EDIT: @Manco Is this conjecture or are there any more sources on the motives of these extremists that you know of?

Furthering my point: attacks on French Muslims since the Charlie Hebdo shooting

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/10/7524731...-charlie-hebdo

More video!

It's highly subjective, but I, after hearing about the murders, didn't go get a gun and seek revenge or do anything radical specifically aimed at Muslim people, the thought didn't really occur to me. I consider myself a normal, sane person, I don't believe violence is a good way of doing things no matter how many cartoonists are killed. I don't think any of you really though about that (even Havoc). Sounds like a stupid plan then, doesn't it?

Does it really further your point? These 'attacks' are pitiful. Like, really pitiful. Somebody sprayed a graffiti... boo fucking hoo. It's not even an attack. It's basically the same 'attack' as the comic strips. The only attack that actually caused harm to anyone is that kid assault, yet we don't know the full context, and therefore it's possible that it could be manipulated. The kid might have been looking for trouble.

My second argument would be that we're talking about kinds of people who blow themselves in terrorist attacks or shoot people who insulted their religion and go to jail for life (mostly). That sounds like idiots for me. I would not overestimate them by saying they're capable of thinking that far and coming up with such complex psychological plan.

I didn't present those arguments before, because I know they're not 100% conclusive and still leave a margin of error that some people might actually plan this like that. I just think it's improbable

Well all I have to say to that is:

1) you may not have pulled a gun out and attacked anyone, but plenty of people have gone out and attacked Muslims since – see the article I linked to above. There are also plenty of people who are using the attack on Charlie Hebdo to proclaim how important free speech is and how hateful and intolerant “those Muslims” are. Attacks like this will always be used by intolerant people to decry what they disagree with.

2) Why are you so sure that terrorists are idiots because of their methods? Just because they are violent and intolerant it doesn’t mean they can’t also be intelligent, cunning, and have long-term plans and goals.

Well as I'm thinking about it now, suicide bombers do have a long-term plan and goal, you know, heaven and a hundred virgins or whatever. The problem is this plan is stupid and nonsensical. And I do believe they do believe this crap.

Getting rid of religion wouldn't reduce the amount of war and violence in the world. People would just find something else to fight about.

Also, as I've said to you before, banning religion would be just as evil as insisting that the entire world practice any one religion.

I'd say the average suicide attacker is fairly unintelligent, or at best deluded. But they're part of a complex political machine, and at the top are very intelligent, very savvy people who stand to gain a lot of power if they can fracture the west along religious lines. The Charlie Hebdo attackers may well have not understood the impact of their actions, but there's no reason why they couldn't have been acting on the orders of someone who does, or fulfilling the obligations that person convinced them they have.

They're terrorists. They perpetrate acts of terror. "Freak people out and incite conflict" is pretty much their job description. Not explaining the Evil Master Plan to every goon working under you is just Villainy 101.

And minus the racial subtext, I'd say that's pretty much fine. I doubt anyone in Nigeria cares about a shooting in France, either.

Sorry, I'll start complaining about people being too unracist from now on.

Thank you

That wasn't racist enough, you useless Slav.

If you ever want to offend a Bulgarian, call him an Ottoman bastard. I'm learning a lot about racism from the building industry.

Also no one gives a shit about Boko Haram because they're a purely Nigerian based terror group. They will never amount any sort of competent attack on the West.

unless they capture school girls that you can use to make yourself look better with Twitter hastags because you're a scum of the earth cunt politician who cares about nothing except furthering your own career.

Are you kidding? Of course it would. Obviously it wouldn't get rid of violence all together but it would rid the world of a huge chunk of it, and stories like these are proof of that.
It's 2015, I think it's time people stopped killing over bronze-age fairytales.

People would find something else to fight about. Religion is only ever the excuse. The moment religion was wiped out, you'd see that nationalism starts becoming an issue again. Or resources. Or something else that we can't possibly predict. It's all just bullshit tribalism, when you come down to it.

You should have watched my video, Nep. Has South Park taught you nothing?

I too think that if religion was gone, there would be less violence. Of course there would be still violence, but I'm sure it would decrease. Though we can't really tell either way for sure, as there was no point in time, when there was no religion.

I have Four Lions on DVD.

Obviously it's because I'm so racist.

