Freedom of expression is a European value. We shouldn’t undermine it ourselves.
The totalitarian force of Islamic State is not about religion but about the quashing of personal liberty and the individual. It is because of this that it is directly at odds with contemporary European civilisation, which is built on respect for individual autonomy and holds freedom of expression as perhaps its most cherished value.
The road to where we are now in Europe has been thousands of years long and is soaked in blood, but its ultimate course and destination have proved inexorable. Even the Iron Curtain of Soviet Communism on European soil couldn’t withstand it longer than 45 years.
That is why it is so distressing, now that we have reached this point, to find in our midst people who still think in terms of controlling the media, harassing journalists, attacking and undermining the free press. These are Europeans raised in European culture, and still they think this way.
It takes a violent attack on a satirical newspaper in Paris, leaving 10 employees and two policemen dead, by those whose thinking and aims are completely alien to those of contemporary Europe, to remind us that we should not be doing the work of totalitarian groups and fulfilling their aims.
Every time a European calls for a journalist to be silenced – I could name names even in Malta but there is no need to be specific – or for more controls on the media to stop us writing about and reporting on this or that, he or she is doing Islamic State’s job. Because this is not about religion. This is about suppressing others.
It is no coincidence that the Parisian satirical paper Charlie Hebdo was the target now. Charlie Hebdo’s last tweet was a sarky remark about the leader of Islamic State. Satire is that part of free expression most alien to totalitarian culture and to people who think in a totalitarian manner.
It is precisely the reason why so many people in Malta cannot come to terms with this website – and also the reason why so many more love it. The divide is purely cultural, not political, not socio-economic and not education-based. Satire separates the European from the non-European. I use ‘European’, of course, as a cypher for a set of values: you could well be Australian or Canadian, though even there, arguably, it’s a European export.
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http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2015-01-07/world-news/Deadly-attack-on-office-of-French-magazine-Charlie-Hebdo-6736128309
Jesus Christ, just read that top comment, unbelievable.
Thank you for giving the prominence it deserves. These barbarians were not avenging any military intervention by the French etc. Their sole motive of the attack was due to the newspaper’s cartoons depicting Muhammad.
It is beyond comprehension in our society and please let us stop being the “Peppi Azzopardis”of the situation saying that Islam is a normal religious cult… One of the cartoonists killed in the name of Muhammad today had said “A cartoon never killed anyone…”, however, a religion that directly or indirectly influences two people to end the lives of 11+ unarmed people in cold blood definitely does!
I AM CHARLIE HEBDO.
[Daphne – This is not about Islam. This is about terrorism, intolerance and separation of church and state. Islam is no more intolerant and dangerous than Roman Catholicism.]
This has as much to do with Islam as the IRA has to with Catholicism or the Ku Klux Klan with Christianity.
As far as I know, the IRA have never murdered cartoonists for lampooning the pope or the Virgin Mary. And they were not seeking to impose an inquisition- style Catholic state. In fact, its political arm Sinn Fein had much less in common with the Vatican on social issues than its unionist rivals. So your attempt to absolve the cult of a violent medieval warlord has failed.
[Daphne – It is your comparison which is false, I’m afraid. The men who committed murder at the Charlie Hebdo offices are not seeking to build an Islamic caliphate in France. They know they can’t do that (France, of all places…). It was a straightforward act of vengeful terrorism, just like the IRA and all those other European terrorist groups which we had to endure.]
Daphne, if you think that France, or indeed Europe, can never become an Islamic state, remember that there was a pre-Islamic Iran, a pre-Islamic Indonesia, a pre-Islamic Malaysia.
[Daphne – Oh please. Compare like with like. Islam is not the flu.]
Who was comparing Islam with the flu? None of those changes happened overnight but travel, communication, etc., which we thought would bring us all together seem to be ripping us further apart where there is an ever growing group of people who think they are the only sons and daughters of a god. And to show you that I am not biased this is the same set up as the Spanish Conquest of South America.
All the world is saying that this is about Islam. Charlie Hebdo is not the only magazine who criticized the ISIS leader, yet it is the only one who made fool of the prophet. Charlie Hebdo is an uninfluential magazine with limited circulation, unlikely to politically annoy the leader of ISIS.
They want the world to think it is about islam.
Charlie Hebdo is not the first. You have forgotten, are ignoring, or never knew about Jyllands Posten.
I beg to differ on this. It seems that whenever one of these events happen, we try to find an excuse that this is not about religion. It is very much about religion; this commando was merely executing a religious fatwa against Charlie Hebdo and basically they were ‘punishing’ the cartoonists for, in their twisted religious guidance, the sin of blasphemy.
The same magazine had a front cover showing depicting Mary with her legs spread wide open with a baby Jesus coming out of her vagina but as far as I know the cowards who killed 12 people in cold blood came out shouting “Allah w Akbhar” and not “Viva r-Redentur”.
[Daphne – You miss the point. Religion is the way a totalitarian mindset manifests itself. It is not the cause of that mindset. People with a totalitarian outlook on life will align themselves to whatever organisation best suits their twisted ideals. In the 1970s, the Europeans who are today going to the Middle East to join Islamic State were joining the Brigate Rosse, the Bader Meinhof or the IRA. People of my great age have a much longer view. We lived through the horrors of European terrorism, with train stations, bandstands, convention centres blown up and people kidnapped by the dozen and parts of their bodies lopped off and sent to their families. Do you know what first made me aware of the news and news photography? That black and white photograph of the corpse of murdered Italian premier Aldo Moro, still lying curled up in the open boot of the car in which it found, on a Rome side street. I was 13 and on holiday in London and that picture was plastered over every news-stand. People of my parents’ generation have a longer view still: they knew that the Nazis were not Muslims from the Middle East. Roman Catholicism has its own offshoot groups of really totalitarian people – there was a craze in Malta some years ago for these really extreme prayer groups. Some pseudo-Christian sects set up their own communities so that they can deploy totalitarian standards of control and behaviour in a closed environment. In none of these cases is religion the main attraction or even the main event. It is the desire to control and impose, to be controlled and imposed on, which pulls them in.]
I categorically and emphatically do not hate Islam, but I do fear it… The possibility of Islamization of parts of Europe is not an unrealistic path that history could take.
I fear that non-Muslims including my children could lose hard-earned freedoms, from the simple joys of eating a ham and cheese sandwich in public to the more profound freedoms such as freedom of speech, which has been so viciously and cowardly attacked this morning in the heart of Paris.
[Daphne – Well, that would be a situation with which all older Europeans are intimately familiar. We forget that. As recently as 1990 or 1991 (I was already working) the government health department’s warning campaigns on HIV were nothing of the sort because they couldn’t or wouldn’t mention condoms. Instead they featured two candles flickering in the breeze or similar – really helpful. You live in a country which only legislated for divorce two years ago, where those who applied for a church declaration of nullity of marriage could prevent their spouse from filing for a civil declaration of nullity in the courts. So what are you on about. As for we married women, it wasn’t religion which deprived us of our rights and our autonomy right until 1993; it was secular thinking which informed the law. Again, this is a case of people being entirely comfortable with familiar abuse to the point where they don’t even see it for what it is, while being terribly fearful of some imagined future abuse.]
Sometimes I think that this rush that everyone has to distance Islam from these events is simply a manifestation of Stockholm Syndrome on a massive scale as most of us, at least subconsciously, fear the scenario depicted in Michel Houellebecq’s book ‘Soumission’.
Apparently, as of now there are already 50 Sharia courts operating in Britain. Do you think this is normal such as some of the judgements they pass e.g. where daughters are denied equal inheritance, to name a mild one?
[Daphne – There are no sharia courts operating in Britain because ‘freedom of choice in justice’ is not a right – for obvious reasons – and Britain does not allow it. Any such courts operate outside the justice system and the law and are in conflict with them, rather than forming part of them.]
I’m sorry Daphne, but if you’re putting the admittedly stifling influence of the Church in Malta and the singularity of barbarity that happened today in Paris at the same level, I think we can never agree. Today’s event’s will change the course of history; how many cartoonists do you think will continue on these heroes’ steps? They always knew they were at risk e.g. after their office was fire-bombed, but no one expected this scale of cold-blooded assassination in the name of Allah.
[Daphne – I think you will find that the murders reinforce resolve and not dissipate it. This is France you are talking about, not Malta where people don’t even mock Labour politicians because they’re scared of the consequences.]
I hope you’re right … time will tell. I envy their courage and wish I was half the man (or woman) they were. They were and hopefully will remain beacons of unbridled freedom, the total opposite of what Radical Islam represents. And by the way, there are in fact over 80 Sharia councils in the UK now, the fact that they operate at the edge of the law is a moot point seeing they have a very direct, and seldom beneficial effect on the lives of many people, mainly women.
Funny you state the Nazis were not Muslim. Although that is a true statement technically, If you did some research you may be surprised how ironic it is. Start with the memoirs of Albert Speer (Inside the Third Reich). Or use a search engine. But then again you are just toeing the PC line. And please, grow up, don’t embroil Christianity in what’s happening right now- no one is buying into it.
The hell it is. This is about Islam and dont go high and mighty on this one as you are way off the mark.
When did you last hear of a Jew, Red Brigade, Anarchist, IRA killing journalists in this manner?
and this is not coming from me but Wafa Sultan herself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafa_Sultan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOoy2D3PACU
[Daphne – I lived through the era of extreme European terrorism, John, and you clearly did not. I can only laugh at your uninformed remark about the Brigate Rosse and the IRA. They killed far more than journalists. They killed children. They were Europeans, from Roman Catholic homes. Wafa Sultan speaking about Islam sounds little different to European women (including Maltese women) speaking about Roman Catholicism a couple of generations ago. I empathise with her. The problem is not the religion, but the failure to understand separation between church and state and to make that separation happen. A totalitarian Roman Catholic state was no more pleasant to live in than a totalitarian Islamic state, and in both, it was the women who suffered most.]
The IRA etc did not quote the Bible to justify their crimes.
Islamists slay infidels even on sight because the Holy Koran imposes jihad on all healthy adult males and “going for the neck” of infidels pleading “Allah u Akbar”.
The Loyalists did though. Remember Iain Paisley’s protest at the European Parliament?
Then you have not read my words carefully. I have in fact lived through those years and I know them well. Brigate Rosse, IRA to name two never killed journalists nor did they use intimidation to blind us so to speak.
[Daphne – You cannot be serious. They never killed journalists (not for want of trying). They only killed one prime minister (Aldo Moro) and tried but failed to kill another (Margaret Thatcher in the Brighton Hotel bombing). They killed Lord Mountbatten and his young grandson. They killed hundreds of civilians including children. But that’s all right because they didn’t kill journalists: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jun/11/suzanne-breen-real-ira-threat ]
To be more precise there is the case of Guerin but that was purely a criminal drug dealing arm of the IRA that tried to cover up their criminal network and activity. It was not politically motivated.
I suggest you watch Wafa Sultan’s interview. Clearly I cannot put it anyway better than she does since the lady has lived through it all and more.
The Muslim religion is quite unique distinct from any other religion in which it quite expressly advocates the use of violence against any other form of thinking. Not just religious thought but any thought that diverges from what is in the Koran.
You are being very naive to underestimate the will that is suppressed when outnumbered until they actually have the numbers to impose that will on others. While outnumbered the violence is disguised and being figurative speech but once they build their confidence those words start taking on their true meaning.
Look at Turkey for a glimpse of what’s slowly happening now that Ataturk’s legacy is being slowly eroded. I give twenty more years and Turkey will become another Iran.
[Daphne – ‘They’, ‘them’ – really unbelievable. Changes to totalitarianism and oppression BY DEFINITION don’t take place by popular consent. It is always one small group corralling the rest.]
How and where does Islam advocate violence? You may have read a text literally or relied on a secondary or tertiary source rather than referring to the original writing.
Literal interpretation can mess up meaning. “How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock” (Psalm 137:9) is not biblical advocacy for infanticide. It is an historical record of what a psalmist said.
Yet we do have infanticide in the Bible and one can find many a verse on violent conduct in the Qur’an. There are pages on the internet on these verses for those who don’t have a Bible or a Qur’an.
