hoffage123

This one is pretty funny actually - I have had a few non-Muslim editors like that in the past, usually before a breaking news bulletin The scimitar is usually bigger though.

hoffage123

I am confused as to what more you want the normal Muslim person to do - there are already sermons in the Mosques where terrorist behaviour is condemned and those people who do hold extremist views are reported and also shunned from the community. Muslim groups speak out and also behind the scenes work on programs to foster environments of mutual understanding, so that even if someone has unpleasant views, they are challenged. In short, they are doing all they can and more the vast majority of the time. I'm sorry that doesn't make the news or reassure you - maybe next time you drive past a mosque, think of going in and asking what actually goes on in there before you just assume people are being ostriches.

No other religious group has been asked to assume collective guilt for the negative actions of a minority of individuals who don't represent them in recent times, to such an extent.

Pulaski

What ever they are doing is ineffective. That's all I'm saying.

To those who made snide or obtuse comments that I suspect were directed, at least in part, at me, I was making observations and noting that immigration and integration policies have been ineffective over the past 50 years or so, and that something needs to be done. I certainly wasn't advocating violence, though I fear that maybe the result.

And to those who think I am ill-informed, I know rather more than most about islam and the politics of the Middle East and the islamic world. I worked for an Arab-owned business for a number of years, and they were some of the happiest years of my life work-wise. I worked with muslims, and most of the customers I met and assisted were muslims. Mid-career as I am, I have still to find a job I enjoy more. Since I left that job I have continued to follow Middle Eastern business and politics, and I have a number, probably a dozen or more, on the politics and history of the muslim countries in and around the Middle East.

SultanOfSwing

This was a disgusting act of terror, carried out on people who were guilty of nothing more than doing their job. We've seen it before many times by extremists of all flavours. This one just happened to be carried out by Islamic extremists, so it's natural the discussion will be weighted towards those who claim to act in the name of Mohammed, where in reality it is extremists of all kinds towards whom our ire should be directed. Authoritarianism in its many forms, is what we should be opposed to. Religion, all religions, is where we should direct our distaste and disrespect (in the words of Salman Rushdie above).

The people who died were merely exercising their right to free speech and expression, extended to them by virtue of the fact that they live in a supposedly free country such as France. Who cares if what they wrote 'offended' some fairytale believers? They didn't break the law of the land, only their set of rules made up by superstitious men who adapted various bronze age mythologies to suit their needs. It's utterly ridiculous in this day and age that people can't speak their minds without fear of some Spanish Inquisition style trial by ordeal coming from the god squads of the world.

Disgusting.

Nutek

Very well put.

kimilseung

I find it reversed for me, Van Gogh was a while ago, and a bit forgettable as it was not very well made, but in my memory it was a bit of a pseudo-documentary filled with little more than quotes and explosions.

Pulaski

That's all well and good, and most of it agree with, but it's not a strategy for dealing with the problem because you can't tell people what not to believe any more than you can tell them what they should believe.

Nutek

There is no strategy to deal with it.

Sally Redux

Disgust is not being shown to all religions.

People are heading down the same demonising route that led to the last world war.

SultanOfSwing

It wasn't presented as such. I'm not authoritarian when it comes to religion, despite my opposition to it as an entity. People can be as free to practice their religious as much as they want, within the law. It's state sponsored protection of religions that I have an issue with.

When things like this happen, of course, I question even more why the hell people allow themselves to subscribe to such ridiculous ideologies without a single thought. At one point don't they think "Wait, God wants me to kill this person just because they don't think the same way I do? Isn't that wrong? No, God said so, so bugger the law, logic and reason, I must do it ..."

Nutek

All religions are not (so far as I know) killing people for drawing cartoons.

Agreed on this, and it wont go well.

kimilseung

Van Gogh was guilty of this, Charlie was not (to the best of my knowledge)

Sally Redux

Line of thinking that an attempt to look at issues has some value; a caricatured vaguely Arabic-type face or Muhammad's arse is in golliwog territory.

Sally Redux

Abortion doctors.

SultanOfSwing

In the 1500s, the Catholics would have, no question. The Islamist extremists now are no different than them. Interestingly, during that time, the Islamic world was one of enlightenment and scientific advancement.

It's the same stuff, just behind the banner of a different book. My point remains, in this day and age that any group of people would kill anyone under the banner of any mythology is just sad beyond words.