Charlie Hebdo being a racist, bigoted and prejudiced publication is not relevant to why they were attacked?
No. They were attacked because they printed cartoons about Mohammed that were deemed blasphemous for
religious reasons. Claims otherwise are simply an attempt to whitewash the
religious motivation of the attackers, by generalizing it to bland, non-specific "bigotry" or "prejudice". It is the same motivation that led to the threats against Salman Rushdie, the murder of Theo van Gogh, the threats against Comedy Central and others who wanted to run a cartoon depicting Muhammed, etc..
Why do you keep denying this? There were overt, direct threats against them saying they should be killed for insulting Muhammed. The people who commit those acts/make those threats openly claim religious reasons as their motivation. Al Qaeda in Yemen, who have claimed responsibility for this and been linked to it by other sources, say it was because of alleged
religious blasphemy.
Europe certainly does have a number of small, overtly racist groups, but they're not being attacked because of those overtly racist beliefs. It's the people/groups who are perceived to have insulted Muhammed who receive the threats and are attacked.
Where has this been "expressed??" You're straight up lying with your "quote" because the attackers made no public statement.
Sure they did -- they screamed "Allahu Akhbar" as they were killing people. We also know that the brothers traveled to and trained with AQ in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Unless you're going to argue that AQAP's focus is anti-
racism, their actions in aligning themselves with that group speak pretty fucking clearly about their motivations. And here's part of the statement released by AQAP after the attacks
Soon after the Al Qaeda member claimed responsibility for the Paris attack on Friday, The Associated Press reported that the branch's senior cleric Sheikh Harith al-Nadhari issued a recording on the group's Twitter feed commenting on the "blessed raid on Paris." He denounced the "filthy" French and called them "the heads of infidelity who insult the prophets." He praised the "hero mujahedeen" who he said "taught them a lesson and the limits of freedom of speech." "How can we not fight those who hurt our prophet, slandered our religion and fought the faithful."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...arlie-hebdo-yemen-al-qaeda-pentagon/21520311/
Mocking a religion is indeed a discriminatory and prejudiced action.
Gee, that's interesting...why are you talking about "mocking a religion" if there's no link between that and the attacks on Charlie Hebod? Anyway....
First, do you think it should be illegal to engage in "discriminatory and prejudiced actions", and that it therefore should be illegal to mock religion?
And second, I do not believe that mocking any
belief system, including a religion, is prejudiced and discriminatory. Those are terms applicable to attitudes towards people, not belief systems. And as an aside, South Park mocks
everything -- I don't see how that can be considered either discriminatory or prejudiced.
More fundamentally, the idea that
any belief system should be immune from harsh criticism, including mocking, strikes me as profoundly repressive. Religions are mocked all the time by social commentators, as are other belief systems such as conservatism, feminism, etc.. Shit, you've got some wacko religious-based belief systems out there that have openly racist principles. Should they be immune from being mocked just because they're religions?
This is commonly considered racist. But it doesn't depict a "race" of people does it?
The cartoon image itself is racist. The context in which that image is used may not be, as demonstrated by your use of that image here to make a rhetorical point.
But...that isn't the Charlie Hebdo cartoon that is at the center of all this, is it? I mean, are you seriously claiming that AQAP supports this attack because they were angered at a depiction of a
Jew? Because according the WP, I thought this was the cartoon in question:
Which, frankly, I don't see as racist. The physical depiction doesn't suggest anything evil or negative -- all it's got is the normal exaggeration of facial features common to virtually
all cartoons, caricatures
.
The problem with Charlie Hebdo is they routinely depicted Muslims as savages and barbarians.
From what I've seen, I think they are/were trying to depict
the subclass of violent Muslim extremists as savages and barbarians, which I believe is perfectly accurate and fair
.
Yes, they also ridiculed the prophet Muhammad. Dehumanizing Muslims is the exact same form of racism as dehumanizing Jews. That's the point.
I do not equate mocking/ridiculing Muhammed with dehumanizing Muslims any more than mocking Catholic priests for child abuse is dehumanizing Catholics.