Secondly you say that one should not take the word in its literal form; can that be explained and moreover be conveyed successfully to the inner of the most concentric circles of any religion?
‘Brigate Rosse, IRA to name two never killed journalists’
Le Brigate Rosse uccidono il giornalista del Corriere della Sera Walter Tobagi.
http://archiviofoto.unita.it/index.php?f2=recordid&cod=728&codset=CRO&pagina=23
Then there was Carlo Casalegno, director of La Stampa (November 16, 1977).
Mino Pecorelli was another journalist probably killed by the Brigate Rosse. A Roma, viene ucciso da ignoti il giornalista Mino Pecorelli, creatore e direttore della rivista «OP-Osservatore Politico». (March 20, 1979)
Other suspect cases are:-
A Palermo, è ucciso Mario Francese, cronista del «Giornale di Sicilia». (January 26, 1979)
A Bologna, un gruppo di estremisti di sinistra incendia la sede dell’Associazione stampa Emilia Romagna; muore per le esalazioni, nell’appartamento sovrastante, Graziella Fava. (March 13, 1979)
Perhaps I have not read your words carefully either, John, but then you need to research properly before putting pen to paper irrespective of whether lived through those years or not.
Daphne please I expected more of you. You did not live through any terrorism (except that dispensed by Labour of course) … you experienced the Brigate Rosse through RAI 1, RAI 2, RAI 3, just like the rest of us, and through what you have read which may or may not be based on the truth about the “anni di piombo” as I think a many vital historical details about that period will remain hidden for a few more years.
[Daphne – No, anybody who lived in Europe in those years lived in a society shaped by terrorism and its attendant risks. How quickly you have forgotten the pervasive fear. The only reason Carla Bruni grew up in France is because her father – a leading Italian industrialist – decided to leave Italy where people like him and their children were being kidnapped left, right and centre. I did not live in a communist country, either, but European communism shaped me all the same. It was a fact of life until I was 24 – I took it for granted that millions of Europeans were locked behind a border against their will and shot if they tried to escape. Our mindset is inexplicable to those a generation younger who did not grow up in the Cold War. You suffer from that peculiarly Maltese characteristic of watching major events and developments as though they are fictional films just because they are viewed through the medium of television, that they have nothing to do with you and do not shape your experience. I was at a work meeting when the first plane hit the World Trade Centre in 2001: the person conducting the meeting stopped briefly so that we could look at the television, then he muttered some platitude and expected everyone to get back to discussing what had been rendered inane. I remember thinking ‘it’s like a film to him’.]
You disappoint me again. It is clear that you see yourself as speaking from a position of perceived superiority.
I quote; “You suffer from that peculiarly Maltese characteristic of watching major events and developments as though they are fictional films just because they are viewed through the medium of television, that they have nothing to do with you and do not shape your experience.”
[Daphne – No. You forget that I moderate every last comment on this blog and do not have the luxury of reading only those which pique my interest, as you do. I am always, because of my work, monitoring what people say and how they think and reason. Clear patterns emerge when you are dealing with that tidal wave of communication. And yes, there is a very definite tendency among Maltese people to consider themselves spectators rather than participants and to ‘watch’ events and developments from that standpoint. At times, the level of disengagement from reality is extreme: very serious events observed on television briefly and discussed equally briefly as though they are info-tainment, fiction or game shows. This is the sort of attitude generally associated with the disenfranchised or those who have habitually felt powerless, so there are historical/cultural reasons for it. You can see it best during election campaigns, when people discuss serious matters and policy proposals as though it is a sport which doesn’t affect their lives.]
The first I heard of Sept 11 was on my car radio while driving in Sliema, just I was rounding the bend near Peppino’s. I dropped what I was about to do and headed home to watch CNN as it was immediately evident that this was something huge. I arrived just in time to see the first tower collapse live.
Of course I know that everything in the world is connected, financially, politically, etc. A few words from Draghi put down to Euro to pre-2006 levels in a matter of hours. What about the possible ramifications of oil price below 50 USD / barrel?
And I’m not speaking about how much Zeppi pays at the fuel pump… it is how the Middle East equilibrium is about to be rattled once again where many governments in the area have built their budgets around much higher oil prices?
So please, stop thinking you are the only person with grey matter on this island. I thank you for the service you provide, but please stop thinking your are some savant holding the key to all knowledge because clearly you do not, and nor do I.
[Daphne – It is quite obvious to any sensible person that I don’t think that way at all. One factor of intelligence is the awareness of how little we know. However, when men in general and a certain sort of spiteful woman gets upset at me for any number of reasons, that is the first thing they say in retaliation, so I know that it has been topmost in their minds all along. It has been happening since I was a teenager, and I am acutely aware that it is directly linked to the fact that I am a woman/was a girl, in a culture where women were deliberately trained NOT to have opinions.
So an informed woman (the reaction was much worse when I was a girl) with views that she expresses in whole sentences and a proper vocabulary automatically becomes ‘who does she think she is/does she think she knows it all’. Nobody ever tells a man or boy that – had you noticed? But I’m accustomed to it, and I actually enjoy studying it. It’s always interesting to see at which point in an argument the other person is going to tell me that, or if he does at all. Good thing I enjoy studying human behaviour because I have to deal with so much of it.
And of course, there’s that other business with the problems Maltese men have debating anything with a woman. They always have to win, as though it’s some kind of battle. It’s not a battle. You don’t have to win it. ]
What I meant say in the previous post, saying that you have “lived” through those BR events is an insult to anyone who lost loved ones or suffered direct effects. Of course we have all been affected by them in some way or another but let’s keep some perspective.
Tobaggi is still a mystery maybe your Italian is not so good but in summary nobody is certain exactly why he was murdered … that kind of defeats purpose if it were a terrorist attack.
Is the muslim fundamentally a violent religion? Here’s a good study about that
http://www.meforum.org/1003/the-religious-foundations-of-suicide-bombings
You in general and plural are missing mine and many of those who like me view these attacks as an attack not just at silencing voices but also a way of life. Our financial and democratic systems, freedom of speech, gender equality. Even defining these as terrorist attacks is wrong since there is no real political aim other than vindicating a perceived insult to a prophet whose not even around to condone or condemn these acts.
How can you even start to compare these idiocies with terrorists fighting for liberation or a political ideal no matter how wrong that may still be?
You are so way off the mark its hilarious. This religion you are defending the way it is constructed advocates that no other law can or may supersede it. So much so that it has its own tranche of punishments covering all aspects of society.
We ditched that King Georges head and even before that it was never an absolutist church over King or Queen
I beg to differ. Islam is intolerant. How forceful are the Islamic leaders in voicing their condemnation of such acts. They may issue a soft statement but are never really strong and persistent in attempting to stop these barbaric actions. They only preach about tolerance where it suits them e.g. in Malta because they want others to be tolerant towards them. They do not practice tolerant behaviour in countries where they have ‘the upper hand.’
[Daphne – The problem is not that Islam is intolerant (as a religion, it is no more intolerant than Roman Catholicism) but that it has no central hierarchy that provides a point of reference and source of control and identification of the ‘real’ religion, as Roman Catholicism does. When people want a point of reference for the Roman Catholic Church, they look at what the Vatican is saying, and not what Angelik Caruana is saying at Borg in-Nadur, or what the Irish Republican Army said and did in the 1970s and 1980s. If there were no Vatican, any bunch of criminals or loonies could set about causing mayhem and murdering in the name of Roman Catholicism and those who knew nothing about the religion would see them as representatives of RC and talk as you are doing now of Islam. I suppose you have not noticed how true Muslims are among those most upset by these terrible acts.]
True. The lack of one centralised system such as that in the Catholic Church is one of the reasons Muslims and Protestants tend to radicalise more than Catholics do.
That’s true. I haven’t noticed how true Muslims are most upset and the comparison with the evil among RCs doesn’t make these barbaric acts any less despicable or inexcusable.
We can say that all religions are intolerant but humanity hasn’t witnessed such widespread inhuman acts against men, women and children as those committed by ISIS in recent years.
[Daphne – Then you know nothing about Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot or the current situation in North Korea. I suggest you get a proper sense of perspective. A certain kind of man with the drive to dominate and savage others will always force his way to the top and do just that, using whatever ‘movement’ he can to do so. Hitler too used religion, but it wasn’t about religion, was it.]
Even so called moderate Muslims are most intolerant towards other religions or non believers and what they refer to as infidels. The lack of central control may partly explain the difficulty in reigning in such acts but does it make things any less unacceptable?
[Daphne – That’s not at all true. By the same token, some of the most fearfully intolerant and ignorant people I know are Maltese members of RC prayer groups (the extremist kind). I do not extrapolate from this to say that Roman Catholics are intolerant and ignorant.]
Muslims are being murdered too by these extremists and yet somehow they aren’t being counted.
A logical mind is needed to comprehend the evils being committed. Now let’s wonder where all this will lead our modern world. The extreme right benefits hugely with these atrocities.
I wonder where the spider lies that spins this evil web.
I wouldn’t want to live in an Islamic country. Would you?
[Daphne – A silly question. Not even the people who live there want to live like that. But you can’t see this because you refuse to try and understand that societies structured in that manner are not about religion but about the innate desire of one man or one group of men to dominate others, using religion or another excuse to do so.]
@Allo Allo
See My name is Ahmed: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10101623244915972&set=a.749460682622.2374114.122585&type=1
It is indeed about Islam, sadly.
It isn’t, really. It’s about people who cannot take a joke. We know all about them here.
True. Nicholas Kristof: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/opinion/nicholas-kristof-lessons-from-the-charlie-hebdo-shooting-in-paris.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
You are being naive, Daphne. It is about Islam. Comparisons to other religions are fallacious, because all religions are bunk anyway, but some are downright dangerous, and Islam is one of them.
[Daphne – The last thing I am is naive, especially about matters such as this. The fact you will not face is the savage human (for which read male) drive to power and dominance, for which any readily available vehicle will suffice, failing which a new one will be created.]
Muslims WANT to live and be ruled by their religion, rather than any secular authority. That is the main issue. Most of them do NOT want our freedoms but actively choose to renounce them. I do not recall which country it was, but not all that long ago citizens one of these Muslim shitholes actually voted to give up their right to vote. In effect. Sorry I can’t be more specific, no time to look this up to refresh my memory.
Islam is the most effective of all religions in indoctrination, in self propagation, and in stifling dissent by all means including violence. Apostasy – renouncing religion, a personal belief of gobbledegook, ultimately – is punishable by death. Fact.
Read “God Is Not Great” and get any wooly liberal guilt out of your system once and for all. It’s relieving.
[Daphne – You reason like a very stupid person, and I am embarrassed for you. ‘Muslims’ this and ‘Muslims’ that. You are talking about 23% of the world’s population. How can you, one man in Malta, possibly know what 1.6 billion unique individuals want, how they think and what they do? As a woman, I am especially exasperated by your argument because it is absolutely no different to the one used all over Europe in the last century to argue against letting women vote. We wouldn’t know what to do with it. We wouldn’t bear the responsibility. We don’t want the responsibility. We would rather let the men decide for us.
God Is Not Great is not about Islam in particular but about religion in general.]
I fear Zuckerberg more than Islam. He’s got 1.5 billion of us under his thumb.
Again, you are just being naive, and obviously, GING is about all religions, yes.
And yes, if someone follows Islam the way it “should” be followed, then what you get is the above.
I do not expect all Muslims of course to follow their religion to the letter, there are hypocritical Muslims just as there are hypocritical church going Christian individuals who don’t live their religion.
However – I and needless to say many others have a lot of interaction with Muslims across all strata of society, getting to know some of them rather well, and make no mistake the vast majority are defined by their religion. When living in European cities like London most of them certainly prefer to keep their thoughts to themselves, or more accurately between themselves, but gain their confidence and what they will may tell you, unwittingly revealing their ideologies, may or should shock you.
To suggest that civilisation – wealth, primarily – may eradicate this mindset is, again, naive. I can not list “education” with wealth, and this is no oversight. When you are “educating” people to be “good” Muslims simply means ingraining this rotten mindset. Plenty of wealthy Muslim states with a fully functional educational system that are just as religiously intolerant, and abusive of women, as the poorest and most dysfunctional.
