Western Governments To Blame for Beheading of French Teacher, Not Radical Islam

[Neptin]

So about a week ago, a school teacher in France was beheaded by a "refugee" for displaying cartoons of Muhammad in his class. There's been a few related terror incident after that. And Macron and several western leaders have now rallied to condemn the act and reaffirm the primacy of freedom of speech.

All due sympathy to the deceased, but unlike I've done with similar tragedies in the past, I'm not here to blame "Islamism", "Radical Islam", "Traditional Islam" or "Hadith teachings". Instead, this is an avenue to point the hypocrisy & insanity in the west, especially on the political Left.

Macron delivers a speech in a public gathering following the killing of the teacher, Samuel Paty. In summary, he says;

A. Islam is a religion experiencing crisis today, all over the world.
B. There is need to 'free Islam in France from foreign influences'.
C. France failed immigrant communities, 'creating its own separation'.
D. We will not give up caricatures & drawings, even if others back away.

To start, I want to address the false doctrine of "freedom of speech" in the west, and the scam behind it. This is important because freedom of speech remains the greatest scam ever sold outside of religion.

But any close observation of the west reveal that certain speech are not tolerated, they're branded as hate speech, sometimes these speeches are banned and their utterance is punishable.

These include speech that demographics like Jews, Blacks, Asians and Muslims might find offensive, regardless of the veracity of such speech. There are plenty of examples, but the most relevant here would be 'denying the holocaust'. It is in order to avoid hate speech accusations that public figures often maintain political correctness when addressing sensitive subjects.

In Austria, 2018, an Austrian critic of Islam was convicted and fined for insulting Muhammad, despite pleading not guilty on grounds of factual accuracy & freedom of speech.

So, with regards to the Charlie Hebdo's cartoon on Muhammad, let's not mince words up. Going by the western logic of hate speech, this is simply "hate speech". Ironically, although it is insulting Muhammad & Muslims are offended by this cartoon, Macron & his government as well as politicians in other European countries want to play the "free speech" card this time.

Let's see the problems with Macron's speech and western leaders.

A. Islam is a religion experiencing crisis today, all over the world.

Not true. First, Islam is the fastest growing traditional religion, even by conversion. Secondly most Muslims are content with Islam as it is.

Islam is not in a crisis, which is why, I'm sorry to admit, Islamic reform failed. The notion that Islam is currently undergoing some crisis, like Christianity underwent before the Protestant Reformation is false.

B. There is need to 'free Islam in France from foreign influences'.

Apparently the French government don't get Islam. In traditional Islam, criticism of Muhammad is punishable by death, and contrary to Muslim apologists, there is no need for some court to try the culprit, any random Muslim can proceed execute the blasphemer. This constitute hadith teachings.

So don't blame foreign influences on Islam in France, blame the Islamic teachings. But we know that would be too politically incorrect, so even if Macron knows it, he dares not state it.


C. France failed immigrant communities, 'creating its own separation.'

So we all know that western leaders have been pushing for diversity and multiculturalism for a long time. They try to give the impression of "tolerance", "altruism" and try to seem "progressive." And a lot of people fell for it.

But as the years passed, it became clear that they were only looking after their selfish interests - a sustainable voter base, cheap labor source and reorganization of human societies to divide & conquer.

OK. So they import the immigrants but they end up with ethnically segregated communities, and now Macron is citing the need to integrate immigrants as a measure to curb Muslim extremism.

But this clearly shows how warped western thought have become. Birds of a feather flock together. That's pretty much explains segregation. As hard as it is to admit, not every immigrant in France want to share neighborhood or work space with native French. And vice versa.

Lots of Middle eastern Muslim migrants won't integrate because they're of a different background & interest from the french. They may pay lip service, but they don't buy into the west's diversity or multiculturalism obsession. And their choice to self-segregate should be acknowledged.

Heck, pushing integration will further breed conflicts due to differing and contradictory values, cultures and religious doctrines between the migrants and native French. So, Macron will fail.

If France sought integration, the very least the government could've done was to enforce stronger borders, controlled and restricted immigration. This would avoid clustering of large numbers of migrants to form segregated communities.

In short, uncontrolled & mass immigration contributes to segregation, which is has become Macron's scapegoat for France Muslim extremism. Unfortunately, in the west, particularly the English speaking west, to object to the mass or unrestricted immigration system would be xenophobic. So everyone turns a blind eye.

D. We will not give up caricatures & drawings, even if others back away.

Traditional Muslims will not tolerate caricature of their prophet, even if in France.

[reel]

I am not holding anything against Macron. He had to appear rough for the sake of his country.

