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Personally, I think there's truth to what both @Danny and @Rucksackfranzose have said about the situation of France, Muslims, Islamophobia, and extremist terrorism. I think a free press is an important part of society - even if that means that you can have some horribly offensive things printed. I think there should be limits, like a newspaper that calls for genocide should probably be not be able to do that... but that's not really what Charlie Hebdo have done. They've got a long tradition of having some pretty offensive images. But the thing about offensive images is... they're just images. And you can feel offended by things and have the right to be legitimately offended. So I understand why devout Muslims would be offended by depictions of Mohammed and they have a right to be offended. But they don't have the right to expect people who aren't practicing Islam to be offended or felt compelled to never show any depictions of Mohammed. And they certainly don't have the right to murder people over fucking cartoons. I do think Islamophobia is pretty rife throughout a lot of Europe and, in my eyes, especially in France. If we even ignore the debate over whether the laws banning head coverings in schools/hospitals is meant to disproportionately affect Muslim women and just stick to the recent terror incidents... I don't see why the local government had to take the official stance of "we will project these cartoons onto government buildings." There are a lot of Muslims in France, and in large part that's due to French colonialism - but that being a part of the local government's response is that municipality tacitly saying "we support the message of these cartoons that offend a lot of our citizens." And when we know that there are segments of Islamic society in Europe that have been radicalised... and we know things like Charlie Hebdo's depictions of Muslims/Mohammed are used as propaganda to radicalise young people and make them potential terrorists. The narrative these extremists push is that the West wages a culture war against Muslims and that Muslims will never be accepted into society, and what that city ended up doing sort of played right into that sort of propaganda. I think a city's got a different sort of responsibility to a private newspaper and they could have commemorated Paty's murder and stood up for terrorism in a way that was less divisive and provocative. Not that it justifies terrorism and murder, because it absolutely doesn't and there should be widespread condemnation of all terror attacks from all people.

I don't think you can separate Islamic Extremism from the spread of Islamic Extremism. One is a byproduct of the other and to seriously address the problem of these terror attacks in the West... the root of the problem needs to be tackled as well or the problem never really goes away. You just end up kicking the can down the road, but when you keep walking the can's still there and you can either keep kicking it along the road... or you can eventually try to pick the can up. Samuel Paty should not have been murdered for showing comics (that he didn't even draw) in a class on free speech, that is obvious. His murder is especially more tragic as he actually considered the feelings of his Muslim students and warned them they might be offended/disturbed by his class and gave them the opportunity to remove themselves. He was an educator who was doing his job, yet was considerate enough to consider the offensiveness of his content. He did not deserve to die, and honestly what little I know about him (basically what I've just said here) indicates to me he was probably a good die. Again, it's an absolute tragedy he was murdered. Similarly, the 3 victims of terror attacks in France yesterday should not have been murdered and I agree with you - it is ridiculous that some people take offense to these comics in such an extreme way. I really cannot make it more clear, I fully agree with you on the meat of your argument here. But I also think this is a hugely complicated issue that's going to take a lot of communities around the world taking serious steps to ever really stop these things that should absolutely not be happening in any society from happening. But I don't think this is an issue that's really solvable by just Muslims on their own in their own communities. But yeah, we obviously need to see moderates in Muslim communities in the West step up and be louder voices against Islamic extremism. But by the same token, the West needs to do things to meaningfully stop the spread of extremism when our governments have played a prominent role - for decades - in the spread of this extremism. Salafists were a fringe sect not that long ago, but decades of Western support and serious financial backing in spreading that ideology have played a huge part in making it more mainstream in Islam. I believe fostering an "us vs. them" mentality hurts everyone involved in this situation - it pushes the idea of the culture war and it'll further radicalise people on all sides. I don't think Charlie Hebdo should be forced to censor themselves, they've been offensive to everyone they feature on their cover for as long as they've existed. But I do think that municipalities taking the opportunity to project these cartoons on government in the aftermath of Paty's murder didn't do anyone any favours and, tbh, is a pretty inflammatory way to commemorate the man's death and show "solidarity" & I can see how it comes off as tacit government support of this bullshit idea of a "culture war." It's certainly not an action that promotes unity amongst France of people of all religions, as it has the high likelihood of irritating even moderate Muslims (because now it's not a media outlet doing what it's always done, it's a city in France's local government showing support with Charlie Hebdo). I think there's got to be a way to balance taking a strong stand against Islamic extremism that doesn't involve promoting Islamophobia and the idea of a culture war. But I think the most effective step at tackling Islamic extremism in Europe is ending our support of the spread of Islamic extremism in the Middle East. It is the most serious and direct action we (we as in our Western governments, tbh) can take to slow the rate at which Muslims around the world are radicalised. We can't ferment the ideology in one part of the world and then be surprised when it spreads around the world. But honestly, I'm not hopeful things will change very much in my lifetime. Seriously addressing the issue would require a real shift in the status quo of Western foreign policy (because Saudi Arabia are longtime "partners" and Turkey's an important member of NATO due to it's geographic location) and would likely cause a huge spike in global oil prices & further increase Europe's dependency on Russian oil... as well as cede a lot of influence the US/EU has over the Middle East to geopolitical rivals in Russia & China.