Fool yourself if you will, but I will bet my frilly knickers that those responsible for today’s atrocity are “civilised” French citizens, not living an uncomfortable life, and having been “educated” in France.
Like it or not.
I’m sorry, honest.
@ HP Baxxter
Fear Zuckerberg? Why?
He’s in it for the money. Haven’t you noticed?
Because it is through Facebook and other social networks that the US is building a dossier of anyone worldwide, FP.
The idiots on Facebook are handing them all the information they require practically for free.
http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/
@HP
Yes. He’s running a business. Haven’t you noticed?
1.5 billion under his thumb? Whatever the number, if any feel “under his thumb”, then they can only be described as masochists.
Subscription is voluntary. Haven’t you noticed?
@bob-a-job
Agreed. Again, it’s voluntary.
There should be enough collective power between those complaining about Zuckerberg’s domination of social media to take him on and bring him down. But it doesn’t happen. Why? Because there’s no money in the exercise. And everyone wants everyone else to do it for them. Free of charge.
You seem to subscribe to the belief in benevolent omnipotents.
I fear Zuckerberg because he is too powerful, just like I fear those two fellows at Google, whoever is directing Apple, the entire Saudi regime, that playboy prince who got the Maltese gong, the Pope and the Ayatollah. Hell, I even fear Joseph Muscat and Herman Grech.
I subscribe to no such belief. Your math is getting rusty.
My point is that Zuckerberg’s 1.5 billion can become a big fat zero any day in a matter of hours just with 1.5 billion mouse clicks.
And putting all those from Zuckerberg to Grech in one bag is, again, bad math.
Islam has a far bigger problem with intolerance, terrorism and separation of church and state since its figurehead was a political and military leader with blood on his hands, among other unpleasant traits.
Islam has a far, far greater problem with terrorism, intolerance and separation of church and state since its figurehead was a political and military leader with lots of blood on his hands.
With regards to your reply to my other comment, you have not addressed the fact that the IRA has never slaughtered anyone for lampooning the pope or the Virgin Mary.
Or the fact that Sinn Fein have much less in common with the Vatican (or yourself for that matter) on social issues (e.g. gay rights, etc etc) than their unionist rivals.
It is also disingenuous to deny that these terrorists have nothing to do with those who seek to establish a global caliphate. Just because they do not stand a chance in France does not mean that they will not strike at it – it is indeed their prime target since its press is not as appeasing to Islam as the British press (which has never published any cartoons of Mo).
I agree with you, Daphne. This is not about Islam. The overwhelming majority of Muslims voiced their anger at what happened.
This is about terrorism. Agree. Both Al Qaeda and ISIS have to recruit members. The best strategy is to accentuate differences in society, ensuring that there is a ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality. Such a mentality can easily become mainstream with far right political parties (e.g. Le Pen) and may result in a disillusionment among Muslims in France and elsewhere, making the ground ripe for terrorist recruitment.
This strategy is not new. For example, Karl Popper in ‘The Poverty of Historicism’ recounts how it was employed by the Communists in Vienna around 1919/20.
Mrs Daphne Caruana Galizia,
Are you serious when you write that the Islam of today is no more intolerant than the Catholicism of today?
Do you want to be taken seriously when you compare the Christendom of many centuries ago with the Islam we are experiencing today?
Do you see no difference between the separation of Church from State as practiced in Christendom and the identification of Mosque with Islamic states today?
Please excuse me from reading you any more if that is so.
[Daphne – It is not religions which are intolerant, but people. A religion cannot be intolerant. Any forms of intolerance are manifestations of human will.]
Islam is an intolerant religion per se because the Holy Kuran is intolerant of all “infidels” and preaches a jihad binding on all its devotees if healthy adult males. Muslim terrorists actually put into practice what the Kuran teaches. I quoted chapter and verse.
Christianity officially preaches love of neighbour, even an enemy. Those who do not follow that doctrine are personally intolerant and deviating from official Christian doctrine.
Please be fair. Do not put all the religions as practiced today in the same basket. They do not all fit there.
Well said and yet here in Malta we take things for granted.
https://archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares-Episode1BabyItsColdOutside
We think we have freedom of speech in Malta. We don’t, not until libel is decriminalised.
And have we got them in Attard or what.
Even Gorg Vella can’t take it anymore.
The PM meantime, must calculate his losses to Grech Mintoff and the ‘businessmen’ planning to pay their respects to the Caliphate in Tripoli.
I suppose the fact Vella was the one who had it for Mintoff and his ‘Mediterranean’ vision in 1996, puts him in one of Labour’s dark corners.
And how does the press, except Maltarightnow and The Independent of course, expect to keep us from asking the questions to be made?
What in the name of liberty, is going on in that ’embassy’?
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2015-01-06/local-news/Malta-government-sticks-to-international-position-Tobruk-is-the-legitimate-representative-of-Libya-6736128293
Right, so why do we have the embassy in Attard representing Tripoli, threatening not to recognise visas, the implication being another Martin Galea, and expecting Malta’s neutrality, at best?
Who is Grech Mintoff?
Mintoff’s sister is (was) married to Grech. Presumably this is her son.
Jana’s cousin. How cosy.
Can’t agree more. An excellent piece, with connotations for Malta.
“Every time a European calls for a journalist to be silenced … he or she is doing Islamic State’s job.”
Well done!
Well said, Daphne. Thank you for defending freedom of expression on Maltese soil, with your name.
So true and unfortunately we seem to be slipping in that direction!
“Je prefere mourir debout que vivre a genoux”.
– Stephane Charbonnier, cartoonist and editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo as quoted by Le Monde.
Daphne,
Will tending to agree with the gist and the bulk of your argument, I can’t quite agree with you when you state that the cultural divide you mention is not influenced by one’s socio-economic or educational background. Yes, there are exceptions for sure, but a correlation between the two surely exists. One needs to have a certain background of values, thought process and general savoir to appreciate satire; one of those qualities alone won’t suffice.
[Daphne – Perhaps, but then some on the most intolerant, insufferable and ignorant people I know are from my socio-economic background. So I suppose, yes, education is a factor but not education in the generally-understood manner, but reading and cultural formation of a particular kind.]
Instruction (which is what you get with our university degrees) is not education. It always goes back to being given the tools that allow critical thinking. THAT is education
A general lack of reading ( variation is important to understand the different gist that can end up making a thinking mind whole and complete) .
For our world to move ahead and prosper in all ways and means we must have leaders that love their people and land more than their ideals and themselves .
No doubt this will give a boost to Marine Le Pen, which sucks.
Of course there are those people who want all Muslims in France to be deported or cast out after this attack. But I wonder, would they say the same if it were Christians who did this after someone made fun of Jesus or something? How about a different ideology or political party?
Nobody in Malta says that ALL PL supporters should be deported or imprisoned after the attack on the Times building those years ago, just the ones who committed the arson, and I agree, but then they would say that ALL Muslims are evil barbarians and that this attack in Paris happened because they are so and want to attack ‘our Christian values’.
But when you mention those Maltese pimps and whatnot in the UK many years ago, they would say that not all Maltese are like that. True, but then again not all Muslims are like that (actually around 1% are like that).There are, I believe, 1 billion Muslims in the world, so these terrorists are not a representation of the whole, just how those Maltese criminals in Soho were not a representatives of 400,000 people.
What happened here was an attack on freedom of speech. If ‘all Muslims are barbarians’ is the first thing that comes to mind to some people, then poor them, because this was an attack on freedom of speech and frankly, the reason those men attacked is because they are radicals and radicals are not just Muslim. You will find many of them in Malta who support PL or PN but it doesn’t mean that the political parties breed extremism.
Ever seen Christians doing the same?
[Daphne – But then they wouldn’t be Christians, just as these are not Muslims. Was the Irish Republic Army described as a Roman Catholic terrorist organisation? Well, then. But they were all Roman Catholics.]
Christians, or just pig-ignorant violent rednecks? http://focuson.alinea.dk/sites/focuson.alinea.dk/files/imagecache/Background/side_40__getty__79046450.jpg
Which is why they were (and still are) supported by the Maltese, the Irish American Fund and a lot of other Roman Catholic communities. I’m afraid it’s a lot more complex than that.
We’ve come to a point where acquiescence and tacit support and silence are all more or less equivalent to support.
In the Christian world, the sectarian troubles in Northern Ireland is just a tiny spec, now to some extent extinguished. If you compare this to the mayhem, problems and violence in the Islamic world, your sense of proportion need to be checked.
[Daphne – You are right. A more accurate comparison would be to the mayhem, murder, violence and torture campaigns carried out in the name of Roman Catholicism right across Europe all the way into the Middle East, over several centuries, and a few side campaigns of mayhem, murder, violence and torture carried out against Roman Catholics by other Christians.]
Well said, Daphne. As for Christians doing the same, Jozef, well, hundreds of years ago they did, all over Europe – and they also invaded parts of the Middle East to force their faith upon others.
Most of them in Europe today aren’t like that at all, thanks to the Enlightenment.
I disagree.
IS intends to eradicate everyone it deems fit.
The IRA had a state as the enemy, not humanity. Conversion as in prostrate ourselves to slavery.
Taqqija, Shar’ia law, the Jizya tax the instruments, serving an orthodox reading of the Koran, the Hadith and the Sunna leading to their comparative reading as the prophet decreed.
And that’s rendering any earlier works superseded by writings later on. The violence escalates at the end.
Taqqija is the concept of lying to decieve the infidel into false security in the name of Islam. That leaves me suspicious of the usual apologies how this isn’t the true Islam, peace and all that.
Can we please start discussing these things and get those who won’t subscribe to this pervasive philosophy on board?
Even because nothing IS says contradicts the three books. The crisis is Islamic, and it’s been growing since Khomeini kicked off what we term ‘fundamentalism’.
Salman Rushdie saw it coming.
Anders Breivik is a Christian. The members of the Lebanese Forces who carried out many an atrocity during the civil war were all Maronite Christians. The Serbs in Srebrenca were Christians.
I am also a Christian, but none of these (and many others) were acting in my name.
At the height of ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland a Sunday Times correspondent began his piece thus:
“I didn’t come across any Christians in the Province, just lots of Roman Catholics and Protestants.”
Sorry Daphne, as much as the IRA might have been Roman Catholic their cause and ideology had nothing to do with Catholicism at all. The same goes for their equivalents in the PKK and PFLP who happen to be Muslims but whose cause is also secular, they therefore cannot be described as Islamist terrorists.
The terrorists behind this attack are Islamic terrorists precisely because their cause happens to be a religious one. They are fighting to reestablish the Islamic Caliphate and they find their justifications in the Islamic holy texts. The term is therefore apt. To say that these are not Muslims is farcical.
[Daphne – You view the matter in this manner because you are one of those people who mistakenly see religion as an end in itself, when it is invariably the means to an end and has historically been a way of achieving and maintaining secular power and dominance. For the Irish Republican Army, Roman Catholicism was the identifier which differentiated the ‘real’ Irish from the English Protestant oppressor. For Islamic State, the dream of the Caliphate is the metaphor by which a large assembly of violent men, who in another society would be in organised crime involved in drugs and prostitution, live out their dreams of violence, world domination and violation of women. When you boil down Islamic State to its essence, it is nothing but Scarface on a truly epic scale: Scarface with keffiyehs.]
‘The members of the Lebanese Forces who carried out many an atrocity during the civil war were all Maronite Christians. The Serbs in Srebrenca were Christians.’
All fighting for nationalist causes rather than religious ones. Breivik wasn’t a practising Christian either, his was a cultural one as well.
The IRA killed in the name of the republic, not Roman Catholicism. That their belonging to Rome as opposed to the Anglican sphere was used as a means of differentiating themselves from the coloniser ‘proddies’ is another point entirely. The point is that they did not claim to kill in the name of Jesus; Islamists do.
[Daphne – Christians killed, raped, maimed, tortured and pillaged in the name of God and Jesus for almost two thousand years. It wasn’t religion which stopped the excesses of religion and religious people. It was a little something called the Enlightenment.]
