Terrorist attacks throughout Europe

the right to free and open expression of their faith

I'm thinking that citizenship test will be a breeze.

Also DJP, rights in general have to be fought for because some people think that the right is wrong.

As a Black man in America who has forebears who were lynched, that never occurred to me.

gyac, that cartoon is racist rather than religiously aimed.

Try maybe taking 5 seconds to think about the people you are responding to and their contexts before typing, it may help your points come across better AND would be a good exercise in empathic thought.

I don't know everyone's contexts! Do you remember that I am a Latino American? I wouldn't expect so. I'm sorry for being condescending there. I'm trying to get at the roots of the objections (aside from "Euler is an asshole", well...). I'm also trying to keep cool through the zings, which as ever serve to show who can be ignored.

Like gyac, you obviously just want to zing me, but it's not like I'm committed to the view that every Charlie Hebdo cartoon is about religious freedom. Why would I be?

xps

If you want to search for some rational grounds upon which to explain this act, then look to systemic injustice against immigrants.

I don't want to search for rational grounds for an indefensible murder. The horror of the act speaks for itself.

Parsing the finer points of Paty's teaching tells us nothing useful about the problem or its remedies.

That depends on which problem we are examining. I'm suggesting that laïcité itself is problematic, not because of Paty's murder or any other act of terror it might incite, but because it seems to be, at least in some of its manifestations, discriminatory and racist.

I apologize for my bad taste in raising these points now. Thanks to Euler's explanations, I understand that laïcité has roots in French history that long predate Islamist terrorism. A thread about terrorist attacks in Europe is probably not the best place for my criticisms, and this isn't the best time to make them.

radical Islamic base: strict separation of sexes, halal food required, etc.

If separation of the sexes and religious traditions regarding the slaughter of animals is radical Islam, then you might need to brush up on your world religions.

Yes, I should be living in fear of my life, every shop in my neighbourhood sells halal food.

I don't know everyone's contexts! Do you remember that I am a Latino American? I wouldn't expect so.

Yes, I do because we became Facebook friends to share Marvel Puzzle Quest rewards.

the right to free and open expression of their faith

Pretty hard to argue with this

Unless you're Catholic obv

But aside from that, my earlier point remains: if the French were able to extricate the obvious racism from the secularist standpoint and its role in society, then there wouldn't be nearly as many issues about the country's Muslim population.

It's also instructive that the countries in which France had the biggest colonial presence tend to be majority Muslim countries. So first, the Western power murders and plunders a country, then tells its inhabitants that their religion is shit? Come the fuck on. What I see happening in France is just a continuation of racial supremacy campaigns and exploitation of resources, namely cheap labor, all swept under the rug of supposed enlightened, progressive values. It's abhorrent.

no one should be murdered in cold blood even if their actions are abhorrent and insensitive

oh “thou shalt not kill” huh? Ok hegemon

Samuel Pety is not an avatar for French colonialism

I’m not sure what part of “this kid should be tried for murder” has been ambiguous in this discussion

no one should be murdered in cold blood even if their actions are abhorrent and insensitive

Tbf he's a stiff now.

xp

I’m being very silly because this story is so horrible and because i hate mainstream French attitudes to race and religion so much

even otherwise very liberal leftie friends of mine there will say things like burkas are offensive and are justified in being banned, that girls shouldn’t wear hearscarves in school, etc, i find it incredibly depressing

no one should be murdered in cold blood even if their actions are abhorrent and insensitive

― trapped out the barndo (crüt), Monday, October 19, 2020 2:20 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I never said that they should, and I also never made Paty a metonym for French colonialism. We're talking about Islam in French society, as well as this specific, recent incident.

(xp) It's all part of a noble experiment, Tracer.

Tracer, as you can imagine, I also am completely undone and depressed by left-leaning people spouting such Islamophobic dreck.

Let me know when the results are in

xpost it’s wild. France really is an outlier with this stuff.

someone in another chat made the point that the question of islamophobia in french society should be considered separately from this issue. like, while it is a real problem, it's not a good explanation for why this incident occurred.

Evidently not as much as you'd think judging by the comments of some non-French itt.

i think that's a good approach. this was a fanatic who was punishing blasphemers. there is a larger context here -- the norm of forced secularism comes down harder on muslims and other religious minorities -- but that is kind of a separate issue. the vast majority of muslims don't react this way to islamophobia. and not all murderers should be seen to have rational motives.

is it possible too much is being read into a single gruesome murder

the right to free and open expression of their faith

in the USA our version of this argument over free expression of religious beliefs is whether Hobby Lobby can prevent their employees from obtaining contraceptives under the ACA, or a bakery that opens its doors to serve the general public can refuse service to a gay couple.