Far right/fascist groups backed by Russia are always looking to exploit attacks like those to gain people's support. They always need a scapegoat. You can read here how it all works: https://www.sigtheatre.org/signature-in-the-schools-the-spoken-word-educational-resources/fascism-101/

At this point, Macron is competiting against them. It is dangerous to allow them to broadcast their nightmarish views and come to power to turn them into reality. But by copying their style in words, he is able to disarm them and save the country.

But any close observation of the west reveal that certain speech are not tolerated, they're branded as hate speech, sometimes these speeches are banned and their utterance is punishable.

These include speech that demographics like Jews, Blacks, Asians and Muslims might find offensive, regardless of the veracity of such speech. There are plenty of examples, but the most relevant here would be 'denying the holocaust'. It is in order to avoid hate speech accusations that public figures often maintain political correctness when addressing sensitive subjects.

If the hate speech risks many people's lives and are used in hate groups they will ban it.

[Neptin]

I am not holding anything against Macron. He had to appear rough for the sake of his country.

Far-right/fascist groups backed by Russia are always looking to exploit attacks like those to gain people's support. They always need a scapegoat. You can read here how it all works: https://www.sigtheatre.org/signature-in-the-schools-the-spoken-word-educational-resources/fascism-101/

At this point, Macron is competing against them. It is dangerous to allow them to broadcast their nightmarish views and come to power to turn them into reality. But by copying their style in words, he is able to disarm them and save the country.

I don't think so. Macron just proves what the far-right(I use the term loosely) have been saying, and thus is giving them approval. In any case, the terror has been done. And the far-right will point this out and say, "We warned you. We were right all along," regardless of how Macron chose to approach this.

Definitely, I would be concerned with how Macron has handled this if I were concerned about far-right groups.

Lastly, who are these far-right fascists anyway? How much of a threat do they pose? I'm kind of skeptical of people in power with all control of the media, pointing a particular group as the boogeymen of current times.

If the hate speech risks many people's lives and are used in hate groups they will ban it.

The speech that the west censors and bans, mostly don't even risk any life. It is no different from blasphemy in the Muslim world. If someone says that the Nazis didn't cause WW2 or that there was no holocaust of Jews, how does that risk people's lives?

[Wakas]

Misconception: No freedom of speech in Islam
https://www.misconceptions-about-islam.com/misconception.php?id=44

[Anoushirvan]

Ok, I'm a French, and let me explain what is happening here, from a French point of view.


I. Blaming the government for the beheading

First of all, blaming Western governments for the beheading on the French teacher by a radical Muslim is exactly like saying that a woman deserves to be raped because she is dressed like such and such or because she doesn't wear a veil or a scarf.

This inversion of values doesn't serve the cause of those who advocate it.
The criminal who beheaded the teacher and those who support him are to be blamed, and not the French government is to be blamed for the beheading. Period.

II. The "Laïcité" à la Française.

Next, from French viewpoint, Western governments, although they condemned the killing, were fairly reluctant to go further and fully support the French government, and President Macron in his approach of Islam.

This is because France has this strong concept of "laïcité" which is a word barely translatable to other languages and other cultures, so other countries hardly understand it and confuse it with persecution of religions.
 
Laïcité in France is a concept that is intimately tied to France history.
It was originally setup in 1905 to replace the old regime of the Napoleonian "concordat" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordat_of_1801) which itself succeeded to the Civil Constitution of the clergy elaborated during the French Revolution of 1789.

Basically the Napoleonian concordat established official relations between the Government and Catholic church, Protestant churches, and Israelite cult.

In particular, regarding the Israelite cult, the Jews were allowed to remain in France and practice their religion provided they organized themselves in institution that represented them to the Government (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israelite_Central_Consistory_of_France) and provided they gave up some Jewish customs, mostly polygamy.


There is one big missing in this list: Islam.

As there were hardly Muslims in France during the Napoleonian era, Islam was not part of the concordat.
The later conquest of Algeria under King Louis-Philippe didn't bring the opportunity to extend the concordat to include Islam in it, for various reasons, including rejection by Algerian imams to give up some Islamic laws under French ruling contrary to what Jews accepted before.

During the 19th CE, the Catholic church held various political positions against Democracy, against freedom of speech, against freedom of religion, against working and social laws, thus leading to an increasing rejection of Catholic church by a part of the French people.
In parallel, in 1870, France was severely defeated by Germany and lost territories for the benefit of Germany. This has lead to an increasing desire for revenge in France.
French elites then took the opportunity to progressively cut the links between the Catholic church and the Government, so that the elite could takeover the education of the masses, especially in the view of a new war with Germany (that happened in 1914).

In particular, school in 1881 was rendered governmental (public), free, and "laïc", that is, instruction was not made by the Church anymore.
The trend culminated in 1905 by the "laïcité" laws which definitely separated the religions from the State. Religions were forbidden to interfere with the governmental institutions, and in return, freedom of religion was guaranteed by the Government, which was not necessarily the case before, provided they don't cause trouble to the public order.