@Josef
‘Taqqija is the concept of lying to decieve the infidel into false security in the name of Islam. That leaves me suspicious of the usual apologies how this isn’t the true Islam, peace and all that’
The reality is that there is no such thing as true Islam but many versions of it. There are vast between the Sunni and Shiia denominations, so much so that they might have as well been different faiths and there are significant differences between the various sects within those same denominations.
‘Even because nothing IS says contradicts the three books.’
There is little difference between what DA3Sh believe in and what is thought in many mosques in Saudi Arabia, Gaza and the rest of the Arab world, especially in those dominated by Salafis.
‘The crisis is Islamic, and it’s been growing since Khomeini kicked off what we term ‘fundamentalism’.’ ‘
It’s older than that, it goes back to the disputes between the followers of the rationalists like Ibn Rushd and the mystics like Al Ghazali. The Mongol sacking of Baghdad, the Napoleonic invasions of Egypt and their technologically superior armies and the Arab Kingdoms of the Persian Gulf using their oil wealth to spread the puritanical Wahhabi Salafist version of Islam at the expense of the more traditional and open minded Ottoman, Egyptian interpretations have exacerbated the situation.
‘When you boil down Islamic State to its essence, it is nothing but Scarface on a truly epic scale: Scarface with keffiyehs’
Oh yes, you could not have said it better yourself. It is just warlordism with an Islamist theme. They are the latest version of the Kharijites. However do keep in mind that the founder of Islam was a warlord himself with the very same motivations that these people have, hence the ease with which these gangsters can find theological justifications for their aims.
Let us make life complicated for our racist brethren.
What about football hooligans? Ever been in a train station with 200 of them forcing their way though? It is damn right scary. Yet these thugs have killed and they are still around in the name of sport.
Sadly all these episodes will give more power to authorities to reduce hard won civil liberties, with phone tapping, surveillance etc – a short stroll straight to an Orwellian future.
Again, read “God Is Not Great” even with a highly critical eye and you may be surprised how many conflicts worldwide that the Western world and media, pandering to PC consciousness, described them as anything other than religious ones, which is exactly what they were, or are.
Especially when the protagonists did not quite fit in the “barbaric savages” mould but rather were part of supposedly civilised societies.
I’m afraid comparison with the Spanish Inquisition, or for that matter, the Crusades, factually just a meek response to the genocide carried out in the Middle East over centuries, doesn’t hold.
One can trace Christianity’s bloodlust to kings and their cousin popes, and that’s centuries ago.
Not with this hydra, the schism never-ending, not when EU passport holders are leaving for Jihad in their thousands, and who’ll settle back happily in Europe when it’s over. Which is when I ask.
Or are we still at how Islam conserved our civilization, and gave us astronomy and algebra? It was already there in Alexandria.
Painter, I never saw Christians doing the same in my life. Even because we became too busy discussing how camp apostles could be depicted some three centuries ago.
And before that, we did have our hundred year wars, terror and Cromwell doing his best to redefine banking according to his religion.
So, yes, religion is the logical way to secular power, but boy did Christianity produce all the art and expose itself to freedom of expression.
One could very well deduce it was the art itself that overturned the mentis, leading to a philosophy which reflects that which drives agglomerations of people speaking a particular tongue and living in determined structures.
How can Islam is what beats me.
As for thinking religion is an end in itself, well, this is their agenda.
http://www.geocurrents.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Future-Islamic-State-Map.png
I don’t like it. Surely that makes me one who differentiates between Islam and muslims. Or is that not our business?
That means away with the secular entropic denominator.
Yes, it’s hard, verging on the impossible, what with our anodyne political formulae leading to correctness everywhere.
Beige secularism in a stateless planet fails.
Wormfood,
‘…However do keep in mind that the founder of Islam was a warlord himself with the very same motivations that these people have, hence the ease with which these gangsters can find theological justifications for their aims…’
And isn’t this the crux of the matter? IS claims his whole documented life. Something other more moderate strains try to avoid.
We must learn what Islam is first.
Apples and Oranges, the IRA did not kill in the name of Christianity, but ISIS have killed in the name of Islam.
This is a gigantic difference – they don’t just happen to be Muslim, its their primary motivation and their objective is make the World Muslim. IRA are not hell bent on global domination by killing people at random and certainly not over drawings.
IRA just happened to be Roman Catholic due to being born in Ireland at that particular point in time. Being Catholic was not their motivation – a Unified Ireland was.
Daphne, saying that these people are not Muslims is a clear example of what’s known as the No True Scotsman fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
By the very act of doing what they did (and same goes for other acts committed in the name of religion) you are saying that they are not TRUE Muslims.
Daphne, your comparisons of the terrible deeds the Crusaders did centuries ago, to the ravages that Radical Islam is causing in the 21st century reeks of tu quoque…
[Daphne – Please don’t be childish and tiring. This debate deserves better. This is not about Cowboys vs Indians and Christians vs Muslims. I made that comparison to illustrate the fundamental point I am making here: that this is NOT about religion, but about the way religion, politics and any other convenient movement or criminal organisation which is already to hand and has to be specially created is used by certain types of men (exclusively men) to achieve secular power, domination of other men and territory, and acquire money, possessions, control, and the position to rule through fear while violating women. No, there is no difference between the behaviour of those Crusaders a thousand years ago and the behaviour of these men now – the drive is the same. So that you don’t think that once more that this is ‘tu quoque’ (as though I represent Muslims…), I’ll throw in some others from history and the present: Genghis Khan, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Adolf Hitler, John Gotti, Pablo Escobar, Kim Jong-Un…]
It will certainly boost Joseph Muscat, which sucks a lot more.
A few minutes after the incident, he promptly tweeted a suitable Euroindignant message about standing with the people of #France – a mere two decades after his lot burned down a newspaper’s offices, and while the Maltese courts are busy with silly libel suits brought by several of his cronies against journalists and satirists.
Our political class are a troupe of clowns. And now they can go right ahead and sue me.
The boy king has a soap box .
I wouldn’t call them ‘his lot’, Baxxter. They were the lot of Mintoff. Joseph Muscat mentioned Mintoff during his meetings to appeal to the Mintoffjani. Let’s face it, Labour needs to be reinvented, and getting rid of the Mintoffian mindset is a start, but being the conservatives they are, many Labour supporters would never forget Mintoff, so dumping Mintoff from Labour would mean losing many votes.
The last time Labour was a good party was during the Boffa years, all those decades ago. It was Mintoff who fucked it up big time (not to mention the entire country as well). Hopefully, it might be a better party in 20 years or something.
While thousands honour the victims of the terror attack with the words ‘I am Charlie’
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/paris-magazine-attack/i-am-charlie-thousands-honor-victims-terror-attack-n281656
Muscat uses this extremely sad moment to further his image.
Yes, he is Charlie. A right Charlie.
It is no coincidence that Joseph Muscat did not mention free speech, which is what all this is about.
‘True, but then again not all Muslims are like that (actually around 1% are like that’
You appear to be someone young and naive enough to read the likes of Huffington Post (or Puffington Host as I like to refer to it) and you have enough strawmen in your argument to form a platoon.
Of course the vast majority of Muslims are not like that, the argument is about the difference between the ideology of certain groups and inherent nature of Islam as a faith and its holy texts. Individuals from an Islamic background are a different matter altogether.
[Daphne – The real, intrinsic problem with Islam is not religion or dogma but men, Wormfood. In any situation in which men have uncontrolled dominance and women are trodden underfoot, and where there is no restraint of law and order, this is what happens. The most savage men get to the top and savage others. The religion is incidental. It’s Lord of the Flies meets Scarface, with rocket launchers.]
“[Daphne – The real, intrinsic problem with Islam is not religion or dogma but men, Wormfood. In any situation in which men have uncontrolled dominance and women are trodden underfoot, and where there is no restraint of law and order, this is what happens. The most savage men get to the top and savage others. The religion is incidental. It’s Lord of the Flies meets Scarface, with rocket launchers.]”
No, the religion (Islam) actively instructs you to do all the above.
As does the Bible, if you don’t read it with our conveniently civilised interpretation of it, which the religious do in order to save themselves serious embarassment.
“You appear to be someone young and naive enough to read the likes of Huffington Post (or Puffington Host as I like to refer to it) and you have enough strawmen in your argument to form a platoon.”
I don’t read the Huffington Post, but at least I am not someone old and bitter enough to read the likes of the Daily Mail (or Daily Fail as I like to refer to it). Daphne’s reply was enough so I should stop there.
You’re almost but not quite right, Daph – “not religion . . .but men”. Which religion is more misogynist than any other? Just look at “enlightened” Saudi Arabia. It’s true that Catholicism gives women a pretty raw deal (as I have consistently argued) but it’s non-league compared to the IS Premiership.
Why do you think the Arab Spring universally failed, with one exception that confirmed the rule? Answer: because women have no rights.
It’s men + religion, not just men.
Daphne, but then, it is also true that Islam cannot be corroborated along our idea of religion.
I never read anywhere the Christ preached Jihad.
Maybe this needs to be underlined with Muslims before any other discourse take place.
Before skinheads take to the streets to do a women’s lib.
[Daphne – Both religions are hostile to women. The female stars of Christianity are a prostitute and a virgin, the stereotypes of the ages.]
I just don’t see a solution in dismissing religion as extraneous to human nature.
The impression is that Islam carries an inherent duality beyond western reading. Brutality its sublimation.
Catholicism, in its institution, I say conveniently, managed to claim an alibi by putting the blame on humanity, read men.
Both claim a design.
Pacelli once referred to God as mother, found dead a few days later.
@ Wormfood “The members of the Lebanese Forces who carried out many an atrocity during the civil war were all Maronite Christians. The Serbs in Srebrenca were Christians.’
All fighting for nationalist causes rather than religious ones. Breivik wasn’t a practising Christian either, his was a cultural one as well.”
Nationalist causes? Isn’t Islamic State, by its very choice of name, equating religion with nationalism?
Breivik claimed to explain his acts as an attempt to eradicate those who were tolerant to Muslims and to cleanse Christian Norway.
Lebanese Forces wanted a Christian Lebanon, because that’s what they thought had been promised to them under Sykes-Picot: a Christian Lebanon and a Muslim Syria. instead they got a mish-mash that is at the root of much of the turmoil in the region today.
The Serbs simply wanted to dominate Yugoslavia and were prepared to find an accommodation with the (Christian) Croats (defeating your purely nationalist argument), but not the Muslim Bosnians.
Do you actually consider these criminals to be “practising” Muslims? Read your Islam before you comment.
Islam is peaceful. Nevertheless, a number of people have managed to use technology (ironically) to propagate a message that has nothing to do with Islam but to tie it in with Islam, exploiting the very ignorance that is being displayed by many of those who are commenting here.
Religion has been used as a tool to excite passion for thousands of years. The problem is not with religion: it’s with those who use it to manipulate and also those who allow themselves to be manipulated.
The more vehemently you react, the more you feed the beast.
‘Nationalist causes? Isn’t Islamic State, by its very choice of name, equating religion with nationalism?’
No it’s not. The gangsters involved are trying to assert domination under the guise of establishing an old long dead empire. Just look at their logos and banners, it also includes all of North Africa, Spain, Eastern Europe and India. If you cannot tell the difference between the causes then you shouldn’t be discussing this.
‘The Serbs simply wanted to dominate Yugoslavia and were prepared to find an accommodation with the (Christian) Croats (defeating your purely nationalist argument), but not the Muslim Bosnians.’
Yet more nonsense, the Yugoslavian powers and military elite wanted to keep everyone in the union by force. Religion is a mere facet of national identity in the Balkans. Albanian Catholics teamed up with their Muslim compatriots to burn down Serbian Orthodox churches in Kosovo.
‘Do you actually consider these criminals to be “practising” Muslims? Read your Islam before you comment.’
There is no difference between what this gang is doing and what Muhammad and his earliest supporters and the Arabs who invaded Sassanid Persia did, unless you mean to tell me that they weren’t practicing Muslims either, so much so that quite a lot of people in Saudi Arabia still think that slavery is justified.
