone:
The price of living in a free society is being ready to accept other people’s speech. In the West we had an Enlightenment, so blasphemy is not against the law. Christians would indeed find a picture of “Jesus fucking Peter in the ass” offensive, but they will sigh and move on. Same for all the other world religions.
Only your religion treats offense as a justification for extreme violence. You need to think carefully about that fact.
Thank you very much for informing me about my religion and everyone else’s high and developed society.
But please take a moment to check what you embraced as “the” civilized fellows done in Gaza, breaking 4 years old kids ribs with their knees. You need to think careful about that fact.
The question was not about Gaza.
I’m offended, very offended actually, when Muslims (and not only) suggest that some brutally murdered cartoonists had it coming because of their “disrespect”. At least as offended as you could possibly be offended by some picture. Your religion needs reform. It needs to learn tolerance.
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Oh, so when we come into some other religion’s “higher stance” is just being an illusion, a propaganda to see “colonizers superior culture” is why they have free pass on crimes towards the oppressed, suddenly it wasn’t about that, huh. Like, they would never ever do such things. Except they do massacres, daily.
I’d like to see how “developed” MAGAs or AFD people to react to Jesus and Peter published on every “developed” newspaper’s front page, as the commenter I’ve replied suggested. Run over the newspapers stands with a truck? Then step down and shoot around? Maybe they aim to kids. That’ll show’em.
Extremism is everywhere. No belief, religion or politic stance, is exempt from it. I didn’t said a thing about Hebdo, just surprised to see how people in 2025 taking worse stances than George Bush in 2004 when it’s about Islam.
Man you are a lunatic
Should homosexuality be banned, to respect 1.8 billion people’s sensibilities?
It’s always someone comes to build a strawman whenever one mentions Muslims could have some sensibilities.
Funny, you just did the same thing with your argument about Gaza. So when somebody else uses the same approach, it’s a strawman?
Ah yes. A strawman. 🤔
No.
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Is it a sensitive topic? I mean satire is respected in any country with decent human rights / freedom of speech. It only triggers bigots that theoretically have bigger problems.
What a void attitude.
The Charlie Hebdo event has proven that the discussion is very neccessary, and that satire is not fully respected even in a modern western society.
I wouldn’t say it’s void, they were extremists. Not to take away from the tragedy of course. From my understanding the question is specifically about satire.
I’d say we’ve moved to wanna be oligarchs highjacking media companies in democracies for “fake news” and war crimes committed against journalists. Israel is too busy blowing up hospitals to attack foreign journalists for Nettenyohoo memes.
Didnt some journalist quit because he made satire of besos and besos being the owner of the media company didnt let it get published? Thats the reality satire faces today.
A more controversial topic would be discussing the satire of luigi that is being surpressed. (Any form of luigi speech really, but satire too).
Didnt some journalist quit because he made satire of besos and besos being the owner of the media company didnt let it get published? Thats the reality satire faces today.
That’s because that cartoon she made was literally the truth of what’s happening behind the scenes in the white house. It moved from satire into reality and that was too much for Bezos and his wealth villain buddies.
Yes, obviously for some Muslim people who would like their own religious rules to be applied to everyone, but also for some people who tend to associate satire on elements related to minorities to some form of racism against those minorities. You can find quite some of the latter in communities here such as ml. One of them shared their views on a comment below.
It says a lot that there’s only one religion that I’m scared to criticize.
12 people were killed for publishing a cartoon of Muhammad.
A teacher was beheaded for showing a drawing of Muhammad.
Cartoonist drew Muhammad, leading to Danish embassies being attacked and riots broke out and people died. Later, people broke into his house to try to kill him.
Cartoonist had to live under police protection because of threats.
Creators of South Park were threatened for including Muhammad in an episode of the show.
These were just a few from the FIRST PAGE of a search engine, AND outside of Muslim majority countries.
This is before even considering every other ‘provocation’, leading to incidences like:
Salman Rushdie being stabbed on stage
A teacher forced into hiding for showing a picture of mahammad
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It’s time based. Buddhism also had a similar ban on iconic representation of the Buddha. That’s why some early art will just have footprints or things like that. Islam should allow iconic representation of their prophet within 300 years.