Laïcité has now become a strong part of the French identity and is explicitly mentioned in the First article of the 1958 Constitution.

But this concept of laïcité does not exist in other Western countries. In those countries, there remains some connection between religions and the government. E.g. in Germany, a tax is taken to people based on their religion. In Belgium, there are religion courses in governmental schools. And so on.

So on this specific point of laïcité and its relationship to religions, France receives very little support from other Western countries.


III. Foreign influences on Islam in France

This is unfortunate that no concordat could be established with Islam before the laïcité came into force.
Because of laïcité, the French government and administration is forbidden to provide any support to Islam, in particular to financially help building mosques or setting up official trainings compatible with French laws of imams endorsed by the State.

Therefore, Muslim people are turning to foreign countries to get help, either for building mosques or for having imams.
In particular, since a lot of Muslim people are descending from immigrants, they are turning to their countries of origins to get support.
This leads to a competition and overbid between those Muslim countries: Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, etc.

Those countries do not provide support for free, they want to influence the community through money. Also they send imams who are not aware of the French laws and culture, thus amplifying the mismatch between Islamic worshiping practices of the faithful and the French way of life.

This is the reason why Macron wants Islam in France to get rid of foreign influences.
The only problem is that the laïcité prevents him to give the means of his ambitions.

In addition, we have to account for the existence of two major movements in Islam today throughout the world (discounting Shia): the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafism.
The movement of Muslim Brotherhood seeks to make governmental institutions compatible with Shari'a, Islamic laws.
Because of this the Muslim Brothers were often chased in various Muslim countries.
In France, they seek to have particular accommodation of the law for Muslims, and this is a direct attack to the laïcité principle.

On the other hand, Salafism in general wants a total impermeability between politics and religion. Salafism is very welcome in Muslim countries ruled by autocrats because the Salafis often don't try to challenge them.
And in France, Salafism is very happy with the laïcité: Salafis often don't vote, they don't ask for particular accommodation although they would welcome them.
They just want to live the Salafi way, and because of this, they are viewed in France as sectarians and extreme communautarism.

But again, because of its own history, France doesn't like communautarism, be it from Islam, or from regional claims.
France is unlike Great Britain or United States which welcome communautarism.

Most countries grew by federating smaller countries or regions, e.g. Germany, United States, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, etc.
France didn't grow like this. Most communities already existed in the French territory conquered by the kings over the centuries.
Under the 3rd Republic, actions were undertaken to reduce the importance of local communities and local languages in order to create a national sentiment in view of a revenge war against Germany.

The problem is that France is responding to Salafi communautarism by extending the notion of laïcité: whereas in 1905, the laïcité meant freedom from interference between religion and government, today in the mind of most people, it means that showing religious signs in public should be banned.

Answer to sectarian behavior should sit at the sectarian attitude, not by denaturing the laïcité concept.

IV. Relationship between Islam and Western countries in general

Whatever troubles France has with Islam because of the laïcité and anti-communautarism attitude, it is not the sole country to face issues with Islam. Yet laïcité, as I explained above is quite unique to France.

Attacks and bombing have been perpetrated by Islamic radicals in various Western countries besides France: Spain, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, US. And I don't even mention Muslim countries.

So it is against Western countries in general that those Islamic radicals have something against, not only France because of the laïcité or Charlie Hebdo.

It should be noted that some months ago Charlie Hebdo drew cartoons insulting French soldiers killed by jihadists in Mali and thus have been heavily criticized by the French government for that.

Yet the French government didn't go to behead Charlie Hebdo's journalists nor did the French army bombing Charlie Hebdo's premises.
Where Charlie Hebo used its freedom of speech for its cartoons insulting the dead soldiers, the French government and other people used their freedom of speech to express their disgust towards those cartoons and that's all.

On the other hand, some years ago, Charlie Hebdo fired one of his cartoonists, Siné (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9) for alleged anti-Semitic cartoons, so Charlie Hebdo is also capable to set themselves some limits, although those appear very flexible...

In general, contrary to United States, European countries have set some limits to free speech, namely to ban hate speech, as it was considered as one of the reasons of the rise of Nazism, WWII, and genocides.

In France, in addition to banning hate speech, the law also forbids to endorse terrorism, called "apology of terrorism".

I find some of those restrictions to free speech questionable. For example, I don't think that Nazism was the result of free speech. Cambodia genocide was not the result of too free speech. The French law on "apology of terrorism" is subject to abuses by police and government who tend to have a too extensive interpretation of it, in my opinion.


Nevertheless, calling freedom of speech in Western countries "scam" and "hypocrisy" is plainly wrong and outrageous.
Go to Muslim countries, or China, or Russia or North Korea and try to exercise there your rights to free speech, then go back here to tell us how it went...If you are still alive.