‘exploiting the very ignorance that is being displayed by many of those who are commenting here.’
You prattle because you are naive enough to think that religions come from god and must therefore be good. I dare you to listen to the likes of Shayikh Qaradhawi, read about the Khaybar incident, which Arabs frequently refer to when they are taunting Jews and then come back to me.
‘The problem is not with religion: it’s with those who use it to manipulate and also those who allow themselves to be manipulated.’
Hilarious, there can be no religion without manipulation. One of the main purposes of a religion is precisely to do just that. Daphne nailed it in her comment about the essence of this being gangster-ism rather than the religion per se.
Islam started out as one such gangster’s rationalisations and attempts to legitimise and justify his right to conquer and help himself to his rivals’ riches and women. There is little difference between these people and the Mexican drug cartels, they are however merely following in the footsteps of the founder of their faith and his successors. It is about time people were honest about this.
Any transformation to an islamic state in Europe would probably take more than my lifetime but yes, I would we afraid that my descendants if not my children could face such a situation. You’re saying its far fetched… to keep a sense of humour, let me reply, inshallah!
People tend to believe that the world will crystallize in the state that they know it as they believe we have achieved the peak of our capabilities as humans. However, we are just sand grains in the continuum of history and civilizations have come and gone.
Please don’t be patronizing and accuse me of being childish. Your blog may indeed be the best conduit of free speech on this rock, but please don’t get haughty and believe you are the holder of some supreme truth. Debate by all means but calling someone childish because he is in disagreement with you is reverting to Joseph Muscat’s style which you despise.
[Daphne – It is childish, yes, to turn this into a Christians vs Muslims debate. Why do you view me, raised a Roman Catholic in a convent in Malta, as a representative of Islam? You are not reasoning clearly. This is about human nature.]
Do point out one post where I back the Christians/Catholics over Muslims.
My fear is that Islam or rather its radical arms which are spreading like a cancer by the hour are a clear and present danger to our BASIC freedoms, no more no less.
[Daphne – The safeguard against that is not repression but the championing of Europe’s core secular values and proper law enforcement. What are you afraid of, exactly – that you will be forced to become a Muslim? That you will be forced to live under shariah law? Come off it. If it is violence that scares you, welcome to the world. I grew up in a Europe afflicted by homegrown terrorism, in the Cold War with the ever present threat of nuclear warfare, with half the continent locked in by Communism. This is nothing. Imagine then, how those still alive today, who lived through the rampaging of Hitler and the reality of World War II, regard the current fuss. It appears that every generation needs to gain a sense of perspective afresh.]
I also never saw you as a representative of Islam but am surprised that you and many others seems to somehow completely divorce radical Islamic ideology from these crimes. Europeans have tried this approach over the past few decades or so and the results are there for us to see. To put this in a Maltese perspective what happened yesterday in France was as if someone killed you, Norman Vella, Carmel Cacopardo, and Jacques René Zammit in one swoop. This is the enormity of what happened and I hope never, ever to see this again.
[Daphne – Well, you seem to have forgotten already that somebody did try to kill me and my entire family by setting fire to our house with so much fuel that even the investigators were taken aback. And it wasn’t radical Muslims who did it, but my fellow Maltese Catholics who objected to my support of ‘black African Muslim’ immigrants.]
As John Kerry said, those who like the monsters who carried out the Paris attack, seek to stifle freedom of expression, are against civilised life. Those in Malta who would like to smother this blog should understand that they are on the same continuum as the murderers who assaulted the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.
It may be about power, but no one can say that it is not mostly about religion, unless one is on a futile and useless attempt at political correctness.
[Daphne – It is definitely not mostly about religion. ‘Religion’ is the movement by which a group of men have positioned themselves to achieve dominance over others, savage them and acquire money and access to violence and women in the process. It could have been anything, but to men operating out of the Middle East, it is that. In Mexico they would have been in a drug cartel, doing much the same thing.]
This magazine was already a target before they were critical to ISIS’s leader. One thing is certain, France and Europe for that matter, were safer and nicer without this now volatile mixture of Islamic vs the rest.
[Daphne – Europe was safer and nicer? Really – when would that have been? Between 1945 and 1989, with half of Europe behind the Iron Curtain of Soviet Communism and with large chunks of the rest under the jackboot of Far Right dictators like General Franco and the Greek generals? In the 1970s, with the relatively small part of free Europe under threat from homegrown terrorism like the Bader Meinhof, the Brigate Rosse and the Irish Republican Army? In the 1980s, when the Mafia responded to the first serious attempt to loosen its grip by blowing up its investigators? In World War I and World War II? In the years between those wars, with Hitler’s rise to power and the start of the reign of terror against Jews? Europe is now the safest it has ever been.]
Another certain thing, and inevitable, is that this will strengthen Marie Le Pen. This will also strengthen the nationalistic anti-multiculturalism far right in Europe. And the more they are suppressed (and I hope you also defend the rights for their expression), the stronger they will emerge.
[Daphne – Of course I defend their right to expression. That is entirely different from defending the views they hold and express, of which I am critical.]
Freedom of expression is sacrosanct, but not freedom to insult, especially the sacrosanct. Every civic society has laws against insults which people can resort to. Insults hurt, everyone is of flesh and blood, and one must bear the consequences of insulting. The injured can reply in kind, take the civic legal route, or like these Muslims, retaliate disproportionally.
Now look what these journalists/cartoonists got from all this. I am a Christian, but I find insults on their prophet disgusting. I can call them savages head cutters, but not offend what they hold sacred.
[Daphne – That is where you are absolutely wrong. Freedom of expression includes the freedom to insult public figures (not private persons) and the freedom to mock organisations and religions even if this is construed as an insult. Be careful because you are betraying clear signs of the very mindset which you criticise in Islamic State.]
Well said, Daphne. And you bastards out there who think otherwise, sadly including some of our compatriots can go to hell. Your intolerance shows your ignorance.
A bit idealist.
Idealists beat the Nazis – sadly it took 6 years and a lot of lives .
King Rat, actually it was the Nazis who were the idealists. In their own perverted way of course. Most others did not subscribe to that ideology, and pragmatically rather than idealistically, fought and died in their hundreds of thousands to beat them. So 0/10 for your appraisal of the facts.
Oscar, go and test the “tolerance” of any predominantly Muslim (or for that matter any deeply religious) society. Just take a little cartoon with you perhaps?
Your lack of ignorance may well be tested.
The idealists lost the war.
It is no thanks to the police force as it was in Mintoff’s time that the workers inside the offices of The Times of Malta were not burned alive when the usual MLP mob tried to suppress the freedom of the press in Malta before ransacking the home of the leader of the Opposition Dr Eddie Fenech Adami and manhandling his gentle wife a few paces away from Castille or a nearby police station respectively.
It is for that reason that any untoward violent methods by members of today’s police force must be scotched at once.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/heartbreaking-cartoons-from-artists-in-response-to-the-ch?utm_term=.bhP5bDALp&utm_content=buffer033e4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#.bmVONp8Ak
Very well said, Daphne. Excellent.
The gutting of The Times of Malta in the 1980s.
Cyber attack by North Korea in reaction to Sony’s satirical film ‘The interview’.
Murder of French journalists today.
All bear the marks of the same rogue culture, an affront to decency, human values and the benefits of the European Enlightenment which still shines on many parts of the world.
The Times of Malta was gutted in the 70s, not the 80s: Monday, October 15th, 1979 to be precise.
Those that persist in saying that Islam is not a factor are as blind as a bat. Those that say that the culprits are not Muslim are making a flawed argument because the Koran preaches violence and these guys are doing what it preaches.
[Daphne – The Old Testament preaches violence too, great violence, but it continues to be a part of the Christian Bible. You cannot extrapolate from that to say that Christianity is a violent religion. You need to understand that familiarity makes us comfortable with some things that seem gross and awful to others, while lack of familiarity causes us to fear what is familiar and not frightening to others. If Roman Catholicism were not a familiar religion to you, and you entered a church full of depictions of tortured men nailed to pieces of wood, hearts pierced with daggers, various individuals with their severed breasts or plucked-out eyes in their hands, other individuals being roasted on grilles – what would you think? Precisely. We are comfortable with all that because it is familiar. To others it is horrifying, gruesome and really violent.]
Those effigies depict sacrifice in the name of an idea, not what should be done to others.
No different to your conviction that good rarely wins on this planet.
Daphne, I am rather puzzled by some of your assertions about history and cultural expression. Is it a case of this debate polarising our views? Because Jozef is right on this one. What he says isn’t even opinion, but fact.
I’d be happy to discuss the subject but it would take more than a few blog comments.
[Daphne – No, it’s a case of my distinguishing between a visual aid and an artistic depiction of an idea (sacrifice). All religious depictions, including crucifixes, started out as visual aids. People couldn’t visualise things. They had to be shown them. The artistic kerfuffle came later. Unfortunately for the artistic bit and the portrayal of sacrifice, there is only so much you can go with a dead or dying man nailed to a cross. It remains a dead or dying man nailed to a cross. I dislike all depictions of torture in whatever context. If the aim was to make people more aware of the sacrifice and suffering, the ubiquity of this image, and the way men nailed to crosses are hung all over the place from the kitchen to the classroom, has the opposite effect. It has inured people and made them indifferent to the horror the image depicts. I am not indifferent to the horror, and that’s why I don’t like crucifixes and believe they have no place in a civilised environment.]
You’re so firm upon this point that you almost force me to conclude your knowledge of crucifixes is limited to the Maltese kind. We got the dregs of Western art, for God’s sake. It’s like defining Islam by taking Bin Laden as representative of the whole group.
Of course I agree with you that crosses and crucifixes shouldn’t be placed in classrooms or offices. They have their place and it’s called a church.
But on this ‘dead man’ thing I disagree. The idea (sacrifice) was a latecomer – very late – round about 1500, and the gore (post 1600) was a Spanish speciality, not particularly widespread outside the Spanish sphere of influence. Again, Malta was unlucky.
I don’t like obesity either but what should we do, ban Rubens?
WHAT? says
The new testament replaces the old. Jesus said so.
[Daphne – Did he? I wasn’t aware there was a New Testament when he was around. The chronological sequence tells me it came after he died. And if the Old Testament is no longer relevant and has been superseded, why is it still one half of the Bible? And why are (select) bits read out in Mass?]
The Old Bible teaches but also narrates episodes. Wars existed and the Bible ‘took sides’ We have to look at the new part Jesus’s life and that what counts really.
I take visitors (Chinese/Turks) to churches and explain besides one sees St. Francis, St Anthony, Our Lady, St Paul, St Dominic and many others.
You said ‘full of depictions of….’ This is not true they not full of such effigies. When one enters any church or a place of worship one should go with a guide of that temple.
[Daphne – ‘Full of’ is a turn of phrase that must not be taken literally.]
In my opinion you are referring only to part of one side of the coin which is unfair.
I do not criticize Islam without reading the Koran. When I enter a mosque I take off my shoes and pray to ALLAH. I respect most of the Islam religion but not Islamic law and the killings and please note that we are living now and not hundreds of years ago.
I am Charlie Hebdo. Are you?
Cartoonists and journalists have offered to keep alive Charlie Hebdo after three men stormed the offices of the satirical magazine killing 12 people.
When ignorant people (extremism is a form of ignorance) lose an argument they shout. When they lose a shouting match they silence.
The burning of The Times of Malta in 1979 was carried out with much the same intentions.
Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith writes ‘But Dom was no harmless eccentric. Neither was he a democrat. He would send his thugs into action when a little muscle could yield results. His thugs burned down the Times of Malta building.’
One must not forget that there were people caught in the burning building and these only made it through a stroke of luck and a small opening one floor up.
This did not stop the arsonists.
Yes I am Charlie Hebdo.
Daphne, notice how the usual gang are using this Paris attack as a means of commenting on Times of Malta’s comments board and other sites against ‘foreigners’, or people of other faiths.
They claim we should “shut the doors”. It’s the same type of commentary in the WW2 Allied countries that led to prisoner camps for Italians or Japanese citizens.
I would like to know when exactly did Maltese people think it was OK to don Brown Shirts.
