The freedom to do whatever you want and and disregard how it affects other people is one we have to give up to live in a civilized world.
That's a terrible stance. It's a satirical magazine and pokes fun at numerous topics. If you don't allow publication of something because you're afraid it might offend someone that limits free speech.
This article is for you:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...-hebdo-freedom-of-speech-can-only-be-absolute
If one of my kids intentionally picks a fight, and the other one punches him, then I'm holding them both responsible for the situation that they created together. If that's terrible to you, then I'm ok with being a terrible person in your eyes.
Now, as to the article you posted. "Freedom is indivisible," once said Kennedy and Mandela. With respect to the arts, we should take everything to the extreme end, says Rushdie.
What about taking freedom itself to the extreme end? I wonder if the five of us would all agree with this:
We should all be free to be at whatever level of development we find ourselves, and not have to be ridiculed, ostracized, attacked, and otherwise persecuted because others, looking from their worldview, perceive our worldview to be incorrect.
It's a new concept, developmental rights. But in my opinion, we'll be fortunate if and when it becomes a big deal.
On one hand, Charlie Hebdo repeatedly used racist, nasty and demeaning depictions of Mohammed in their cartoons. Yes, it's largely insensitive and not in the best of taste...
...why anybody would read an editorial like Charlie Hebdo and expect anything else is beyond me. That's the entire point of satire - nothing is sacred, when it comes to satire, and nothing should be. Fundamentalism fears free speech and expression, and that's why the extremists chose to attack Charlie Hebdo. Like the above article about Salman Rushdie - freedom is indivisible, and once you carve it up, it ceases to be freedom. Let's not allow religious extremism from a few to take away more freedoms from the many.
Let's not allow religious extremism from a few to take away from the freedoms of the many. Let's also not allow the predispositions of the many make our world inhospitable to the few.
Your stance is essentially the same as Went's: modern society pursuing freedom only for its own particular set of values. If freedom is indivisible, we need to stop dividing it up rational freedoms and non-rational freedoms. It is possible to have freedom for both modern society and religious extremists, and people of every stage of development, but not if we keep doing the same things we've always done.
I'm not advocating new limits on speech to be imposed from without. I'm advocating a respectful attitude coming from within. And more to the point, I'm advocating both sides stop expecting that the other see things their way.
Because that's what satire comes from, pointing out how wrong another person is. But it is not wrong to be at a level of development in which God or Allah or Jehovah is your beloved Holy Father, and everything that comes with that particular stage of understanding. And if we really accepted that it is okay to think in that way, we'd have no reason to satirize such thinking.
The bombings have the same objective, to punish those who disagree. Which is why I say again, both sides are doing the same thing they've always done, and we're getting farther and farther from a solution.