The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.
© Thomson Reuters 2020.Macron to Muslims: I hear your anger, but won't accept violence
By Sarah White and Michel Rose PARIS©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
27 Comments
Login to comment
ulysses
There is no excuse for violence.
Jimizo
It’s a very good point. If moderates like Macron doesn’t do something about this, you can end up with the electorate turning to leaders and policies as intolerant, narrow-minded and exclusionary as you find in the Muslim world.
Europe needs to be a place where tolerant people should be allowed in to escape intolerance.
Madverts
Macron needs to do something about radical Islam or we're going to end up with the nutters in power like in the US. And we've all seen the "success" over there.
Toasted Heretic
The cartoons and suchlike are insensitive, sure - but if one's faith is strong, surely it should be able to overcome some unfunny caricatures?
Ironic, that. Have you seen your violent avatar?
Jimizo
You mean remove freedom of speech and expression when it comes to Islam?
It isn’t just cartoons. It can be novels, films, scholarly articles about the authenticity of the Koran, opinions about Mohammed and others which can result in murder and mayhem. Theo Van Gogh was butchered for a film, Salman Rushdie escaped execution but a translator of his novel didn’t, Ayaan Hirsi Ali lived in bazooka-proof accommodation for her apostasy and criticism of the faith in the Netherlands etc.
Just say nice things about this particular faith which does seem to result in a lot of the things liberal people like myself are against?
Toasted Heretic
That's odd. It was still there, the last time I went home. Has anyone checked behind the sofa?
I agree, the ideology that Europeans don't integrate is a non-starter. But maybe your Muslim friends/colleagues/neighbors disagree?
Strangerland
It's a good thing that people draw the pictures of mohammad, as these drawings are absolutely imperative to maintaining all life on this planet, for if someone decided not to draw one of these images, a portal would open up to hell, demons would spill out, and literally kill all life on this planet, including the Muslims.
So of course we MUST draw these pictures, and we MUST keep on offending Muslims. The alternative is obliteration of humanity.
Zaphod
P. Smith
Read again. The quote was about "ideology" and not "percentage of people". The majority of CCP, Boshevik, or Nazi party members were not radical Gulag guards either but rather only followers. The "majority" excuse does not hold.
Zaphod
P. Smith
Poverty? Like in Saudi-Arabia, home of Osama Bin Ladin, most of the 9-11 pilots, and a large part of ISIS?
Bjorn Tomention
So they speak of tolerance but have none, they speak of inclusion but they offer none, they offer violence and demand acceptance !
Europe is long gone and everyone knows it, let it be an example to the rest of the world that this ideology does not integrate and does not play well with others.
Zaphod
Madverts
Err, what? Seems to me the nutters are in power in France, Germany, and Sweden, and not in the US.
Zaphod
zichi
.,,,alas this is the false equivalency that is so typical in the West. Among the 3 belief systems you mention, there is only one that has the concept of Jihad and of Dar-al-Salam (i.e. the final goal of submitting the whole world under Sharia). The two others have accepted the separation of religion and state.
venze
Nobody can 'hear' others' anger adequately or appropriately. They need to feel (apart from seeing the raging behavior) the burning anger of those in fury.
Of course, Macron does not want violence to damage France. Nonetheless, for those whose voices are never heard, they do not know what else to do.
Nobody wants to condone irrational recklessness, let alone wild killing of innocent. There must be a better way out. Any idea?
Zaphod
P. Smith
There are ideologies that can, and there are ideologies that can not. That is fact.
As I pointed out, it is an excuse. Because the majority members of any ideology are passive; it is always the activist believers we have to worry about. So excusing a virulent ideology by saying they are not the majority is a cop-out.
Zaphod
Jimizo
Actually, the cartoons themselves are really "opinions". There are no photographs of Mohammed, it is only the believers that somehow recognize him in some illustrations. So if I draw a stick figure and call it Jesus, no problem. If I change title and call it Mohammed, I get threats of beheading. For the same stick figure.
So the cartoon issue are really about speech.
Zaphod
P. Smith
What is "intervention" supposed to mean? Ideologies are belief systems and determine human behaviour.
The same applies to Communism and Nazism. Do you make the same argument for those?
Goodlucktoyou
This is from a guy who launched cruise missiles on civilian Syrians based on Western govt-funded support for Terrorist Al Nusra and Al-Quida under the guise of fake White Helmet justification.
Ego Sum Lux Mundi
Macron and his failed nation state civic nationalism has nothing to fight this with, nothing. Liberalism is hoist by its own petard.