Your replies to some of the above comments are instructive in their lucid presentation and clear thinking. Worth reflecting on and revising our personal worldview and analysis of human attitudes and actions. Much appreciated.
I heartily concur.
What happened in Paris is atrocious.
Some of the conspiracy theories and blame being thrown around in comments on articles in the Maltese media are scary.
[Daphne – Give those people a Kalashnikov and the right (wrong) environment, and they will do the same in the name of Roman Catholic Malta.]
The internet is becoming very vulnerable. During the last month, in China there was mass censorship (in the form of blockage) of communication tools/sites such as Twitter, Snapchat, gmail, etc.
The newspaper article outlines how easy it is for states (Russia and Turkey were also mentioned) to block and attack (through denial of access) communication web sites.
One needs to ask whether the current Maltese government is engaging with Chinese hackers to monitor, hack and attack websites of personas-non-grata in Malta.
One shouldn’t forget Hollande’s support of Joseph Muscat.
Support is expressed in several ways.
Please elaborate.
@Baxxter
I already have, with you directly.
When a large private entity insists that one deals with an outside agent for a number of years, when that outside agent asks for detailed documentation that is not passed on to that private entity, when that outside agent disappears completely on being asked a pertinent and direct question as to his links with that country’s security, when that private entity washes its hands of all knowledge of having asked one to deal with that person, then something irregular is afoot.
So irregular, that in other countries, this falls under “fraud.”
Especially so (irregular), when this is accompanied by other similar quasi-imperceptible similar moves at that level.
That level only comes under him and matches local “surveillance” moves in direction.
There. For now.
It is about Islam and how. Google Oriana Fallaci for some interesting views. Incidentally Charlie Hebdo had quoted her and earned the chagrin of Islam extremists. She speaks of immigration as a Trojan horse, political correctness towards Muslims (removing crosses and cribs) and of Eurabia. Wake up.
[Daphne – I am not a Muslim and I would very much like to see the removal of crucifixes (though not crosses) from non-religious public places, as I find all representations of torture distasteful and abhorrent. I have felt this way since childhood, which is how I know that perceptive children find these things upsetting even when they are raised in a Catholic environment and know what they symbolise.
As for Oriana Fallaci – Brigitte Bardot syndrome. “The sons of Allah breed like rats” is not rational discourse.]
I wouldn’t mind crucifixes being removed for the same reasons, but there will be people that this would be done to censor them and Christianity.
It’s a big wall, Painter. Lots of space.
Daphne, I lived overseas for many years and I can personally confirm that the loudest voices for removal of crucifixes or nativity scenes is not from other religions but from atheists.
Atheists can be fundamentalists too. They too can be intolerant of views which are not akin to their own. What happened to live and let live.
Daphne,
You will explain the metaphysical difference between a crucifix and a cross.
It does disturb you.
[Daphne – A crucifix is a literal depiction of torture and murder. A cross is just the symbol of it, and is entirely meaningless to those who don’t know it. A crucifix, on the other hand, is immediately recognisable for what it is even to those who have never heard of the religion in question. Yes, it does disturb me. It is horrible. We know what happened. We don’t have to look at it. This hasn’t been an illiterate/subliterate world for a long time.]
A crucifix is no different to a nude, in the sense that it can only be properly understood by an enlightened audience. It’s an artistic meme, not a pictorial representation. Without knowledge of the meme, it’s just a vulgar and shocking thing.
It is no coincidence at all that Western art started showing the crucified Christ exactly at the same that that it started showing smiling Christs, Virgins and saints, buff Christs and sexy Virgins.
I could go on for hours, but do we really want to have this discussion?
[Daphne – I am perfectly familiar with the meme, and I still find it disgusting. And actually, it is a pictorial representation. It is meant to evoke pity and horror, and in the past was there to show the educationally challenged – which meant pretty much everybody – how it was done. I spent the years 4 to 16 in a proper convent, remember – not much you can teach me about this stuff.]
There are many types of crosses without Christ nailed to them depicting just a cross (not necessarily a Christian Cross).
A cross with Jesus– God– on it is a Christian symbol.
[Daphne – No, it’s actually specifically a Roman Catholic symbol. The plain cross is Christian. The crucified Christ was a visual aid when people were illiterate and wholly ignorant. It’s not been necessary for a long time.]
You may not like it but many, many like it because it depicts the triumph of Jesus over death and that is what one has to look at a crucified Jesus on a cross.
[Daphne – You see, that’s where you’re wrong. It depicts man’s savagery to man, and is a graphic portrayal of torture and murder. The triumph over death would be the resurrection and not the death itself. It is horribly morbid.]
Besides nowadays we are evolving to your idea in an accelerated way. The RC in Malta, at its new churches many a time depicts a glorious Jesus in front of a cross or just the figure of Jesus with open welcoming hands (Divine Mercy Church in Naxxar).
Also some crucifixes are as you said, but that is the purpose to remind us that Christ suffered and died for all mankind, but much better to remind us of his victory over death thus our salvation. Jesus no longer suffers. He is glorified risen and that is what comes to my mind and I smile and thank HIM.
Read about all places that one visits before one does so.
I take it you know about the clothed crucifixes of the middle ages?
[Daphne – How insulting.]
Because what you describe (the tear-jerking crucifix) is very limited in space and time – Southern Europe, 1600-1800.
[Daphne – Who said anything about tear-jerking? A man nailed to a cross is a man nailed to a cross, whatever the style of depiction.]
Malta got the worst of the stylemes.
S.O.D. to Kenneth’s “baroque”.
I think this discussion is way off track however. So I’ll leave it there.
I didn’t mean to be insulting. It’s just that out of 2000 years of imagery, you take 400 as representative of the whole.
The cross is a symbol of that tragedy then, just as the pen is the symbol of yesterday’s.
#JesuIsCharlie?
An atrocity will always have a symbol left as a reminder.
Enlightenment is never complete.
Bring back the fish I say – it’s a much more peaceful and benign symbol.
The fish symbol was used by early Christians to depict Christ.
Brava.
You are right, Islam has nothing to do with barbaric acts such as the one committed today.
The Islamic State is all about power through the control and manipulation of ignorant people. In many ways IS uses a tried and tested formula not very dissimilar from that used by the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages.
Alex, it is now that we are living – 2015, not in the Middle Ages.
Carmel, the “glorious” Roman Catholic Church still reaps the fruit of the misdeeds it committed in its darker days.
For those here categorically referring to Islam, it may be worth noting that Islam in itself is mainly split into two large groups. The IS who claim to be Sunni consider the Shia as infidels who must be destroyed in favour of a “pure” Islam. To complicate matters various Sunni leaders have rejected the caliphate.
In my view religion is only a convenient vehicle for a new ideology of violence for its own sake.
I recently came across a blog post written by Kathy Sierra which explains in some detail why sections of any given population feel the way they do about people like you – intelligent women that express their opinion on a popular blog.
http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point
It is a very interesting, albeit lengthy, read.
It is most worrying that most of us ‘Europeans’ cannot or refuse to try to make a sane and informed appraisal of what is truly behind these terrorist acts.
This is even more worrying when one considers that the converse to this is even truer, namely, that the terrorists are insanely mindset and mentally brainwashed in perpetuating their mayhem.
I think that the people behind these attacks are well aware of this situation and are using social media to further foment a growing social divide between people who ‘should know better’ and other people who unfortunately ‘know no better’.
“It was a little something called the Enlightenment.”
That was when the French revolutionaries after decapitating their nobility, their priests and their nuns started to decapitate their own enlightened revolutionary leaders.
Yes, that was a tad stretched. Bad teeth and knitting.
Just like that other bunch of leftist c*nts a century or so later, at the other end of Europe.
First thing they did was kill Stolypin.
Never trust a leftist, Jozef. Never.
Well Baxxter, I would never trust a rightist for that matter.
Dear Daphne
I think the point here is very simple. It is about people who were given an opportunity to live in European culture and instead of adapting, went the complete opposite way of developing intense hatred for European values. It reminds of the train bombings were the perpetrators were 2nd generation immigrants. I think that you and people like yourself who advocate illegal immigration should think seriously about these attacks.
[Daphne – The train bombing I remember most particularly, Mr Agius, is the one in which Italian terrorists blew up Bologna train station. Yes, I agree that the problem lies with individuals who want Europe to adapt to them rather than the other way round, but that’s the point: they’re individuals and not a generalised mass of ‘Muslims’. I do not advocate illegal immigration – don’t reveal your ignorance and difficulties with logic. I advocate tolerance of refugees and humanity towards those who have suffered extraordinarily to get here, which gives us some idea of the terrors they were escaping. Oh, and incidentally, when my home – my home, not merely my front door – was set on fire with a view to killing all asleep inside, it was people of your sort who did it, and not immigrants or Muslims.]
Daphne, I can’t see the logic in your comparison of the Bologna train station bombing and the Islamist inspired Al-Qaeda bombing in Madrid. Even more so when it is still unclear who was really behind it as even Ghaddafi may have been involved unless you are privy to the Book of Absolute Historical Truths… :-)
[Daphne – Gaddafi was involved in the IRA bombings, certainly, but then so were several Maltese who helped the Semtex through, with the contraband cigarettes that helped finance IRA operations later following the exact same route.]
This is where our Police Commissioner showed that his loyalties were utterly misplaced.
Did any of those Maltese do it for ideological reasons? No, they pure and simply did it to line their pockets and obviously had no remorse or human decency when they knew they were the recipients of bloodstained cash.
The Glorious Kuran
SuraXLVII 4-6
“Therefore when ye meet
The Unbelievers
Smite at their necks
At length, when ye have
Thoroughly subdued them,
Bind a bond
Firmly ……
[Daphne – Yes, and all civilised and law-abiding Muslims ignore that completely in the same way that all civilised and law-abiding Christians ignore much worse in the Old Testament. That’s why my Muslim girlfriends have never gone for my neck and instead had tea and a chat.]
I prefer to have open-minded free spirited girlfriends for a chat but if I had to choose Christian vs. Muslim GF for a chat I would go for a Christian as it is quite clear that there is a larger probability of having a Muslim GF blowing herself up next to me.
[Daphne – The one thing I don’t like about running this website is that it brings me into direct contact with the worst of my compatriots’ stupidity and ignorance.]
Consider the possibility that your readers may be justified to resent being considered stupid and ignorant simply because they disagree with a blog writer who thinks that the Holy Eucharist is a rice paper wafer.
[Daphne – I don’t think I have made myself clear. As a liberal, I respect people’s religious beliefs and regret the fact that so many people do not understand that freedom of worship is an inalienable human right. Some people believe a round piece of rice paper is the body of Christ and other people believe it is blasphemous to depict living things (for we forget that it is not only the depiction of Mohammed that is proscribed) and neither belief is any of my business. Religious belief only becomes a problem when it begins to interfere with the rights of non-consenting third parties, on the principle that your right to swing your fist ends where another person’s face begins. I absolutely do not care what people believe – it’s their affair and not mine. I have my own beliefs and they are nobody’s business either. I wish people would be more private about religion all round.]
Christians read the Old Testament texts in the light of the New Testament. This is one of the differences between Islam and Christianity. Islam preaches vendetta and retaliation. Christ preached forgiveness and love of one’s enemies.
[Daphne – But the only Christians who did that in the almost 2,000 years which followed were murdered for their pains by other Christians who felt that this threatened their drive to power and domination. If Christianity really had been about Christ, we would have had 2,000 years of Woodstock instead.]
Tu quoque
Please do not attribute to religion what should be correctly attributed to rulers and politicians acting against the teaching of the gospel.
Would they be the ones that can’t drive cars, can’t go out on their own etc etc?
Or weren’t they pure?
Face it, Dr Saliba.
Propagating the myth that Christians are generally non-violent while Muslims generally are is futile.
And implying that the Bible promotes less violence than the Koran is even worse, because it most certainly does not, and no amount of careful surgical “interpretation” will change that basic fact.
Religion in general got a well-deserved moral trashing by the secular movements not many decades ago, and continues to get that to this very day.