Were Buddhists killing people for depicting Buddha?
We pull back too much because Islamic nutjobs will get violent because you dared draw a picture that resembled their stupid prophet. By doing that, we are giving them what they want and telling other religious groups that if they get violent enough, we’ll stop to appease them too.
You can mock Jesus, Moses, Krishna and any other religious figure because their followers, at worse, are going to verbally protest, if they do anything at all. But draw fucking Muhammad and people will tell you to knock it off because we don’t want to upset the assholes who will riot and kill people because they can’t handle someone having a differing opinion. Society bends over backwards to not offend Islam out of fear.
In response, we should have doubled down. Make more cartoons, get more vulgar with it…go all in, not stopped to appease them. Some people did for a while immediately after the attack, but not enough and not long enough, imo.
On the other side, if you do double down and get vulgar then you’ll find lot of racists joining in with you. That’s the dilemma of criticizing or satirizing Islam while also staying away from xenophobes.
Why doesn’t the same happen for Hinduism? It’s mocked relentlessly and is predominately practiced by non-whites, perhaps even more so than Islam, but we never hear any worries of racism for it. Why do we worry for one religion and not another? What about Judaism? It’s perhaps the most mocked/satirized religion throughout history and the only one that actually shares its background with a race, but we never worry about racism towards it like Islam?
Why doesn’t the same happen for Hinduism?
Are you sure about that? Do you even know what is happening in India ever since Modi’s party got into power? Please don’t talk out of your ass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_cow_vigilante_violence_in_India
Oh okay I missed one example lol you got me.
What about Judaism? You left that question unanswered. If we’re really that worried about racism, I would think we’d be more cautious when it comes to mocking anything Jewish-related, wouldn’t we? But that’s not the case at all as their religion is mocked and satirized freely.
What about Judaism?
Uhm look at Zionists? Seriously?
Just because you think these religions are fine with comedy (they’re not but those voices are miniscule) doesn’t mean they’re fine with everything you say about those religions.
Would your response be the same if an outright racist or transphobic comic was murdered? Would you spread racist and transphobic content to assert your free speech?
Society bends over backwards to not offend Islam out of fear.
Not drawing cartoons is not bending over backwards. If they were trying to get women being veiled, or ban abortions or homosexuality then yeah we should tell them to fuck off. But if they’re just asking to not say a word or draw something that isn’t necessary to political dialog then it’s fair for society to respect that. It should be enforced by being ostracized not killed though.
People shouldn’t be shot for saying the n word but if someone did get shot for saying it we shouldn’t all go around saying the n word because being intentionally offensive is still a dick move. Again not one that should be punished with death.
Would your response be the same if an outright racist or transphobic comic was murdered? Would you spread racist and transphobic content to assert your free speech?
Sure, why not? I feel that way about Dave Chappelle and the crap he got for making jokes about “the t” in LGBT. We can make jokes about everyone else but as soon as it comes to transgender people, that’s off limits? No. Don’t think so. Carry on, Dave. He did exactly what I recommended here by doubling down when people made a big deal over it.
But if they’re just asking to not say a word or draw something that isn’t necessary to political dialog then it’s fair for society to respect that. It should be enforced by being ostracized not killed though.
There are Christians who ask for this and it is absolutely not respected. There were protests for things like “The Last Temptation of Christ” and many other media since and instead society continues to poke fun at Jesus.
So why is it respected when it comes to Muhammad but not for Jesus despite a portion of the population asking for him to not be satirized? Is it because they’re not vocal enough? Or is it because people fear for their lives because psychos murder over a cartoon?
I think Charlie Hebdo comics are often in bad taste and more shock value than critic, but that’s no legitimate reason to massacre people.
More than the attack on Charlie Hebdo itself, which I can “understand” in the twisted sense of a religious fanatic, it was the overall ruthlessness of the attackers that shocked me. I remember vividly seeing a video of one of the attackers walking up to a wounded police officer and executing him at point-blank range.
I’m with you here, satire should be protected, killing people for satire is awful, and Charlie Hebdo have a really dumb and bad taste humor.