But there's no evidence to support this whatsoever. If we live in a violent society, it's going to continue feeding off of that violence however it can.
I certainly think religion should be taking a back seat and occupy less of people's focus and dedication, I think eventually we'll reach a point where we can look at religious texts as myopic fables from different times in history and give them a safe-for-work secular spin, but the short-term solution isn't the instant and total dissolution of religion as a whole. People don't work that way.

Jesus murphy I can actually hear your fedora tipping.
Here's a passage from the Qur'an. Since I sat through most of that fucking awful video, kindly read it.
"n 619 AC, 10 years into his prophet hood,
Muhammad (peace be upon him) travelled 70 miles south east of Mecca with
Zayd bin Haritha to the city of Ta'if. There, arrogant chiefs greeted
him with ridicule and mockery and ordered the slaves and children of the
town to chase the Prophet and his companion out of the city pelting
them with verbal insults, large rocks, dirt, spit and filth.

Covered in blood, Muhammad (peace be upon
him) and his companion staggered out of the town. Under the cover of a
tree and safely outside the city, bloodied, helpless and overwhelmed, he
put his hands up in prayer to Allah (God): "O Allah! To thee I complain
of my weakness, my lack of resources and my lowliness before men."

The Hadith ("traditions of the Prophet")
narrate it was then the Angel Gabriel appeared before him stating that
an angel had been ordered to stand by at the top of mountains that
surrounded the city of Ta'if. "Just give the order, and he will cause
the mountains to collide together and crush the city and everyone in
it," the Angel Gabriel boomed. The Prophet's response: "No — do not do
this. I pray that if these people do not accept my message today, God
willing, from their progeny there will be some that accept my message."
this got shared on my facebook by Jizzle

Yeah, that sure sounds like unreasonable, warmongering, violent religious fanaticism. All holy texts are filled with contradicting takes on things, but Mohammed's adventures are mostly pretty fucking awesome. Dude went on a globetrotting adventure with all of his best buddies, and they killed a lot of people and took the moral high-horse on a shitload of others.. I'm pretty sure you know jack shit about Islam and Abrahamic religions in general, particularly how they're practiced today.

Muhammad did also have a woman put to death because she (a poet) wrote a poem that was none-too-kind to Muhammad as a person.

I'm not saying you're wrong and Islam is evil, if anything I'm agreeing with you that Islam (and religion) is so fucking contrary that it's impossible to call Muslims evil and vicious based on their Qu'ran, which changes its mind on when to use leniency every six words.

That's why I mentioned the contradiction, I'm genuinely interested in reading that passage though. Mohammed always says some line before putting someone to death. Like, if he was going to strike down an infidel with a lamp he'd probably say 'Lights out!' or if he like, shoved a bunch of guys waving M16's at his stepdaughter into a vat of liquid nitrogen he'd say 'cool off.'

What puzzles me is that the Qur'an is full of weird shit that you can frame politically in a pretty unflattering way, but Charlie Hebdo went with Mohammed's dick and balls hanging out. Y'know, the classic. It just strikes me that this supposed comprehension of Islam by many of its non-academic critics is total bullshit.

It’s because it’s low-hanging fruit. People who know just enough about Islam to know that Mohammed is not supposed to be depicted so they go “hurr, let’s depict him in a really puerile way”. Its Family Guy-level humor.

And yes, I did make this post just to make the low-hanging fruit pun.

Like I've said before though, whether you find it funny or not has nothing to do with it, the point is it's not to be taken seriously.
It's shock humor, an "oh I can't believe they just did that" sort of thing. There's entire franchises built around that kind of humor.

tl;dr version: Extremism is bad. Going to extreme lengths to offend people already experiencing a social tumult is bad. Murdering those offensive people is an unacceptably extremely bad response. Saying that Charlie Hebdo were just harmless satirists is ignoring the evidence that they were still racist assholes.


You don't make a conscious choice to be offended. It happens, and how you respond to that trigger is subjective, but when people are taught that the image of their most revered prophet is holy and should be respected, they have every right (down to the juices in their brains) to find it offensive and desire not to see it. It's documented that Charlie Hebdo repeatedly published front-page comics whose purpose was to skewer Mohammed in unflattering and disrespectful ways. That isn't to say murdering those responsible is the answer, I think the majority of Muslim people aware of Charlie Hebdo made a conscious choice to ignore it, or even to interpret it as the lazy, half-baked attempt at satire that it was and not think about it.