Christianity was as morally corrupt as, if not more than, any other religion, and this has resulted in it becoming the pick’n’mix religion that it is today, the picking-and-mixing being pioneered by the authorities themselves over the years to try to tone down the unsavoury bits and play moral catch-up with secular society.
And more recently by the followers themselves, many of whom see their following the religion of choice simply as a catch-all safety net to help them jump onto the immortality bandwagon.
The Muslims in Sabra and Shatila were killed by Christian Phalangists.
I see FP’s quite the expert in the Hadith, Sira and Sunna and can distinguish between Mecca and Medina.
Obviously the first to condemn anyone who spent their entire life ordering the mass murder of Jews, Buddhists, Zoroastrian Persians, Nestorian and North African Christians and Hindus in their millions.
Fact.
600 battles over 14 centuries. As per written instructions and protocols how to deal with anyone khafir. That’s over 65% of all three books. Yes, that’s all they talk about, how to enslave everyone in their path.
Fact.
Indeed, where in the New Testament do you find anything similar?
19,000 registered attacks since 9/11 all over the planet, seculars and ‘moderate’ Muslims included.
Fact.
This morning’s was Al Qaeda, the one ISIS considers toothless.
Fact.
Damned if people like you get to gloat or blame Christians for this.
No wonder you have no faith.
La Redoute, let’s murder Christians for what they got us into shall we?
[Daphne – http://vassallohistory.wordpress.com/vassallo/the-origin-of-the-maltese-surnames/ ]
Jozef, another one of the ah-but-they-did-worse-than-we-did pick’n’mix brigade.
Armed with “all” those facts, who’s to argue with you?
Perfectly said
No FP, I just can’t take ignorance as a method to do away with everything.
There is no such concept, repeatedly explained and in its different denominations but mainly for political reasons, as Jihad, in the old and new testaments.
I’m getting a bit tired of the we-must-carry-on-the-one-sided-dialogue-ghax-jahasra mantra.
How about we see for ourselves what these extremists read?
Yes, I can already see your difficulty with discernment and discrimination. Demands faith in a future.
“Civilised law-abiding Muslims” who “ignore completely” or tamper with the Kuran are conspicuous by their low profile if not by their rare absence on the world stage today. I do not blame them because otherwise they would run the very real risk of a fatwa and the loss of their head – and it won’t be Christians who will be doing it.
Your Muslim girlfriends are the welcome rare exceptions, to the rule of notorious obscene majority waging terrorism against “infidels” as well as against other Muslims.
As the name implies, “law-abiding civilized Christians” take their cue from Christ and the New Testament. Obviously when you refer to any book of reference (such as the bible) you would abide by the latest edition. For Christians that is the New Testament. Similarly it is grossly unfair to make excuses for the Islamist terrorism of today by comparing it with events of centuries ago when savage methods of warfare were in vogue by all in those remote days and which have long been abandoned by the faithful Christians of today.
An interesting read:
“All of the Abrahamic religions feature what Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist, has called “word magic”: the idea that by saying something one can do something profound and terrible.
…
Islam does not forbid mention of God or the prophet—indeed, the declaration of the faith, the shahadah, requires both. Instead, the taboo is displaced to the visual world: God and Muhammad may not be depicted in art.”.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/01/johnson-blasphemy?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/dangerouswords
Now it’s gone viral on Facebook, with many people sharing cartoons or changing their display picture in support, including, ironically, a few people who in the past have taken issue with this blog. Ah well, glad to see that they’ve finally embraced satire.
They haven’t come down on the side of satire. They’ve taken up arms against the infidel, naively believing that Charlie Hebdo is a Christian publication because it is French.
Hi Daphne,
For a twenty-something it was interesting reading your mentioning of non-islamic terrorism activities in your replies to this thread. To be completely honest, my first reaction was similar to other people in this thread regards Islam. For curiosity’s sake, do you subscribe to a Hobbesian view of mankind, similar to the principal theme in Golding’s Lord of the Flies?
Karl
[Daphne – I don’t subscribe to other people’s views because at this stage in life, I’ve long since formed my own on the basis of half a lifetime’s professional interest in observing human nature and human behaviour. Human behaviour follows patterns, and there are very recognisable personality types and basic drives. The rest is just detail. The exact same type of man will use a drug cartel, a religious movement or a political group to get into a position where he can savage others. It’s the personality types and the psychological motivators you have to be looking at, not the trappings of religion or politics or whatever else. Those follow a clear pattern: dominance of other men through fear and brutality, money and power, enjoyment of violence for its own sake, perverted sex, brutalisation of women – all the same, whether you’re looking at a Mexican drug cartel, organised crime in Italy, a London gang, a dictator in North Korea or Islamic State.]
Oh Daphne! And while we are on the subject of freedom of expression, DA3Sh and Islam let us not forget this little incident that didn’t take place as far away as Paris
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-08-18/news/man-arrested-and-sent-to-mount-carmel-after-peaceful-protest-outside-pms-office-6241222657/
We are organising a gathering for freedom of speech and to support Charlie Hebdo tomorrow.
https://www.facebook.com/events/702681943180783/
You can join tomorrow at 19.00 at the Love sign in St Julian’s.
[Daphne – Great initiative, but you really need to correct this: to moan the 12 people to ‘mourn’.]
OK, so you got a few things wrong.
First off, why next to the Love sign? The way it will play in the media is that this is a hippie peace protest, i.e. make love not war against Muslims, which is rubbish. You should have met next to the “Madness” graffito at Balluta, which is the closest thing we have to witty mockery.
Secondly, a gathering to mourn the victims? What the eff? If you gather, it should be to flip a big reverse salute to those idiots who think the correct response to a cartoon is a murder. This should be about defiance, not earnest hand-wringing.
Well said. This continent is on its knees.
All those who state that “Christians” would never do these things forget about the Crusades and the Inquisition. However, then as now, religion is only the excuse for intolerance and greed. If religion didn’t exist, man would still kill and maim man. We’d just need a different excuse.
[Daphne – That’s exactly the way I see it.]
Religion is just yet another excuse why wars happen. Most wars I can think of had nothing whatsoever to do with religion but with independence , civil liberties , domination of other lands for dynastic reasons and other completely secular reasons.
There are more recent examples of “Christians who would never do these things”: http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre.html
The crusades.
Hilarious.
Welcome to my world. I regularly get booted out of conferences on l-istorja ta’ Malta u l-Assedju glorjuz.
The Crusades and the Inquisition occurred centuries ago. Islamist terrorism is here and now.
THAT is exactly the way I see it.
All those who insist that this attack has nothing to do with Islam are either in denial or know precious little of the origin of Islam or the personality, life and times of its founder or worse still, are deliberately misleading the general public.
This has everything to do with Islam just as much as are the deliberate destruction of the Banyan Buddhas, the public beheading of assorted infidels, the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini on Salman Rushdie, the 9/11 attacks, and ISIS rampaging all over the place preaching war on the infidel world.
I wish I could find a link to an interview which the Muslim- turned- Christian convert Magdi Cristiano Allam gave to Rete Quattro this afternoon on the subject.
[Daphne – When I see a person who converts from one religion to another, the thought foremost in my mind is that he or she has a personality disorder. The fact that somebody moves from one religion to another, completely different religion – rather than just dropping his original religion and staying religion-free – indicates that the individual cannot live without a religion, any religion, and uses it like a crutch. If it weren’t religion, it would be alcohol or drugs or gambling. And often, when people come off any of those, they sink themselves into religion instead.]
Quite a few celebrities (Hollywood or otherwise) do just that, usually just after marriage or through ‘peer/fad’ pressure.
[Daphne – They don’t. We’re talking about moving from one religion to another here, and not taking up religion for the first time. The fact that a Hollywood celebrity is white and American does not mean he or she was raised in any religion at all.]
Just some info on Magdi Allam , if anyone is interested. He is an MEP by the way.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdi_Allam
“Islam is no more intolerant and dangerous than Roman Catholicism”
This is one of those times that even if one puts forward the most irrefutable and concrete evidence to the contrary, Daphne will still persist, so I won’t bother.
[Daphne – Yes, because failures of rationality bother me immensely. You cannot have this debate unless you allow for context. The main reason Roman Catholicism is not as dangerous to the individual as it used to be is that secular developments in Europe over the last 250 years forced it to ‘behave’ because Europeans and the laws and mores they evolved could no longer tolerate that kind of thing. It is now a benign form of religion rather than the operator of the feared Inquisition and a burner and torturer of unbelievers and witches which controlled every aspect of people’s lives and provided the only form of law (the equivalent of shariah). In parts of the world that did not go through the same social evolution, that process of controlling religion through ‘natural’ secular development did not happen. The only control against a religious dictatorship was a ‘secular’ dictatorship. When the secular dictatorship goes, the religious dictatorship surges in (vide Libya right now).
I suppose part the failure to understand this comes from our insistence on using the word ‘religion’ when any religion is just the vehicle for this kind of behaviour. We should really be talking about people who use religion to act out their violent fantasies of power and domination. This was certainly the case with Roman Catholicism just as it is with Islam.
Some (male) leaders and members of certain sorts of Catholic groups in Malta leave me with the distinct impression that, given the right context where they could get away with it, they would be more than happy to do the same. I get the creepy feeling that a couple of them are the sort who watch violent porn and snuff movies in which women are killed. Don’t ask me why – I just get that feeling. And at this stage in life, it’s unlikely to be wrong.]
“Islam is no more intolerant and dangerous than Roman Catholicism”
That is like saying that there is basically no difference between the personality of Jesus Christ and Mohammed and what they taught.
[Daphne – Irrelevant. Neither of those two can be held in any way responsible for what was organised after their death in their name. Other men did that, which is why so many aspects of the modus operandi of both were similar, in the drive to secular power masquerading as conquering territory for God (like God gives a damn about how much real estate is held in his name), total domination by men and total subjugation of women.]
One forgets that when Christ sent His disciples to preach the word He told then not to bother with those who were not interested, and to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.
[Daphne – Yes, and look what followed: Roman Catholic ‘shariah’ law throughout a large chunk of Europe, later exported to South and Central America. A few people are expressing horror on this thread because Islam doesn’t allow for apostasy. Well, I hate to break the many-centuries-old news, but Catholicism didn’t either, and the price for that was death.]
During His dying moments He preached forgiveness. The same cannot be said about Mohammed if one goes by what is recorded in Islam’s own Holy books.
Jesus is old enough to toot his own horn.
‘…The only control against a religious dictatorship was a ‘secular’ dictatorship. When the secular dictatorship goes, the religious dictatorship surges in (vide Libya right now)…’
So how does that explain Christianity today? All I see is seculars scared shitless they lose their faith in reason.
Hope it seems, must be rational, or else.
Comparing Christ to one who slew others IS relevant in this case. Even because that’s what they’re doing, following his life to the letter, as written by him, if you please.
Can we at least recognise this to be a part of the problem? Or is that too offensive?
[Daphne – This is not about religion, so the argument has veered off course. It is about violent men looking for an outlet for their violence and finding it there. Nor is this a Christian vs Muslim scenario. This wasn’t an attack on Christianity, but on freedom of expression.]
Can I go one last step in the detour before we get back to the original course?
The way I see it, what we have here is not Islam vs. The Rest but The West vs. The Rest.
Christianity fits more or less comfortably in Western civilisation. I won’t go into the history, but if we just take a snapshot of the present, I see two things:
– Its idioms are largely those of the West (think of a seven-day week with Sunday off, and Christmas)
– It is the ultimate self-effacing religion, so there is only residual conflict with Western secularism.
Islam doesn’t fit comfortably because its idioms are alien to Western civilisation.
This has nothing to do with faith, in either religion. I’m talking of religion as cultural identity.
It’s Socratic Dialectic vs. Confucianism. (Hence my cast-iron condemnation of Taghna Lkoll).
I was struck today by Maajid Nawaz’s comment, when interviewed (I think it was on the BBC). He runs the Quilliam Foundation. He did not repeat the platitudes we’ve been hearing all day about how the vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving and abhor violence.
Instead, he said that the solution is for Islam to open itself to outside scrutiny, just as other cultures and religions have. He said there should not be a fencing-off of Islam, whereby it is shielded from criticism.
