As previously pointed out, the equivocation by Americans reveals those who can’t seem (or want) to fully grasp American values. The heated exchange of emails and fury at Al Jazeera demonstrates even “peaceful” Muslims want to add the “BUT” at that end of the phrase “I condemn these murders …”
As journalists worldwide reacted with universal revulsion at the massacre of some of their own by Islamic jihadists in Paris, Al Jazeera English editor and executive producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr sent out a staff-wide email.
“Please accept this note in the spirit it is intended — to make our coverage the best it can be,” the London-based Khadr wrote Thursday, in the first of a series of internal emails leaked to National Review Online. “We are Al Jazeera!”
Below was a list of “suggestions” for how anchors and correspondents at the Qatar-based news outlet should cover Wednesday’s slaughter at the Charlie Hebdo office (the full emails can be found below).
Khadr urged his employees to ask if this was “really an attack on ‘free speech,’” discuss whether “I am Charlie” is an “alienating slogan,” caution viewers against “making this a free speech aka ‘European Values’ under attack binary [sic],” and portray the attack as “a clash of extremist fringes.”
“Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile,” Khadr wrote. “Baiting extremists isn’t bravely defiant when your manner of doing so is more significant in offending millions of moderate people as well. And within a climate where violent response—however illegitimate [sic]—is a real risk, taking a goading stand on a principle virtually no one contests is worse than pointless: it’s pointlessly all about you.” […]
Hours later, U.S.-based correspondent Tom Ackerman sent an email quoting a paragraph from a New York Times’ January 7 column by Ross Douthat. The op-ed argued that cartoons like the ones that drove the radical Islamists to murder must be published, “because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed.”
That precipitated an angry backlash from the network’s Qatar-based correspondents, revealing in the process a deep cultural rift at a network once accused of overt anti-Western bias. […]
“What Charlie Hebdo did was not free speech it was an abuse of free speech in my opinion, go back to the cartoons and have a look at them!” Salem later wrote. “It’ snot [sic] about what the drawing said, it was about how they said it. I condemn those heinous killings, but I’M NOT CHARLIE.”
That prompted BBC alum Jacky Rowland — now Al Jazeera English’s senior correspondent in Paris — to email a “polite reminder” to her colleague: “#journalismsinotacrime.”
But her response triggered a furious reaction from another of the network’s Arab correspondents. “First I condemn the brutal killing,” wrote Omar Al Saleh, a “roving reporter” currently on assignment in Yemen. “But I AM NOT CHARLIE.”
“JOURNALISM IS NOT A CRIME [but] INSULTISM IS NOT JOURNALISM,” he raged. “AND NOT DOING JOURNALISM PROPERLY IS A CRIME.”
The full email exchange is available at the link.
As long as “peaceful” Muslims continue to make excuses for their radical co-religionists, an Islamic Reformation is as possible as Ben Affleck performing a convincing Hamlet.
h/t Glenn Reynolds
Darleen, I have learned to empty my hands and mouth before reading you. Your last line would have cost me a new laptop if I had been sipping something.
Muslims (and proggs) need to realize that preventing offense isn’t freedom, that giving offense can go both ways, and that their lives too may depend on free speech someday sooner than they realize.
More than half of the Muslims in the world support some form of Shariah law. What we call “radicals” are actually practicing the religion as it is supposed to be practiced.
Seems even the Catholic League is getting it wrong.
serr8d … Hugh Hewitt ripped Bill Donohue into a bloody mess over that.
If we parse the Hewitt-Donohue exchange, do we end up concluding that Hewitt is charging Donohue with Donohue’s violation of Donohue’s own principle? Or has Hewitt got ahold of something altogether different?
But…but…hate speech:
(I’m seriously hoping the above is satire – I suspect, however, that it probably isn’t…)
Hate speech is a convenient canard for this Miss Cohen. Let her wallow in her quackery, without our giving her any further attention.
All speech is hate speech to someone. Dismissing words as hate speech and therefore deserving of punishment embodies the fascism the left, and much of the so-called right, embraces.
Hate speech: Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom [1786]
“[. . .] Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.”
That is seriously hateful speech, sdferr.
It should likely be banned.
even “peaceful” Muslims want to add the “BUT” at that end of the phrase
My debate coach taught me many years ago that “but” is verbal shorthand for “ignore everything I have said up until now, because I am about to tell you what I REALLY think”, and in the several decades since I have yet to find any meaningful exceptions.
“Oh, that’s a lovely dress, but…”
“You’re kids are wonderfully polite, but…”
“Democrats really do love their country, but…”
“Hate speech” is what people who want to prohibit “hate speech” do.
I thought the reason for hate speech laws was to keep those who would make the speech from becoming violent, not from having violence put upon them?
Or should I just stick with my standard reaction of “fuck hate speech laws”?
“fuck hate speech laws”
yes
#koranishatespeech
works too
It’s more likely the hate speech laws were created in order to fluff the moral vaunting of those who made them, than that they were created with some practical principled objective accomplishment in mind. They are, in other words, merely an advertizement asserting the moral superiority of our law-makers. Or in other words, an advertizement demonstrating their lake of same.
Lawmakers were merely doing the bidding of the speech-haters.
whiny adopted cunt is whiny
we should make her a cheese plate
ok I should make her a cheese plate
i just make better cheese plates than you people
you know it
i know it
Maybe she thinks she’d have been better off if she’d have been aborted?
Foodies fuck up every single thing they touch.
Artisanal pizza?
An artisan should be able to get it ROUNDER than the guy at pizza hut. Or a perfect golden rectangle.
Instead you get this incompetent lumpy thing that looks like a “find the centroid of this random rigis 2D body assuming uniform density ” problem, or a mess made by an uncoordinated child using half-dried play-doh(TM).