Tell me something, Nepsotic. Do you think it would be fair to cast judgements on you for the rest of your life because of all that pony-related content you used to post? That was pretty recent in my opinion, within the last several years.

So imagine instead of being one person you're a few thousand, and instead of ponies you believe there was a dude who spoke for God (or at least with some authority on behalf of the God he believed in). This guy is a highly respectable figure in your life. And that about 1000 years of varying levels of dominion, peace and violence, history books full of events, occurred as a result of your pony nonsense/what this Holy Guy got up to. So much has happened that you can't really look at this guy or the book he came from the same way, and you have to look at the world with the scope of history available.
Now your tastes have changed, you've learned more, you've got more to talk about and offer, but people won't stop associating you with a past snapshot of how you interpreted things and presented yourself. And also there's a magazine that deliberately singles you out and makes sure to take every oppurtunity to target you with unflattering imagery and poorly-written editorials.

Charlie Hebdo took the opportunity to single out Islam because it's an easy target because people like you would stand up and say 'Duuuh, it's just meant to be a joke!' when its purpose was to disinform and play on people's preexisting prejudices.

That rampant disregard for the modernization of a billion people and the assumption they're all raging, kamikaze savages is what Charlie Hebdo was all about. They were insular, hateful old men.
Charlie Hebdo capitalized on a specific brand of xenophobia, or anti Islamic sentiment if you'd like, that didn't attempt to shock people for the sake of humor but was really, truly toxic and hateful. We already know the mag was run by people who did and said racist or offensive things, outside the context of cartoons. We already know they didn't deserve to die for this, but it does not give you or anyone else license to pass them off as harmless comedians poking fun. They were assholes who didn't deserve to die. They deserved criticism, and maybe a lil smack on the bottom, but nobody is saying they deserved it. Stop making that association.

It's so easy to disregard people as reasonable and 'like you and me' by assuming they're all mad about the same things and capable of the same things due to that anger, but this is clearly not the case. I'm not a Muslim person, I'm not someone who grew up in the same environment of worship and dedication to Mohammed, and I find the comics offensive, disrespectful and lazy. Does that mean I'm going to go firebomb some Europeans over it? According to you, it does. After all, I took offense, something a thousand times more terrible than publishing nasty cartoons that play on peoples fears. Nope, all I'm doing is letting people know 'Yo, that's fucking bad!'

Look up some of the really bad Charlie Hebdo comics, the ones that aren't being republished because they're too offensive. if you can't honestly agree that the lengths they went were for the explicit purpose of pissing people off, and not purely for the sake of humor, then I'll let you continue espousing ignorance without reply.

In addition to what Mac said, I'm going to point out to Nepsotic that saying 'IT WAS A JOKE' doesn't excuse anything. Humour doesn't mean anything is allowable. Humour doesn't mean it's inoffensive. Humour doesn't mean it's not meant vindictively. Humour doesn't mean that there isn't anything serious behind it.

Humour has no greater or lesser freedom than any other speech. 'IT WAS JUST A JOKE' is not an excuse for anything and I really wish you'd stop saying it.

I think you're perhaps running it too far in the other direction, Mac. You say it's been proven that they're all a bunch of racist assholes, but is there any evidence, aside from the cartoons themselves, that the people murdered espoused such views?

Is it possible that the crude send ups and depictions of Muhammed is less about offending Muslims and more about the idolisation of certain figures by people who resort to extreme violence?

Charlie Hebdo are also known for ridiculing all religions. And I'd say Islam is not the "easy target" considering there are known extremists who murder people for such satire. Not that they're doing great work, Charlie Hebdo, but Jesus Christ is a far easier target than lampooning Muhammed. I don't get the impression that they're singling out Islam but, at the moment, it's the only religion used in a "Holy Wars" across the world (at least it's the only one you hear about). And nothing wets satirist appetites like ridiculing such people.

It's supposed to be humourous but I'm not getting the impression that "It's all just a joke!". There's an intent behind these images and I'm not getting the impression that it's to appeal to the xenophobia and conservatism in the country.

Charlie Hebdo seem like the type of people that aren't going to separate religion from the atrocities or social oppression that's committed in it's name in case they offend the man on the street. Sure, it's antagonistic. It's offensive to certain people. But I think jumping down the racist or xenophobic angle seems like an easy, knee-jerk reaction since they're being martyred by many people.