The right to ridicule the beliefs of others is an absolute foundation stone of any liberal country. Satirising Mohammad is not 'hate speech' or 'racism', people from all communities should accept this or we're in for big problems.

Who is poking who? It seems to be that certain people believe they deserve more protection than any other. You should be secure in your beliefs, unless there is something more sinister about Islam that I’m missing? I say this as someone who wants to avoid what I think we can all see is coming. We need Muslim communities to give over with mealy mouthed statement and stop trying to qualify beheading other human beings with ‘well but he did show a cartoon’..... Otherwise you know what will happen and it won’t be pretty.

It just seems to me that the right-wing of Labour cannot tolerate the left, but everyone accuses the left of being intolerant. During in the Blair years, which are as right-wing as Labour has ever been, stalwart left wing MPs like Corbyn, McDonnel and Skinner stayed in the party, despite disagreeing with a lot of what went on, they fought for Labour. When the left get in, loads of MPs leave and then some actively campaign for the Tories (words cannot describe how much I detest Ian Austin). The narrative is the wrong way round.

I agree with all this, anti-Muslim bigotry is a problem that needs to be combatted and Western countries behave largely against the interests of their own citizens at times. I think we need to deal with things on local level and international level. We need condemnation and resolute defiance from all sections in France, but a move to disengage from the middle east all round.

I don't subscribe to the point of view I'm talking about now. Still could imagine that there's or the government suppose there is a "now more than ever"-mentality over this beheading. In the sense of them wanting to send the message they won't back down from this integral part of their society whatever costs it may take. As said don't subscribe to that but can see a logic attitude behind this behavior.

The issue is, without Corbyn do you get a regression to Blair type Labour? If so, then there's no point in having a Labour party at all.

Secularism isn't neutrality, to be secular in a French sense means to be anti-religious. From this point of view banning religious garment is absolutely fine, and again it doesn't affect Muslims only.

I was going to post it as @Spike journalism career in mental image thread

If you ban religious clothing with no real reason other than its religious then you are “the bad guy”. There is no plausible logic to it. It’s wilfully ignorant to ban face coverings and include religious garments in that. It is islamophobic. If you go through such trouble to be known as a secular nation then why would you have policy in place that’s discriminates against a specific religion for no real reason? Again France is not to blame for beheadings or shootings but it is to blame for discriminating against Muslims

It isn't racist at all. I'm fully aware that being French and Muslim is as possible as being of European origin and Muslim. Where in hell is written you can't be citizen of a country and still don't be welcome? I wouldn't say for example Neo-Nazis are welcome, whether they're German or of any other nationality doesn't matter. The existence of preventive detention is a good example for the existence of persons that aren't welcome in the respective society regardless of their nationality.

Dr. Fauci " No Semblances of normality until 2022 "