In fact, such statement like freedom of expression in Western countries is scam or hypocrite is just endorsing terrorist speech.
The goal of terrorists and Islamic radicals in particular is to make these countries overreact to their attacks and constraint them to deny themselves and "reveal their true oppressive face".

The worse is that this terrorist strategy actually works.
In a lot of Western countries, and France in particular, Islamophobia and even rage against Islam is rising, and not only in far right movements. Protestors are shouting "Islam out of Europe !".
Laws are constantly being passed to increasingly monitor citizens since 09/11.


Now, the question is: what is the stake here ?


V.  Islam failure as guidance to mankind
 
In fact, both Islam and Christianity have long been developed the ambition to be the civilizational pole for mankind.
For Islam, this ambition was developed especially under the Abbasid era.

This ambition finds this root in the underlying messianic impulse that triggered first Christianity, then Arabic proto-Islam during the 7th CE as evidenced by some old chronicles of that time.

In ancient Jewish thought, the coming of the Messiah would result in an era of eternal peace, the Kingdom of God, and a common law for Israel and the pagans.

Under the Abbasid dynasty, the theologians and legal scholars elaborated the concept of Dar al-Islam, the Domain of Peace under Islam submission, and Dar al-Harb, the Domain of War outside Islam rule, which is exactly a far remote derivative of the forgotten original messianic idea.

The original messianic idea ended to be forgotten in Islam under the Abbasid because Qur'an set a ban on Messianism.
Qur'an actually dismissed the original messianic idea that animated the Arabs in the beginning of 7th CE, when they started their conquest, calling it "fassad", that is, spreading corruption of earth, i.e. causing chaos and war, because this idea was based on the idea that the Messiah would be a war leader as some ancient Jews thought he would be.

During the 8th and 9th CE, those competing traditions among Arabs progressively merged into a common framework that we call "Islam" today.

But the original messianic idea that some kingdom of God should become the civilizational pole to mankind still remained.


Therefore, during centuries, both Islam and Christianity fought each other to be acknowledged as the civilizational pole for humanity.

For complex historical reasons, Islam and Islamic civilization ended up to lose this battleship for being a guidance (huda) for mankind to the benefit of Christianity, and later to the successor of Christianity, i.e. the West.

Islam then stalled for centuries until 19th CE, when most Islamic countries and people suddenly woke up under the West rule and its colonization.
This Western colonization was not only motivated by taking natural resources in colonized countries. West saw also itself as having a mission to civilize the world.

Towards the end of the 19th CE, some Muslim intellectuals, especially Al-Afghani, Ridda, or Abdu, thought about reviving Islam in order to fight back West and get rid of colonization.
They prophesized that atheist and immoral West for ultimately fail despite its technological strength, provided Islam comes back to its root.

Nevertheless, this prophecy utterly failed, despite West being exhausted and weakened by two world wars.

And in the near future, it is not clear whether West will remain the civilizational pole for humanity, because it looks like it could collapse from internal due to people not believing in Western values anymore, namely democracy and freedom.

But one thing is clear anyway: if West stops being the civilizational pole for mankind, it will not be to the benefit of Islam.
If any pole emerges in the future, it will likely be China or even India, both being much more anti-Islam than West today.


Statements like there is no crisis in Islam because Muslims do not feel there is a crisis is simply a denial of reality.
From economical point of view, Muslim countries are mostly failed countries.
Consciously or unconsciously, Muslims are upset to having lost the battleship for being the guidance to mankind despite promises in Qur'an they are the best "umma", and jihadists are  just capturing this resent.

Instead of doing self-introspection of why the Islamic project failed to be a guidance for mankind, Muslims blame Western countries for their fate as they weren't to bare a share of responsibility. They feel they are like Prophet Muhammad in Medina facing a heterogeneous coalition of polytheists, Jews and Christians.

But such way of thinking cannot be successful.

[Neptin]

Misconception: No freedom of speech in Islam
https://www.misconceptions-about-islam.com/misconception.php?id=44

Most Muslims are not Qur'anists, they're hadithists. In traditional Islam, there are hadith sanctioning death for insulting Muhammad. In traditional Islam, there is a concept of abrogation of earlier verses by later verses or by hadith. It's as simple as that. It's not a question of whether the Qur'an enjoins freedom of speech, it is a question of whether Muslims enjoin freedom of speech.

That said, although you could make a case for freedom of speech in the Qur'an, when it all come to realities of the physical world, freedom of speech is unattainable. And any society that promises freedom of speech is con.

[Neptin]

Ok, I'm a French, and let me explain what is happening here, from a French point of view.