Regardless, post some of those cartoons that aren't being re-published because I'd like to get a look at them. Perhaps looking at the context of these cartoons will make me see it your way.

Now you're saying like you're an oracle saying where is the offensiveness line for humor. That's your opinion. Each person has his own limit after which he gets insulted. I don't think humor presented in that French mag shouldn't be allowed because of potential offensiveness. If I was of Islam faith with all of my personality, I wouldn't give a rat's shit about it. Really. I didn't find it funny (it's more like a lazy low-blow), but that's a different case. What can you say about it?

I somehow don't imagine you going and protesting against tv shows like South Park, because they insult people in their comedy.

I agree with Nep. If something is labeled as a humor, it shouldn't be taken seriously. It's not like that's the point of humor, riiiight?

Deliberately being cruel to a large number of innocent people for no practical reason: Not to be taken seriously.

Yes it's not as if there are tonnes and tonnes of websites/blogs/articles that do that exact thing all the time.

Also Nate, in humour anything is allowed, and that's something I will defend to the death. Yes, you've got to know where it's okay to make certain jokes and where it's not, but it comes down to this, if one thing is okay to joke about, anything is. Nothing gets special treatment, and that's something I've always believed in.

petition to rename this thread “The Aristocrats” and close it right now

Well it looks like Nep has this discussion well and truly on the rocks.

It's been a fun ride thanks for playing.

Guys the internet did something so I guess that makes it okay

It's not like stupid people ever use the internet

Nep, my bottom line is this: I'm all for comedy taking on controversial subjects; it's an important component in shaping public attitudes, and those attitudes ultimately determine quality of life for various groups of people. Also, y'know, it's funny.

My issue with Charlie Hebdo isn't that the magazine publishes comedy adressing racism, my issue is that they publish racism and label it as comedy. Diagram:



Those cartoons have no subtext, no satirical intention, no deeper meaning that reveals the racial caricatures as themselves symbols of the backwards fools who maintain them. There's no setup, no punchline, no topical observation: It's just foriegners and their kin being depicted as universally freakish and unpleasant.

Forget finding it funny: unless you harbour racist views, that's not even a joke. It offends me both as an opponent of racism and lover of comedy.

You're completely wrong there, Meech. Gotta say. And that's quite an impressive straw man if I've ever seen one.

For example I'll quote some Frenchman, who has a better knowledge of current affairs than myself, on these particular cartoons:

http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg...t_to_webp=true

"Don't touch our (welfare) allocations!"

And here's another about a seemingly very racist cartoon:

I mean, had you even hear of Charlie Hebdo before this crisis? I hadn't. But I found it hard to believe that everyone supporting Charlie were ignorant to supporting a bunch of racist xenophobics and were simply blinded by martyrdom or whatever.

And, to me anyway, these don't sound like the ramblings of apologists. They sound like the opinions of French people who understand their culture, and this newspaper, better than any of us on OWF.

It might seem like a cop out, but I genuinely have no interest in looking at or circulating those comics that I deem particularly offensive. That being said, here's a link to several I feel abuse the image of an extremist as a strawman stand-in for Muslims: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.ca/2012...-cartoons.html
I'm not sure what the political angle of that blog is so if you dig deeper and find out the guy's a big crazy anti-semite leave me out of it.
Ah, here's the comic I keep talking about. The one with Mohammed's dick and balls hanging out and 'a star is born' inexplicably inscribed above. It's at the bottom of the page. Understand that on their own I feel like these are simply politically motivated cartoons, but the more that same rough image used to depict muslims is used the less unintentional the stereotyping feels.
The evidence that I'd cite for them encouraging such views were publishing Sine's piece in the first place and firing him after it became critically and perhaps commercially necessary to do so and avoid possible legal trouble. I draw the conclusion that though the majority of the people at Charlie Hebdo were unlikely bigoted and hateful, there were people in charge willing to accomodate a certain level of ignorance either for shock value or because they actually felt the same way.
linky
I'll be the first to admit to getting carried away with describing these people as worse than they clearly were, and I'll keep things a little less indulgently critical from here on out, but at the core of my arguments is the point that Charlie Hebdo used a generalized image of Islam to criticize Muslims in general, in a part of the world that allows free speech in such a way that such a crude and abrupt depiction should not have been necessary or be considered appropriate.