And that’s exactly what Christianity went through in the last five hundred years. It dropped the universalist mission and became one of many. Islam will get there, probably before Judaism, and way before Sinosupremacy.
Thanks Baxxter.
Although I do see it the other way round, western civilization is what it is, because of, and not in spite of, Christianity.
Freedom of expression relate directly to a good six hundred years of navel gazing at the meaning of faith and our place in this universe.
I think humanism derived its faith in mankind only after the Sistine chapel was ready, Caravaggio had depicted human misery and the Christ turned from pantocrator to son of man.
Impossible if the only form of expression allowed was symmetry and even more symmetry, let alone the depiction of real flesh.
And that was only thanks to a patron of the arts capable of keeping in line with humanity. And the classical world embracing it. Gentiles, we’ll always be.
If religion cannot be other than the oppressive thing it’s supposed to be, that we be rid of it, Christianity somehow manages to put itself ahead every time.
And I’m sorry if Catholicism had to revert to such cheap tricks as art and illusion; mannerism, hyper realism and pointillism. Isms, all of them.
But yes, when we’re allowed to expect God to exist out of belief, it leaves us the freedom to imagine our universe.
Science in our minds can be free.
Science isn’t even acknowledged in Islam. Definitely not the minor issue of cause and effect. You say not yet.
But when the violent man is the one writing the religion, it becomes a bit tricky to extrapolate.
We had the Greeks, they may need us.
[Daphne – We could argue about this till kingdom come. Actually, western civilisation as we know it – certainly the values we hold most dear – is the result of secular resistance to religious domination. Our freedoms and values were forged through that process. I don’t think even the most fervent Roman Catholic would wish to live in the equivalent of a Roman Catholic state in which religious law is THE law. You mentioned art earlier. Yes, while religious patrons were the reason artistic skills and techniques developed in Europe – they were the ones commissioning the art – art in Europe really began to flourish when painters and sculptors could cut themselves free from the repetitious depiction of saints, Christs, Madonnas and Biblical scenes, and found themselves patrons who were interested in commissioning other things. I keep it brief and simplistic because this is a comments board: European thinking, behaviour, law, social organisation are the product of the fight against religious domination and for freedom of worship and the freedom not to worship at all. It informs everything.]
I withdraw everything I said because I think I might have misunderstood Daphne. I’m not sure whether she was referring to Malta or the entire European continent. I assume it was the former, so her point holds.
The Islamic State terrorism is equivalent to a totalitarian doctrine. It identifies, labels and persecutes an expression of freedom as anti state. Religious fundamentalists portray the same values when they interpret their scriptures literally.
Islam allows no interpretation except the literal one as far as what is laid down in the Quran, because every word is considered as being Allah’s own and therefore remains valid and unchanged until the end of times.
Which is why Islam has remained in the Middle Ages and moving on with modern times has proved so difficult. Unfortunately, this state of affairs will continue to drag the Middle East into the abyss it is heading and unfortunately, the west with it.
[Daphne – This debate is becoming exhausting. European religion (Roman Catholicism) did not change spontaneously but was forced to change by external social evolution on this continent. Had that social evolution not taken place, Roman Catholicism would have stayed exactly where it was – nice and comfortable, murdering and persecuting people for ‘betraying the faith’. So let’s not romanticise the situation, shall we? Let’s just be glad for the secular changes and for secular life in general.]
Islamic State terrorists and religious fundamentalists are killing God. They are the haters of humanity, freedom and justice.
Daphne , while Roman Catholicism has evolved over the past 250 years and is very much an “optional club” , not so with Islam.
Indeed we have seen over the recent past extreme Muslims very much in the forefront, rendering the great silent majority irrelevant.
I don’t even consider Islam a religion, but a sect based on hate, giving men a licence to behave terribly, violently, and debasing women as a mere breeding mechanism.
It indeed surprises me that you are not in the forefront in condemning women who blindly follow such a despicable “religion”.
[Daphne – I don’t condemn anybody for their religion. It’s their business, and not mine. Besides, it’s actions which are condemned and not people – unless the person is in the dock being condemned to death or life imprisonment. Roman Catholicism is not a respecter of women either. We are fortunate to have secular law, and we don’t have any religion to thank for that. Men who are that way inclined do not need a licence to behave terribly and violently and to debase women. They will do so anyway, with or without any religion.]
Daphne, the point you miss is that Islam authorises men to debase and abuse women. The classical case being rape, where the woman is stoned to death.
[Daphne – This is really too much. There are 1.6 BILLION Muslims in the world. When was the last time a woman was stoned to death anywhere civilised? Because it’s not the religion you have to look at. It is the level of civilisation in the state in question. Death by stoning predates Islam in the Middle East as a means of disciplining ‘loose women’. It even predates Christianity, which is why Christ was able to say, when he came across a routine stoning event of a loose woman in his neck of the woods, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ Uncivilised states simply used this as an excuse to create their own snuff non-movies. Are women stoned to death anywhere in North Africa? No, they are not. Are they stoned to death in Turkey? No. Are they stoned to death in Britain? No. Are they stoned to death in France? No. Is the Imam up in Corradino talking about stoning women for putting it about or for being raped? No and no. The same uncivilised states allow men to have multiple wives because the Koran allows it, but in civilised states a Muslim man can only have one wife, because that’s the (secular) law.]
Are all Muslim women with a negative IQ to allow themselves to be brainwashed and accept such an injustice.
[Daphne – I don’t know why you’re bringing this up, quite frankly. Consider the way Maltese women lived, or the fact that married Maltese women had no autonomy and lost many of the rights they had when single, and this until just 20 years ago. You might as well ask the oldest women in your family how they accepted the injustice of watching the men go out to vote when they had no vote.]
And you have the effrontery to equate Roman Catholicism, which certainly has its faults , with that hate sect called Islam.
[Daphne – Don’t talk that way because it reflects badly on you. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are the three ‘religions of the book’. Islam is most definitely classified as a religion and a mainstream one at that: it accounts for 23% of the world’s population.]
The Imam in Corradino is talking Shar’ia law.
Unofficial shar’ia courts are already up and running in both Germany and Britain. Both states left with no choice but to legalize.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3753/islamic-law-german-legal-system
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/islamic-law-to-be-enshrined-in-british-law-as-solicitors-get-guidelines-on-sharia-compliant-wills-9210682.html
[Daphne – Come off it. ‘Both states left with no choice but to legalise’. EU member states can’t have two competing legal systems internally. Unofficial sharia courts are subject to the law of the land. If they authorise, say, a killing it remains murder. The link you posted is about wills and the report is disingenuous. British law, unlike Maltese law, allows you to disinherit your children altogether and leave the lot to the dogs’ home. Under Maltese law you are obliged to leave at least a minuscule portion called the ‘legittima’. This does not stop you from leaving the bulk of your estate to the favoured child and just the ‘legittima’ to the other child, so what needs to be added to that report is the fact that in free Europe you are allowed to do whatever you like with your estate, and are not obliged to leave it to your children, to your children in equal amounts or to anybody at all.
And yes, the German link is worrying – Malta knows through direct experience how bad it is to have secular law on marriage interfered with because of religion. In 1993 the law was changed to allow Roman Catholics with a crisis of conscience to prevent their spouses from seeking a declaration of nullity in the civil courts. And then of course there was the small matter of there being no divorce legislation at all.]
Tu quoque
“The same uncivilised states allow men to have multiple wives because the Koran allows it, but in civilised states a Muslim man can only have one wife, because that’s the (secular) law.]”
Oh no, Daphne, you are really got yourself in a twist now. You conveniently omitted the words …. That’s the (secular) law IN THE WESTERN world, where polygamy is illegal.
Furthermore, you state “in civilised states a Muslim man can only have one wife”. It seems even you are suggesting that all Muslim countries are uncivilised, as they all allow Muslim men to have more than wife.
[Daphne – Rubbish. That’s not what I said at all. You can’t compare Tunisia or Turkey to Saudi Arabia or Iran. I am not about to research the laws of all states with a predominantly Muslim population, but you can’t have failed to notice that Moroccans, Algerians, Libyans, Tunisians, Turks (need I run on?) form their families on the basis of one man and one woman. It’s the Saudis who have multiple wives. And why are you scandalised, anyway? How is a man marrying two women any ‘worse’ than a man marrying another man or a woman marrying another woman, or a woman marrying a man who used to be a woman or a man marrying a woman who used to be a man? Why do you assume that two wives is a form of abuse whereas one wife will not be abused? Most abused women fall into the ‘only wife’ category. At least two women can gang up their abuser.]
I wonder why Islam doesn’t contemplate a woman having more than one husband…. I’ll get my coat.
[Daphne – Because religious rules, even with Christianity and Judaism, have their roots in historical reality. The ruling which allowed men to take up to four wives was made at a time of constant warfare, which left a lot of widows and men in short supply generally. Unmarried women and widows faced, at that time, a life of social exclusion and were at risk of poverty. Allowing men to marry up to four women concurrently was a social solution and not a sexual one. It provided women with a home and male protection and, of course, children. Single women didn’t go out and reproduce. Why do you think pork and shellfish were proscribed originally? Because in that climate and with the poor hygiene of the era, they could kill you. Now it’s part of the religion.]
Daphne, Islam is obviously classified as a religion, and one of the three monotheistic religions.
However this does not in any way alter the fact that certain aspects about it are derogatory and discriminatory as quoted from the Qu Ran itself. Have you heard what the Imam at Corradino had to say about homosexuals?
Fortunately for Roman Catholicism, it has managed to move on from silly fables like Adam and Eve.
[Daphne – Remind me, what is the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuals nowadays? At times I wonder where this deep-seated need to belong to a religion comes from.]
Tu quoque
So the Bible is about silly harmless fables while the Qu’ran is about derogatory and discriminatory views.
Freedom5, you need to free yourself.
Unfortunately you fail to understand that the liberty and freedom we enjoy is due to Christianity.
[Daphne – It isn’t. The freest countries in Europe were among the last to become Christian and there remains a strong ‘pagan’ undertow to their culture. Their attitude towards freedom and personal liberty has its roots in social organisation which predates the arrival of Christianity. The societies most intolerant of personal liberty, in Europe, were also the most religious. It wasn’t religion that made them that way. They were that way to begin with, and that’s why they embraced Roman Catholicism wholeheartedly – it chimed with the values they had already, whereas it was in direct conflict with the values cherished in other parts of Europe.]
Incidentally there is and there has never been a Catholic Sharia law.
[Daphne – Obviously not, because shariah is a word that comes from Islam. If you were not so literal, you would understand that I used that a cypher to avoid having to explain that Roman Catholicism shaped the law in Roman Catholic states, including Malta, where we retained part of that legacy until just two years ago when parliament legislated for divorce.]
Western civilisation has been built by the Catholic Church. It is enough to look at the history of the main European universities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8ysmbkCzQU
Anti-Catholic prejudice does not show an open mind.
[Daphne – I am no more anti-Catholic than I am anti-Muslim. I view both dispassionately, but unfortunately come up against people in Malta who can’t do the same because their feelings about Catholicism are as defensive as the feelings of certain Muslims about Islam, which clouds vision and perception. And then there are the ones who are antagonistic precisely because they were brought up with an overdose of Roman Catholicism. Their views are equally clouded and irritating.]
Imagine if this happened in Malta. People would be considering retaliating by attacking the mosque. Well, nobody went to burn down the Labour HQ when the Times building was burned down.
All this debate only goes to shows the confusion that reins in our society, and I do not think that it will make anyone change his or her point of view. All speak with an air of authority that mocks anyone who disagrees.
May I add two comments that are not mine, but a reproduction of what I have seen in the international reportage on this massacre that can never be justified, condoned or downplayed.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, visiting the site of the murders, cautioned “I am asking people to act responsibly”.
The publishers of Charlie Hebdo boldly underlined the title of their publication with “a journal without responsibility” (in French).
My own comment is that freedom carries with it responsibility. Let no one dare to say that this does not apply to him or her.
Carmelo Abela, despite his name, is definitely NOT CHARLIE.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2015-01-08/local-news/New-Home-Affairs-Minister-urges-media-not-to-undermine-institutions-6736128366