If Free Speech Doesn't Work For You...
How about you live where where speech is unfree, like in Muslim countries in the Middle East, instead of emigrating to West to foist your values -- and your firebombs -- on free and civilized people there?
Of course, a rather modern and civilized alternative would be taking a chair at the table of Enlightenment values and learning to defend your religion with something other than brute violence.
Henry Samuel writes for the Independent that the satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, had its offices bombed after it printed this cover, with Mohammed saying "A hundred lashes if you don't die of laughter": 
From Samuel's story:
A back page cartoon shows a bearded prophet with a red nose and the caption: "Yes, Islam is compatible with humour."It is also mockingly renamed "Charia Hébdo" - a pun on Islamic Sharia law.
The fiercely anti-clerical magazine said the move was intended to "celebrate" the victory of Islamist party Ennhada in Tunisia's election, and the inclusion of Sharia in the Libyan constitution.
Charlie Hedbo's editor-in-chief Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb said: "We no longer have a newspaper. All our equipment has been destroyed."
No-one was hurt in the blaze, believed to have started by two Molotov cocktails thrown at the paper's headquarters in Paris's 20th arrondissement overnight. Computers needed to design the paper and digital archives were destroyed.
...The magazine's website was also hacked overnight, with the welcome page replaced by a picture of Mecca full of pilgrims and the words: "No god but Allah".
It has filed a legal complaint against persons unknown, and has taken up temporary quarters at the Libération newspaper's offices.
"We will do everything possible to put a paper next week. There is no question of giving in to Islamists (if behind the fire)," said Charb, who added that the attackers could not even have read the offending magazine.
"Nobody knows what's in it except those who bought it this morning, that's what's most abhorrent and stupid," he said.
More at Hudson New York, by Soeren Kern:
In recent years, Muslim immigrants and their multicultural supporters in Europe have used a combination of lawsuits, verbal and physical harassment and even murder to silence debate about the rise of Islam there....But Charb rejected accusations that he was trying to provoke. "It was a joke where the topic was to imagine a world where Sharia would be applied," Charb said. "But since everyone tells us not to worry about Libya or Tunisia, we wanted to explain what would be a soft version of Sharia, a Sharia applied in a soft manner. We feel we are just doing our job as usual. The only difference is that this week, Mohammed is on the cover and that is quite rare," Charb said.
French Prime Minister François Fillon said "Freedom of expression is an inalienable value of our democracy. No cause can justify a violent action."
French Muslim leaders, while distancing themselves from the attack, said it was justified.
Barbarians. Here, from Kern's piece, is one of those French Muslim leaders:
Dalil Boubakeur, who heads the Great Mosque of Paris, said he resented the "anxious European climate of Islamophobia" and the stigmatizing of Muslims through caricatures.
Again, we have free speech in the west. And you don't have a right to not be offended or have your religion of violence and death mocked for being just that.
That sort of thing doesn't work for you? Drag your backward, barbarian ass back to the Middle East where they'll execute people for having an Islamically unapproved opinion. (In fact, just being Christian will very likely get you dead.)
Time Magazine bungled this.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 3, 2011 11:53 PM
Bungled?
Crid, for the love of everything that is, well, worth loving, you of all people should be able to do a lot better than merely "bungled".
Jeff Guinn at November 3, 2011 11:59 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/11/04/if_free_speech.html#comment-2740144">comment from Crid [CridComment at gmail]Wow, Crid. Allahpundit's comments on the Time piece were right on. This ended his blog item on it:
Amy Alkon
at November 4, 2011 12:17 AM
> do a lot better than merely "bungled".
You're right, of course. I'm sorry... It's just that... Well... The F1 championship has been over for a month already, and there are only two races left... It's a dark time... I'm bloated, and I don't feel pretty... I'll try to pull the A-game together for the weekend. Thanks for the bitchslap.
(Also, in related developments, the FIA has yet to cancel the Bahrain race next year... This is inexcusable, considering the essentially indisputable reports that doctors who'd treated protesters in Manama earlier this year were being tortured by the government. What race driver could trust a host country with emergency care in such a context?)
(And also, why do I care so much about this when it's the United States' support of Bahrain and her naval bases that keeps the nation on the air anyway? I'm taking an almost Kardashian-level view of this, right? I feel bad.)
But the thing that's so gruesome about the Crumely piece is that the boy is absolutely naked... As naked as the day he was born. He doesn't offer new facts or novel logic... Or even mundane logic. He just stalls.
He condemns the Hebdo work as "stupid and totally unnecessary" and "offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody".
If reasoning of this sort were applied to Time magazine, the flesh of Crumely and the next seven generations of his family would be roasting like briquets on the 4th of July. This little weasel makes a living with freedoms earned by people with more courage than he could ever dream of, but he's quite eager to throw them overboard to indulge his own pussy fear of a conflict which will certainly happen now or later: "It's all so unnecessary."
Odds of me buying another issue of Time magazine in my remaining years just jumped from 200:1 (at an airport, say, before a long flight, with a glass of airport wine in my belly and no book to read) to metaphysically incalculable.
Better men than me will say this in the days ahead, and with better language. So, Jeff, I didn't wanna go, y'know, overboard.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 4, 2011 1:09 AM
Crid reads Time? I am disappointed. Time, Newsweek, and the other magazines in this group jumped the shark for me about 20 years ago. I think I may have picked one up by accident in a doctor's office a few years ago. They are worse than awful.