I. Blaming the government for the beheading

First of all, blaming Western governments for the beheading on the French teacher by a radical Muslim is exactly like saying that a woman deserves to be raped because she is dressed like such and such or because she doesn't wear a veil or a scarf.

This inversion of values doesn't serve the cause of those who advocate it.
The criminal who beheaded the teacher and those who support him are to be blamed, and not the French government is to be blamed for the beheading. Period.

That's not a good analogy. Samuel Paty, the teacher is the victim, not the government. I'm not blaming the teacher.

II. The "Laïcité" à la Française.

Next, from French viewpoint, Western governments, although they condemned the killing, were fairly reluctant to go further and fully support the French government, and President Macron in his approach of Islam.

This is because France has this strong concept of "laïcité" which is a word barely translatable to other languages and other cultures, so other countries hardly understand it and confuse it with persecution of religions.
 
Laïcité in France is a concept that is intimately tied to France history.
It was originally setup in 1905 to replace the old regime of the Napoleonian "concordat" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordat_of_1801) which itself succeeded to the Civil Constitution of the clergy elaborated during the French Revolution of 1789.

Basically the Napoleonian concordat established official relations between the Government and Catholic church, Protestant churches, and Israelite cult.

In particular, regarding the Israelite cult, the Jews were allowed to remain in France and practice their religion provided they organized themselves in institution that represented them to the Government (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israelite_Central_Consistory_of_France) and provided they gave up some Jewish customs, mostly polygamy.


There is one big missing in this list: Islam.

As there were hardly Muslims in France during the Napoleonian era, Islam was not part of the concordat.
The later conquest of Algeria under King Louis-Philippe didn't bring the opportunity to extend the concordat to include Islam in it, for various reasons, including rejection by Algerian imams to give up some Islamic laws under French ruling contrary to what Jews accepted before.

During the 19th CE, the Catholic church held various political positions against Democracy, against freedom of speech, against freedom of religion, against working and social laws, thus leading to an increasing rejection of Catholic church by a part of the French people.
In parallel, in 1870, France was severely defeated by Germany and lost territories for the benefit of Germany. This has lead to an increasing desire for revenge in France.
French elites then took the opportunity to progressively cut the links between the Catholic church and the Government, so that the elite could takeover the education of the masses, especially in the view of a new war with Germany (that happened in 1914).

In particular, school in 1881 was rendered governmental (public), free, and "laïc", that is, instruction was not made by the Church anymore.
The trend culminated in 1905 by the "laïcité" laws which definitely separated the religions from the State. Religions were forbidden to interfere with the governmental institutions, and in return, freedom of religion was guaranteed by the Government, which was not necessarily the case before, provided they don't cause trouble to the public order.

Laïcité has now become a strong part of the French identity and is explicitly mentioned in the First article of the 1958 Constitution.

But this concept of laïcité does not exist in other Western countries. In those countries, there remains some connection between religions and the government. E.g. in Germany, a tax is taken to people based on their religion. In Belgium, there are religion courses in governmental schools. And so on.

So on this specific point of laïcité and its relationship to religions, France receives very little support from other Western countries.

III. Foreign influences on Islam in France

This is unfortunate that no concordat could be established with Islam before the laïcité came into force.
Because of laïcité, the French government and administration is forbidden to provide any support to Islam, in particular to financially help building mosques or setting up official trainings compatible with French laws of imams endorsed by the State.

Therefore, Muslim people are turning to foreign countries to get help, either for building mosques or for having imams.
In particular, since a lot of Muslim people are descending from immigrants, they are turning to their countries of origins to get support.
This leads to a competition and overbid between those Muslim countries: Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, etc.

Those countries do not provide support for free, they want to influence the community through money. Also they send imams who are not aware of the French laws and culture, thus amplifying the mismatch between Islamic worshiping practices of the faithful and the French way of life.

This is the reason why Macron wants Islam in France to get rid of foreign influences.
The only problem is that the laïcité prevents him to give the means of his ambitions.

In addition, we have to account for the existence of two major movements in Islam today throughout the world (discounting Shia): the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafism.
The movement of Muslim Brotherhood seeks to make governmental institutions compatible with Shari'a, Islamic laws.
Because of this the Muslim Brothers were often chased in various Muslim countries.
In France, they seek to have particular accommodation of the law for Muslims, and this is a direct attack to the laïcité principle.

On the other hand, Salafism in general wants a total impermeability between politics and religion. Salafism is very welcome in Muslim countries ruled by autocrats because the Salafis often don't try to challenge them.
And in France, Salafism is very happy with the laïcité: Salafis often don't vote, they don't ask for particular accommodation although they would welcome them.
They just want to live the Salafi way, and because of this, they are viewed in France as sectarians and extreme communautarism.

But again, because of its own history, France doesn't like communautarism, be it from Islam, or from regional claims.
France is unlike Great Britain or United States which welcome communautarism.