And I'd be inclined to agree with you if the popular perception of Muslims did not already seem to be seriously negatively slanted, especially in some parts of Europe. If their purpose was to satirize there's plenty of ways of doing so without repeatedly going back to the image of the scowling terroriste, which seems to be their calling card when it comes to depicting Muslims.

Were they calling for brownies to be lynched in the street? Obviously not. Were they regurgitating a harmful and inaccurate image that encouraged a culture already wary of a group of people to single out that group of people in a negative way, I think so. While I'm not french and never truly will be, I've been aware of the growing miconceptions about Islam and the air of ignorance that pervades its popular western critics for a few years, ever since a friend got really obsessed and I grew interested in it.

My problem is that you say 'labeled as humor' rather than 'actually being humorous'. Look at Mac's most recent post for examples of the former rather than the latter.

And, leaving that hair-split aside, even if it humorous, that doesn't excuse anything and everything. Just because something is amusing does not mean it isn't serious. In fact, that's almost the definition of what makes good satire.

This next point primarily to Nepsotic, but also addresses Varrok's post: the point is not that 'in humour anything is allowed'. Frankly, the far more important point is that "In free speech, anything is allowed".

But you're missing the point that I've been trying to make in this thread. I'm going to express it in its own sentence in its own paragraph, just to hopefully get it drilled into your head that it is important.

Just because something is allowed, doesn't mean its the right thing to do.

This isn't about the law. This isn't about limiting free speech. This is about ethics. And, speaking as a believer in Utilitarianism, the best thing to do is that which creates the greatest good for the greatest number of people. To put it a different way, you should live your life in such a way that the world as a whole is a better place for you having lived with it. And the world is a worse place for Charlie Hebdo's cartoons having been in it.

I was writing a longish reply last night, Mac, but the internet cut out and it went away with the wind. So I went to bed. The short of of it was to do with context being the most important thing, is that I think Charlie Hebdo is against Islam and religion rather than anti-Muslim, that their focus is not the man on the street but the man who idolises Muhammed and resorts to violence if his image is ever depicted, and, unfortunately for the average Muslim, they too are Muslim - and like people like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins their approach seems to be anti-theism rather than separating the terrorist from his religion on focusing on that aspect.

Unfortunately there are those who will use it as fuel to their discriminatory fire but perhaps Charlie Hebdo are the type of mag that don't feel the need to make a clear distinction in their cartoons. Perhaps they expect their readers to understand what type of Muslim they're satirising and, if they're really a left-wing anarchistic magazine, don't care for the opinion of any xenophobic readers they may have out there. The monkey cartoon, to me, would seem a prime example of this.

In the case of the anti-semite it's hard to say what went on internally and I wouldn't be quick to make any assumptions. It may come out that some of the cartoonists were actually racists at heart and I'llbe the first to throw my hands in the air - even if I still think some of these cartoons are concerned with making a social or political statement rather than spreading further xenophobia.

Also, just as a little aside, is prejudice and discrimination of Muslims actually racism? I'm pretty sure it doesn't concern their actual race but their culture or religion. It's not the same as saying "all these Muslims have massive teeth because they're not white". I'm actually curious about the distinction. Or whether the term, racism, has really evolved beyond race.

This is an interesting viewpoint on the room for offensive satire in society.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/op...one-share&_r=0

Regarding your last point in your longer post; you're talking semantics really, racism and general discrimination are similar enough and shitty enough that it makes no difference what you call it. Additionally you have to pretty much question the definition of race.

Not really, discrimination against an ideology comes from a different place than discrimination against an ethnic group. The root of ideological discrimination can very easily come from ignorance or lack of understanding or just vehement disagreement with that ideology, rather than simple hatred of skin color or perceived racial superiority.

Sure, it’s still shitty and intolerant behavior, but it can evolve from more reasonable roots and thus needs to be approached and understood in a different manner.

Have you heard about the latest Hebdo cover? Yeah, thats happening.

Which makes sense...

Translated from here: http://www.liberation.fr/societe/201...rcredi_1179193

The lawyer of the newspaper , Richard Malka recalled Monday afternoon that the drawings of Muhammad and other religious authorities were usual in the newspaper for years. "In each issue of Charlie Hebdo for twenty- two years , there is not one in which there is no caricatures of the Pope, Jesus , priests , or rabbis , imams and Mohammed." "The surprising thing would be that there is no " Muhammad drawings in this issue, he said .