As far as I can tell, the magazines aren't even the point anymore. The magazines let them collect your personal information, and they earn their real money by selling you to marketing companies. Once I finally got off their lists (unsubscribe, move, and let the forwarding run out - that, the amount of junk advertising I get bombarded with dropped immensely.
a_random_guy at November 4, 2011 2:17 AM
First, F*ck that idiot at Time. It's the paper's fault for printing something they knew was offensive?
Second, WTF? The morons who did this obviously don't think they were righteous or justified in doing it, or they wouldn't have done it in the middle of the night. If you're standing up for your "religion" and what you think is right, have the stones to do it in broad daylight, out in front of God/Allah/whoever and everybody. Otherwise, shut the f*** up about being justified.
Finally, AGAIN, if your religion tells you it's all right to harm other people, YOU NEED A NEW ONE.
Peace. And innocence is not dependent on whoever you pray to (or even if you pray). Let's try to remember that and play nice.
DrCos at November 4, 2011 4:32 AM
""anxious European climate of Islamophobia" and the stigmatizing of Muslims through caricatures." Stop burning and blowing shit up. Then the fear of Muslims will go away and the peaceful Muslims will be left the fuck alone. Hamas uses Israeli counter attacks as a recruitment campaign. So either you are too stupid to grasp the tables being turned or you want it. American hate groups have access to far better stuff than a bit of aging soviet war gear. Think black water but with a bigoted rather than money making agenda. Your tacit endorsement of this is driving more people to want to kill you and unfortunately the innocents under your banner.
vlad at November 4, 2011 6:28 AM
As someone observed in a post at the Time article:
This is like a woman being raped because her skirt was too short.
If you have have the rights of free speech and a free press you also have the right to be offended by said speech or writing.
You have also have a right to respond with your own speech or writings. You do not have the right to use the other persons press. You also do not have a right to injure persons or damage property because they offended you.
Jim P. at November 4, 2011 6:44 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/11/04/if_free_speech.html#comment-2740353">comment from a_random_guyCrid reads Time? I am disappointed.
Note the link -- it's to an Allahpundit piece on Hot Air about The Time piece.
Amy Alkon
at November 4, 2011 7:07 AM
Taliban cartoons? Who'd have thought? Based on what I know, they seem like an utterly humorless and unhumorous people.
What next? Taliban porn? Like "Playgoat"? No, wait. "PlayLITTLEboy."
Patrick at November 4, 2011 7:25 AM
What next? Taliban porn? Like "Playgoat"? No, wait. "PlayLITTLEboy."
Great. Now I need brain bleach. Thanks.
I R A Darth Aggie at November 4, 2011 7:43 AM
There's a silver lining here. When Charlie Hebdo reprinted the Mohammed cartoons in 2006, there was quite a bit of clucking from the French establishment about how they should have been more responsible and refrained from upsetting the tender sensibilities of Muslims. This time around, there's none of that. Crumley is an American in Paris, writing for an American newsmagazine. French media outlets haven't published anything like his sniveling plea for surrender. The French establishment has closed ranks behind Charlie Hebdo, and the French Muslims who are saying the attack was justified are on their own.
Five years ago, Muslims only responded with threats of violence, so people could afford to be academic. Now they've gone and done it. Nothing like a bombed-out newspaper building to focus minds on a threat to liberty. If this has helped to halt the slouch towards Eurabia, that's good.
Martin at November 4, 2011 9:35 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/11/04/if_free_speech.html#comment-2740461">comment from MartinI heard from a friend in France that Libération, the lefty French paper that has given Charlie Hebdo office space, put some of their content out as a special supplement. Yay, Lib!
Amy Alkon
at November 4, 2011 9:50 AM
How did they know it was meant to be the prophet and not some random Arab guy?
NicoleK at November 4, 2011 10:05 AM
Charlie Hebdo announced ahead of time that they were planning to put Mo on the cover of their next issue.
Martin at November 4, 2011 10:42 AM
I'm sure that Christians don't like seeing their "holy" figures or "holy" words mocked or criticized either but, by and large, they don't seem as full of rage or violent in their response as Muslims do.
Andres Serrano received death threats for his "Piss Christ" photo, and angry Christians are not always nonviolent -- e.g. Wikipedia says On April 17, 2011, a print of Piss Christ was vandalized 'beyond repair' by Christian protesters while on display during the Je crois aux miracles (I believe in miracles) exhibition at the Collection Lambert, a contemporary art museum in Avignon, France -- but no one actually killed him. Had an artist done "Piss Muhammed" in Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or even France, I've little doubt he would have been murdered by an Islamic fanatic along with, probably, any gallery owner that chose to exhibit it.
Definitely a very powerful streak of intolerance in Islam.
Jim at November 4, 2011 11:59 AM
I wouldn't be surprised to find that Crid reads everything that is published. However, I disagree that Time "bungled" the article. They conveyed exactly the attitude that they wanted to convey.
Cousin Dave at November 4, 2011 4:34 PM
Read a book every three years. I'm 10 pages into this, 1334 to go. See you in '14!
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 4, 2011 7:40 PM
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