Most countries grew by federating smaller countries or regions, e.g. Germany, United States, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, etc.
France didn't grow like this. Most communities already existed in the French territory conquered by the kings over the centuries.
Under the 3rd Republic, actions were undertaken to reduce the importance of local communities and local languages in order to create a national sentiment in view of a revenge war against Germany.

The problem is that France is responding to Salafi communautarism by extending the notion of laïcité: whereas in 1905, the laïcité meant freedom from interference between religion and government, today in the mind of most people, it means that showing religious signs in public should be banned.

Answer to sectarian behavior should sit at the sectarian attitude, not by denaturing the laïcité concept.

IV. Relationship between Islam and Western countries in general

Whatever troubles France has with Islam because of the laïcité and anti-communautarism attitude, it is not the sole country to face issues with Islam. Yet laïcité, as I explained above is quite unique to France.

Attacks and bombing have been perpetrated by Islamic radicals in various Western countries besides France: Spain, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, US. And I don't even mention Muslim countries.

So it is against Western countries in general that those Islamic radicals have something against, not only France because of the laïcité or Charlie Hebdo.

It should be noted that some months ago Charlie Hebdo drew cartoons insulting French soldiers killed by jihadists in Mali and thus have been heavily criticized by the French government for that.

Yet the French government didn't go to behead Charlie Hebdo's journalists nor did the French army bombing Charlie Hebdo's premises.
Where Charlie Hebo used its freedom of speech for its cartoons insulting the dead soldiers, the French government and other people used their freedom of speech to express their disgust towards those cartoons and that's all.

On the other hand, some years ago, Charlie Hebdo fired one of his cartoonists, Siné (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9) for alleged anti-Semitic cartoons, so Charlie Hebdo is also capable to set themselves some limits, although those appear very flexible...

In general, contrary to United States, European countries have set some limits to free speech, namely to ban hate speech, as it was considered as one of the reasons of the rise of Nazism, WWII, and genocides.

In France, in addition to banning hate speech, the law also forbids to endorse terrorism, called "apology of terrorism".

I find some of those restrictions to free speech questionable. For example, I don't think that Nazism was the result of free speech. Cambodia genocide was not the result of too free speech. The French law on "apology of terrorism" is subject to abuses by police and government who tend to have a too extensive interpretation of it, in my opinion.

OK. This has been quite educating.

Nevertheless, calling freedom of speech in Western countries "scam" and "hypocrisy" is plainly wrong and outrageous.
Go to Muslim countries, or China, or Russia or North Korea and try to exercise there your rights to free speech, then go back here to tell us how it went...If you are still alive.

Well, these countries outright tell you they reject freedom of speech, so you know what you're up against. The west tells you that they support freedom of speech, yet there are so many exceptions. There is no freedom to criticize minority communities, like Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Asians, LGBT or women. There are doctrines and tenets in the west that you're not allowed to criticize - like the holocaust narratives or the victimhood narratives by minority groups like blacks.

In fact, such statement like freedom of expression in Western countries is scam or hypocrite is just endorsing terrorist speech.
The goal of terrorists and Islamic radicals in particular is to make these countries overreact to their attacks and constraint them to deny themselves and "reveal their true oppressive face".

The worse is that this terrorist strategy actually works.
In a lot of Western countries, and France in particular, Islamophobia and even rage against Islam is rising, and not only in far right movements. Protestors are shouting "Islam out of Europe !".
Laws are constantly being passed to increasingly monitor citizens since 09/11.

But what else can I do? I have to call a spade a spade. It wasn't always so. I used to believe the west stood for freedom of speech, I argued in defense of Charlie Hebdo in 2015 when I was actively promoting Quranism and Islamic reform. It all changed for me by mid 2019.

Now, the question is: what is the stake here ?


V.  Islam failure as guidance to mankind
 
In fact, both Islam and Christianity have long been developed the ambition to be the civilizational pole for mankind.
For Islam, this ambition was developed especially under the Abbasid era.

This ambition finds this root in the underlying messianic impulse that triggered first Christianity, then Arabic proto-Islam during the 7th CE as evidenced by some old chronicles of that time.

In ancient Jewish thought, the coming of the Messiah would result in an era of eternal peace, the Kingdom of God, and a common law for Israel and the pagans.

Under the Abbasid dynasty, the theologians and legal scholars elaborated the concept of Dar al-Islam, the Domain of Peace under Islam submission, and Dar al-Harb, the Domain of War outside Islam rule, which is exactly a far remote derivative of the forgotten original messianic idea.