"We will not yield or all this will have no sense. The mindset "I'm Charlie", also means "right to blasphemy" warned me Malka , also stating that Charlie Hebdo is "not violent but irreverent newspaper, bringing laughter" and vehemently denied any accusation of Islamophobia . Asked about whether the newspaper is "Islamophobic" , Richard Malka said that Charlie Hebdo "attacked much less Islam than Christianity" and criticized a "relativism of indecent and obscene bad faith" .

One PR puff piece does not excuse 22 years of this:
http://images.dailykos.com/images/12...png?1420739736
image being used to 'satirize' Islam. I give, they demonstrate an understanding that what the extremists stand for is not what Mohammed/Islam stands for in that cover, I just haven't seen any evidence they've moved beyond the 'Well most Muslims support the extremists' mindset.
They can claim to have blown Lord Xenu out of the sky for all I care, the evidence that they scapegoated Muslims on a social level is absolutely still there. They took a group of people, currently marginalized due to their beliefs (and conceivably because of the part of the world they immigrated from), and played on that negative image to promote a perception that what they think and do is wrong and 'unfrench'. Ignorant.
France, or more accurately what I can ascertain of modern French society does not seem to have a lot of respect for religion. It's a secular society that exists in a vacuum of its own freedom-of-expression allowances conflicting with the gentrifying advocates of those same freedoms. One is free to express their ire for a religion in France, but one is not allowed to dress their children in the symbols or accoutrements that are part of their religious ritual.
That seems backwards to me. Tell me, could a culture that banned the wearing of religious icons (IE a crucifix necklace, Hindu T-shirt, or Religiously-obligated Turban) be considered above ignoring the growing social dissaray to cloud an issue into simply being about 'free speech' rather than having the conversation 'Did what these people publish constitute extreme abuse of free speech?'.

The thing is, getting back to the point at the start of this issue, Is it solidarity in evidence that they scoff at the very people supporting them or is it the same patent, idiotic disrespect that leads me to believe they are ignorant and hateful? Charlie Hebdo doesn't give a shit about 'Je Suis Charlie' because they themselves know it's a backwards and incomplete picture of who they are and what they do. They themselves seem to acknowledge the fundamental ignorance the social media rabble have by not appreciating Charlie Hebdo as a two sided coin; 1) Is what people want to celebrate: They expressed their criticism however they wanted. 2) They did so in a way that deliberately offended and marginalized Muslims already caught in the cycle of ignorance. Christians aren't being misunderstood and attacked in the streets, Buddhists aren't being called to answer for the extreme peacefulness exhibited by adherents to their faith.
So why then does it seem like nothing really happened here? Some men were killed, and I'm not trying to imply that doesn't matter, but there's no wellspring of understanding emerging. People are just blatantly in support of what Charlie Hebdo published because they got attacked, and that's fucking stupid.

I'm not saying they were exclusively Islamophobic. I'm sure there were plenty of other Ideological strawmen published within the pages of Charlie Hebdo. But I think that using this as an opportunity to address the growing misconceptions about muslims is a lot more legitimate than saying 'They were bad, but they weren't that bad.' or more harmfully 'It's okay they treated all groups this disrespectfully and carelessly'.

Important edit: I think we've reached the point where the facts are on the table and peoples opinions and conjecture are taking over, especially mine. I exhibit some pretty extreme opinions on things, and I was definitely wrong to go whole-hog and label Charlie Hebdo as racist because that label was, by my own admission, easier than explaining what I meant by it. This is ironically a situation where my own extreme interpretation of things may have clouded it for other people. I think that what Charlie Hebdo published as far as cartoons about Islam was Inappropriate, or simply inopportune, given a climate of distrust and misinformation pertaining to Muslims. I don't think they were trying to get anyone deported, or motivating people to attack Muslims in the street, nothing like that. I think they played up the model of Muslim people as 'unreasonable and unwilling to change' when French law already encourages them to indulge their religious practices and rituals differently. By their very presence in France they are change, but Charlie Hebdo singled them out regardless. This forces them (Muslims) to accept and do things differently than their interpretation of the Qur'an allows, but to continually poke fun at them and lampoon their prophet during a period where they're finding their own identity within French culture is detrimental and, to indulge myself a little, hideously short-sighted and mean. I am however approaching this issue shortly after a tragic, violent thing that might represent more to other people than my negative associations with the subject of that attack, and could see why this seems frivolous by comparison, so perhaps I'll leave it for a later time from here on out.