I don't think this discussion is being driven by the attack on the teacher so much as by the discovery that some ILXors don't seem that fussed by (or averse to) Islamophobic comments and attitudes.

yeah these are always thorny issues

Who'd have thought it? In ILX of all places? Tut tut.

I mentioned him on the French borad, but Fethi Benslama (no idea if he was translated into English) has written some insightful stuff on this topic, at the crossroads of politics, history and psychoanalysis, as he puts it. Here's an interview (in French) from 2015 for the curious:

https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2015/11/12/pour-les-desesperes-l-islamisme-radical-est-un-produit-excitant_4808430_3224.html

Might be intelligible when run through Google Translate as well, which has greatly improved in recent years.

sorry folks, i really shouldn't post to these threads when i'm angry, i'll hang back.

I don't see why its values, to which it tries and fails to reach, are White.

I'm glad we're moving off this conflict (are we?) but I did want to come back to this because I think there was a big leap here and I didn't see it addressed?

It's not that equality is a "white" value, it's that the values that lacite reifies are those of the ruling, law-making class, which is...white people without religiously or culturally complicated identities? It sort of refuses to acknowledge that anyone else exists, in order to purport that everything is a flat plane and all people are equal. But nothing is equal to whiteness and the in-group identity! Extremely problematically so. It's like...saying "I don't see color" instead of addressing the harm of racism and white supremacy.

the right to free and open expression of their faith

in the USA our version of this argument over free expression of religious beliefs is whether Hobby Lobby can prevent their employees from obtaining contraceptives under the ACA, or a bakery that opens its doors to serve the general public can refuse service to a gay couple.

ding ding

Beautifully put, in orbit :)

"It's not that equality is a "white" value, it's that the values that lacite reifies are those of the ruling, law-making class, which is...white people without religiously or culturally complicated identities? It sort of refuses to acknowledge that anyone else exists, in order to purport that everything is a flat plane and all people are equal."

Yeah this is really good, seconded.

Thank you, because it seemed so simple that I was afraid I was being stupid by belaboring it.

Haha it is like, basic identity stuff that semiotics students learn when they're teenagers but I've rarely seen it articulated so well. And sometimes I guess ya gotta to get back to the basics when there appears to be such a fundamental divide in agreement.

gyac's big post upthread, which i've just now read, is fantastic too.

Euler I really don't detect a desire to 'zing' you there!

xp absolutely not, it was succinct and otm

nv said it early this morning, basically, just a slightly different facet of examination:

and the extent to which this doesn't create a cultureless space but a space containing only state acceptable cultural signifiers, including but not limited to brand logos for example

― Notes on "Scamp" (Noodle Vague)

It's just a matter of whose culture gets to be "neutral."

One might even say "secularisation cannot eliminate its long Christian tradition"... like Macron approvingly did two years ago, when meeting with a bunch of bishops!

https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/8879/macron-accused-of-tampering-with-la-cit-after-church-state-remarks

Macron letting the cat out of the bag there.

I remember reading at the time something like 4 out of 5 Catholics voted for Macron

Of course, notorious melt Robespierre reined in the dechristianizers, secularism can only go so far.

cult of the supreme being should be the state religion of France clearly

Don't knock it till you've tried it.

It's just a matter of whose culture gets to be "neutral."

That's an essentially accurate observation of an underlying truth and defining a problem is usually a basic step toward solving it. However, no matter which way I turn that truth, I can't see a solution falling out of it that resolves the essential conflict that rises out of fundamentally clashing cultural values. The particular Islamists who encouraged this crime do not want toleration or neutrality, but enough power to create a hegemony for their own religiously-inspired or religiously-justified ideas.

If it is their culture that gets to be 'neutral', then the result would be far harsher laws suppressing other cultural norms than the French laws against the display of religious symbols in public schools. Full and free expression of secular humanism would absolutely not be allowed. I don't see that outcome as preferable, according to my culturally hegemonic 'western' beliefs.

So, when it comes to whose culture is considered 'neutral' in this power struggle (because that is what the execution of the teacher was about), I am going to side with the French Republic over the Islamists who perpetrated this crime every time. At least the Republic allows avenues for the redress of wrongs and may conceivably arrive at a compromise solution amenable to the majority of muslims in France.