The editor-in-chief of French magazine Charlie Hebdo on Sunday slammed media outlets who didn’t show the Muhammed cartoons following the Paris attack.
“This cartoon is not just a little figure, a little Muhammad drawn by Luz. It’s a symbol. It’s the symbol of freedom of speech, of freedom of conscience, of democracy, and secularism,” Editor-In-Chief Gerard Birard said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It is this symbol that these newspapers refuse to publish, this is what they must understand. When they refuse to publish this cartoon, when they blur it out, when they decline to publish it, they blur out democracy, secularism, freedom of conscience, and they insult the citizenship.”
Birard said that he did not blame papers in countries with totalitarian regimes for not publishing the cartoon, but he said the free press should have published Charlie Hebdo’s latest cover.
Birard said that by drawing the controversial cartoons depicting Muhammed, the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo defend religious freedom.
“Every time that we draw a cartoon of Mohammed, every time that we draw a cartoon of a prophet, every time that we draw a cartoon of God, we defend the freedom of conscience. We declare that God must not be a political or public figure,” he said. “Religion should not be a political argument.”
Watch the full interview via NBC:
Or maybe they just don’t agree with what the cartoons say…aren’t they free not to publish some things?
“…Religion should not be a political argument…”
That’s the point of the First Amendment to America’s Constitution.
Under conservatism, however, the First Amendment was written by George Washington to ensure churches could opt-out of birth control insurance benefits.
Sort of saying that you better promote my business or I’ll call you names.
Considering what happened at his business, I’m saying that it is very prudent to be mindful of whom you are writing about or depicting.
Believing in Democracy and poking tigers are two very different things.
Perhaps M. Birard does not realizes the free speech includes the right to be silent and not say something.
So…it’s now censorship if we don’t all promote his ideas. Does that mean that newspapers also have to print anything any Muslim extremist writes, no matter how offensive? I’m pretty sure that’s not how freedom works. You have the right to say or not say whatever you want, and so do the rest of us.
So, is it alright for us to not be Charlie Hedbo now? Because this whole issue was framed wrong. This was never an issue of free speech. What the extremists did wrong was using violence, period. But if they had used legitimate means to shut down Hedbo, like boycotts and non-violent protests, that’s acceptable since that would be an expression of their own free speech. And had they randomly targeted a newspaper and killed them for no reason other than to flex their power, that’d have been equally repulsive with what they did. And the only reason to conflate their violence with the issue of free speech is as an excuse to target Muslims.
Because I’m against violence of any kind, no matter what the reason (besides self defense and that sort of thing). And I also support free speech. But the idea that we should all be insulting Muslims because a few crazy extremists used violence is an absurdity and misses the point entirely. And overall, we don’t need to insult others in order to protect our right to insult others. And in an ideal world, you’d never need to assert your rights because they’ll never be infringed upon.
We’re obviously not there yet, but it bothers me how many people use this false argument as an excuse to be a jerk. You still have the right to own guns, even if you don’t own a gun, and you still have the right to draw bigoted cartoons, even if you’re not a bigot. People who insist that we have to test our freedom as the only way to keep it are just rationalizing bad behavior, as our rights are still our rights, even if we don’t use them. That’s what makes them rights, because we were born with them and they are ours to use or not use, as we see fit.