Honestly? That I would rather have Meta (and a bunch of Western countries, while we’re at it) lift restrictions on that front first before they go against LGBT people.
I’m not on board with the idea that edgy or offensive humor is valuable in itself, but I absolutely abhor the scenario where offended conservative and traditionalist views are treated in their own terms while marginalized groups are considered needy or nagging if they ask for the same treatment.
Also not on board with comedians assuming that noting their ignorance or bigotry is the same as not having a sense of humor, incidentally. Everybody sucks, is my point.
Prohibiting satire of religion is a form of blasphemy law, and blasphemy laws shouldn’t exist.
You don’t think a sovereign country can have a state religion if everyone in the country is part of that religion and wants it that way?
There are exactly zero countries that are so homogenous that you can say that literally everyone is of the same religion.
Everything is and should be allowed in comedy. Religion is no exception.
I think most people would agree with the following: even if you feel the cartoon was in poor taste or was “punching down,” the shooting was a terrorist act that just served to reinforce the worst stereotypes about Muslims and—ironically—the offending cartoon itself.
Opinions can vary about the cartoon, but that’s the point of defending satire and free speech; what’s completely indefensible is violence that clearly isn’t in the service of self-defense. People who quibble about the definition of self-defense and even skirt the idea that the terrorists in this incident had a right to do what they did, in my opinion, are likely either sophomoric contrarians or bad faith actors intentionally trying to muddy the waters, akin to some far-right militia members on conservative subreddits.
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Doesn’t make sense to me that religious people get violent because of something you say or draw.
If it would be wrong god will punish people who do it. If god doesn’t it is not wrong. And if god doesn’t but religious people do, that is them acting against god and thinking they know better then god. That is blasphemy and will make their god hate them.
I always thought that the reason that religious extremists are so obsessed with concepts like blasphemy and hatred for other sects and religions is because their very existence plants seeds of doubt in their minds. “If my beliefs are self evident and absolutely true then how can any other beliefs possibly exist?” They may turn it around and pose it as an attack on them “They are trying to make me doubt my beliefs.”
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over
What
I said
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over
😂 Beautiful reply!
Still, doesn’t make sense
It’s a standup comedy bit by Emo Philips.
It’s referencing the deep divisions between creeds even though they are very similar from the outside.
I find it weird when religious people don’t see this. I was proselytized to not long ago by a Muslim dude from Egypt out of the blue. He tried to dismiss Christianity because there are many denominations and when I pointed out the various Muslim denominations he just said they’re wrong by default because they are. Like, ok, I see your brain is forced to turn off with this topic.
It’s like all this Tate sigma male influencer horseshit. If you have to say it, you ain’t it.
Completely agree.
It’s religion, it doesn’t need to be logical. Au contraire.
People can behave in a way that makes sense to an outside observer without actually making any fucking lick of sense themselves.
The whole point is just a way of not revering the prophet as a god or idol. Like Catholic saints are borderline in their focus on the religiosity of that person but the church chose to ignore it because it was popular and helped them spread their religion.
But the implication is that it only matters for people who are already Muslim. It doesn’t make a difference what outsiders do.
What’s this image supposed to be? All I see is CENSORED.
It isn’t just religious people
Satire is a necessary way to call out impropriety in Democratic society. The humor softens the blow of the reality of horrible acts and makes less horrible but still bad acts easier to understand. As long as it’s not saying things that are just totally without merit or using it purely to spread hate, it should be staunchly defended regardless of who is offended by it.
Example of bad satire is something like a cartoon of an LGBTQ+ person going to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist saying it’s a mental illness and their head explodes. This is pushing the narrative that being gay is something to be cured and that gay people just can’t accept it. This can be considered satire, but like any type of speech it’s stating something designed to harm others. Satire is meant to over-exaggerate a problem, not make up a problem that doesn’t actually exist for the express purpose of hate.
Would you support killing a person who published such a cartoon?
Social ostracization or ridicule is an appropriate response to bad statements, not violence
No. I don’t support the death penalty for any crimes except in circumstances where secure imprisonment is impossible and the criminal is a serious physical danger to others. I said defend satire, not punish hate speech disguised as satire which is another subject on how to do that.