The original messianic idea ended to be forgotten in Islam under the Abbasid because Qur'an set a ban on Messianism.
Qur'an actually dismissed the original messianic idea that animated the Arabs in the beginning of 7th CE, when they started their conquest, calling it "fassad", that is, spreading corruption of earth, i.e. causing chaos and war, because this idea was based on the idea that the Messiah would be a war leader as some ancient Jews thought he would be.

During the 8th and 9th CE, those competing traditions among Arabs progressively merged into a common framework that we call "Islam" today.

But the original messianic idea that some kingdom of God should become the civilizational pole to mankind still remained.


Therefore, during centuries, both Islam and Christianity fought each other to be acknowledged as the civilizational pole for humanity.

For complex historical reasons, Islam and Islamic civilization ended up to lose this battleship for being a guidance (huda) for mankind to the benefit of Christianity, and later to the successor of Christianity, i.e. the West.

Islam then stalled for centuries until 19th CE, when most Islamic countries and people suddenly woke up under the West rule and its colonization.
This Western colonization was not only motivated by taking natural resources in colonized countries. West saw also itself as having a mission to civilize the world.

Towards the end of the 19th CE, some Muslim intellectuals, especially Al-Afghani, Ridda, or Abdu, thought about reviving Islam in order to fight back West and get rid of colonization.
They prophesized that atheist and immoral West for ultimately fail despite its technological strength, provided Islam comes back to its root.

Nevertheless, this prophecy utterly failed, despite West being exhausted and weakened by two world wars.

And in the near future, it is not clear whether West will remain the civilizational pole for humanity, because it looks like it could collapse from internal due to people not believing in Western values anymore, namely democracy and freedom.

But one thing is clear anyway: if West stops being the civilizational pole for mankind, it will not be to the benefit of Islam.
If any pole emerges in the future, it will likely be China or even India, both being much more anti-Islam than West today.

Fair enough.

Statements like there is no crisis in Islam because Muslims do not feel there is a crisis is simply a denial of reality.
From economical point of view, Muslim countries are mostly failed countries.
Consciously or unconsciously, Muslims are upset to having lost the battleship for being the guidance to mankind despite promises in Qur'an they are the best "umma", and jihadists are  just capturing this resent.

Instead of doing self-introspection of why the Islamic project failed to be a guidance for mankind, Muslims blame Western countries for their fate as they weren't to bare a share of responsibility. They feel they are like Prophet Muhammad in Medina facing a heterogeneous coalition of polytheists, Jews and Christians.

But such way of thinking cannot be successful.

You're missing the point. The Muslim world is lagging in the scientific, technological, or economic arena. But none of these imply a crisis within Islam. Far more than the west, the Muslim world retains a unique and strong religious and cultural identity and the families units are closer and more intact.

This is not crisis.

[Jafar]

I. Blaming the government for the beheading

First of all, blaming Western governments for the beheading on the French teacher by a radical Muslim is exactly like saying that a woman deserves to be raped because she is dressed like such and such or because she doesn't wear a veil or a scarf.

This inversion of values doesn't serve the cause of those who advocate it.
The criminal who beheaded the teacher and those who support him are to be blamed, and not the French government is to be blamed for the beheading. Period.

Agree..

Yet using your own metaphor of blaming the raped women, it's like the men blaming the raped woman because they have fear of being blamed by the women, all men are rapist. Better throw the blame first before being blamed and/or throw the blame back when you're being blamed.

Not a justification definitely, but I'm sharing with you the 'why' aspect so you can understand better.

II. The "Laïcité" à la Française.
Laïcité has now become a strong part of the French identity and is explicitly mentioned in the First article of the 1958 Constitution.

But this concept of laïcité does not exist in other Western countries. In those countries, there remains some connection between religions and the government. E.g. in Germany, a tax is taken to people based on their religion. In Belgium, there are religion courses in governmental schools. And so on.

So on this specific point of laïcité and its relationship to religions, France receives very little support from other Western countries.

Thank you for sharing the historical aspect of power struggle between 'religious body / institution' and 'government institution' in France.

III. Foreign influences on Islam in France

This is unfortunate that no concordat could be established with Islam before the laïcité came into force.
Because of laïcité, the French government and administration is forbidden to provide any support to Islam, in particular to financially help building mosques or setting up official trainings compatible with French laws of imams endorsed by the State.

Might potentially caused issue on 'which Islam' to be included.

Which also intrigued me about the laicite, do they include Russian Orthodox institution, Greek Orthodox institution, Syrian Orthodox institution, Coptic institution, Jehovah Witness institution, Mormon institution, Kaballah institution in the laicite?

And how about the buddhist institution doing in France, they're not included in the laicite?
Does exclusion from laicite also cause problems for them?
Yet if you came back with question of "which Buddhist institution", that is also a valid question...

