Breaking News - Allegedly 10 people killed at office of satirical magazine in Paris

I know you haven't Anya, I'm really popping at politicians who I think do tend to separate European terror from the rest of the world and view it as something of personal insult. How COULD other people have different views to us particularly religious ones! fancy someone being offended at having things held dearly ridiculed and scorned!! They've just got to put up with it in the interest of freedom! Hang on here, whose freedoms are we talking about?! Not everyone's for sure. I can trample over you, but any protest from you will.be shoved to one side with the usual crys of intolerance and free speech! Murder of course is shocking, but I do think that we should all be respectful and mindful of others whatever their colour, creed or orientation and I do think that satire can go too far and be deeply offensive and upsetting.

the cartoons likely were not even seen by many of those who claim to find them offensive, the magazine has a very small, likely liberal circulation ( not saying that there are no liberal Muslims, so dont jump at me). Remember the footage of all those people jumping about and bellowing in front of fires burning the Satanic verses? i dont think many had read that book either.

The cartoons don't even begin to compete with the vicious, hate-filled diatribes on jihadist websites (in English and French). The latter probably have a larger circulation too.

Those too are deeply offensive, but two wrongs don't make a right. I'm sure lots of people who would be offended don't read any of it, but as a Muslim lady said, she abhorred the murders, but nevertheless found the mocking of her religion and other peoples hurtful. Everyone has the right to question and query, to argue ones point of view, but not to ridicule and make a mockery of other people, that is just cruel and insensitive. Everyone deserves respect from a civilized society. The jihadists you speak of unfortunately are anything but civilized, surely we don't want to be allied with them.

Any faith that cannot take a bit of mockery is a sorry weak thing. Why do people care what others, who don't share their beliefs, think of their beliefs? Why does one need to have one beliefs respected by someone else (who doesn't really respect them anyway, even if he respects one's right to hold such beliefs). You can recover from mockery. You can snort at people's mockery in the strength of your beliefs.

Murder doesn't leave any options.

There is no comparison between hurt feelings and murder!

No of course there isn't, but hurt feelings do matter. Lampooning Jews in Nazi Germany mattered and led to persecution. Mocking anyone's sincerely held beliefs matters. Discussion, seminars, arguments of course. Mockery and derision never.

I agree that hurt feelings matter. What puzzles me is why someone who believes something that I think is hogwash cares if I say so.

I don't think they do mind if you say so, its the way you, me or the next person says it, that matters. Not what you say but how!

Lampooning ideas or beliefs associated with a religion is not the same as lampooning the people who hold those beliefs.

Judaism was not criticised. Jews were persecuted. Judaism is an ideology. Jews are people.

Muslims are not being persecuted. Certains ideas associated with Islam are being criticised.

Like the difference between murder and hurt feelings, there really is no comparison between the two things.

Correction to previous post: Muslims are being persecuted. By other Muslims.

Well said, bags! That was a point that needed clarifying.

I suspect that persecuting Jews in Nazi Germany was the result of a lot more than "lampooning Jews", although propaganda in many forms – and there was an entire ministry devoted to the production of it – had a role.

I agree with nigglynellie's posts.

The cartoons must have been hurtful to ordinary decent, law-abiding, Muslims.

www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/46-examples-of-muslim-outrage-about-paris-shooting-that-fox-news-cant-seem-to-find/#.VLKD5RkBNpQ.facebook

Of course everyone, including Muslims, are outraged at the killings. That's not to say the satirists didn't invite their fate.

If you blame the victims often enough, you can probably convince yourself that neither you nor the people you love will ever be caught up in a terrorist attack. That's why its called terrorism – it frightens people and distorts their thinking.

Neither I, nor the people I love, go in for cruel trampling on other people's deeply held religious beliefs.

Apart from saying that I cannot reply to your post absent because it makes no sense to me.

My feelings are not distorted. I hate satire.

Thinking. Not feelings.

Not you in particular jingl. It is common for people to blame victims – of all kinds of crimes and horrors besides terrorism – for bringing disaster down on themselves rather than blame the perpetrators. That way, they can reassure themselves that such horrible things will never happen to them because they do not do whatever it is that the perpetrators use to justify their actions. Of course, such a view rather ignores the policeman in Paris, more than a thousand in the Twin Towers, hundreds in a Bali nightclub, a packed commuter train in Madrid, tube trains and a bus in London…

absent I would imagine everybody that lives in an urban environment - particularly a big city - and who uses the transport system (both of which I and my family do - my son commuting during the rush hour every day) are well aware there is a risk of being involved in a terrorist attack. I'm fairly sure that people don't think "Oh well, I haven't done anything to upset [whatever group] so I'll be all right".

Some of the Charlie Hebdo satirical cartoons that I have seen cleverly expose absurdity and hypocrisy. However, the ones described by Mishap were, I thought, not "satire" at all but just disgusting, stupid and insulting images and text which made no point whatsoever.

As I said before, I wouldn't want to ban or censor anything that currently falls within legal limits and nor would I suggest that any level of offence or insult warrants violence or murder - but I certainly wouldn't praise material that aims only to ridicule and insult, rather than to expose and enlighten.

Eloethan What I described is a well-known psychological phenomenon. Another well-known "self-protection" viewpoint that applies to city dwellers at risk from violent crime and terrorist attack is the idea of safety in numbers. It is equally spurious.

Are the cartoons Mishap described Charlie Hebdo originals or the Danish ones which caused a much earlier furore? Charlie Hebdo reproduced those on the grounds that it was pusillanimous to censor material as a result of threats not, so far as I know, because of any particular merit, but few, if any other magazines or newspapers did. There is a difference between the publication of the two.

I have not praised any of the cartoons but merely remarked that I believe that they had a right to publish them without fear.

absent I can only speak for myself and those that I know. We do sometimes think of the dangers of travelling on the underground for instance but, of course, it is natural to try and put concerns of this nature to the back of your mind.

I would certainly say that the (erroneous) belief in "safety in numbers" is only relevant in certain situations. After an atrocity of this nature has occurred, when you enter the concourse of one of the main train stations in London during the rush hour, you don't think "Oh that's good, everything's fine, there's lots of people", you think "If there was anyone here planning to (for example) set off a bomb, they'd be hard to detect in this huge, constantly moving, crowd of people". Travelling outside the rush hour when the carriages, platforms and station concourses are relatively uncrowded is far more reassuring because anyone behaving oddly would be easier to spot by CCTV surveillance teams.