I recently exposed to Plum village, and surprised to learn that they're a vietnamese buddhist monastery in France?
https://youtu.be/KKBDXcmRpAY

Therefore, Muslim people are turning to foreign countries to get help, either for building mosques or for having imams.
In particular, since a lot of Muslim people are descending from immigrants, they are turning to their countries of origins to get support.
This leads to a competition and overbid between those Muslim countries: Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, etc.
Those countries do not provide support for free, they want to influence the community through money. Also they send imams who are not aware of the French laws and culture, thus amplifying the mismatch between Islamic worshiping practices of the faithful and the French way of life.

And each have their own political agenda to support... understood..

This is the reason why Macron wants Islam in France to get rid of foreign influences.
The only problem is that the laïcité prevents him to give the means of his ambitions.

And he didn't want Buddhist in France to get rid of foreign influences too?

Maybe it's wiser for him to convey to all people in France (or the world) in general to get rid of hatred, pride, supremacist teachings, from whatever the sources.

In addition, we have to account for the existence of two major movements in Islam today throughout the world (discounting Shia): the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafism.

Why only two? MB doesn't have official government support as of now, while Salafism has many sub-sects, among them Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia and MB itself is a subsect of Salafism or the other way around is also true, depending on your perspective. And definitely MB and Wahhabist hate each others to the bone... because that's the key foundation of their teachings in the first place, fear and hatred.

Attacks and bombing have been perpetrated by Islamic radicals in various Western countries besides France: Spain, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, US. And I don't even mention Muslim countries.

So it is against Western countries in general that those Islamic radicals have something against, not only France because of the laïcité or Charlie Hebdo.

Not true.. Islamist Fanatics have problems with everyone that is not among their group or share their view.
Well actually fanatics and supremacist in general will have problems with everyone that is not among their group or share their view.

And you should mention attacks and bombings in non-western countries as well such as Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, India, Philippines, China.

It should be noted that some months ago Charlie Hebdo drew cartoons insulting French soldiers killed by jihadists in Mali and thus have been heavily criticized by the French government for that.

On the other hand, some years ago, Charlie Hebdo fired one of his cartoonists, Siné (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9) for alleged anti-Semitic cartoons, so Charlie Hebdo is also capable to set themselves some limits, although those appear very flexible...

I don't agree to Charlie Hebdo firing one of his cartoonist due to anti-semitic cartoons either.

People or group of people who is not capable of laughing about themselves has a kind of mental sickness and insecurity within them.

The same goes to Donald J Trump in this case, which currently show similar tendency.

In general, contrary to United States, European countries have set some limits to free speech, namely to ban hate speech, as it was considered as one of the reasons of the rise of Nazism, WWII, and genocides.

I tend to agree on 'banning' hate speech.
Although I'm more of support educating the masses the ability to recognize 'hate' speech.

Lately I stumbled on a pamphlet issued by Indonesian government to their citizen, it basically say:

How To Recognize The Radicals?
1. They spread fear and hatred.
2. They think that they're superior
3. They don't tolerate other view and people outside of their own group.

It's a socialization pamphlet as part of their 'religious deradicalization program'.
Without mentioning a specific name of religion.

V.  Islam failure as guidance to mankind
 
In fact, both Islam and Christianity have long been developed the ambition to be the civilizational pole for mankind.
For Islam, this ambition was developed especially under the Abbasid era.

Under the Abbasid dynasty, the theologians and legal scholars elaborated the concept of Dar al-Islam, the Domain of Peace under Islam submission, and Dar al-Harb, the Domain of War outside Islam rule, which is exactly a far remote derivative of the forgotten original messianic idea.

Therefore, during centuries, both Islam and Christianity fought each other to be acknowledged as the civilizational pole for humanity.

Statements like there is no crisis in Islam because Muslims do not feel there is a crisis is simply a denial of reality.
From economical point of view, Muslim countries are mostly failed countries.
Consciously or unconsciously, Muslims are upset to having lost the battleship for being the guidance to mankind despite promises in Qur'an they are the best "umma", and jihadists are  just capturing this resent.

Instead of doing self-introspection of why the Islamic project failed to be a guidance for mankind, Muslims blame Western countries for their fate as they weren't to bare a share of responsibility. They feel they are like Prophet Muhammad in Medina facing a heterogeneous coalition of polytheists, Jews and Christians.

See how those fit the 3 criteria as outlined by the Indonesian government pamphlet

How To Recognize The Radicals?
1. They spread fear and hatred.
2. They think that they're superior
3. They don't tolerate other view and people outside of their own group.

Not only "The Religious" as mentioned by you above, but the Colonialist as well..

But such way of thinking cannot be successful.

Indeed it will not.. and never will be..
Hatred beget hatred, fear beget fear, pride beget pride.

[Anoushirvan]

Well, these countries outright tell you they reject freedom of speech, so you know what you're up against. The west tells you that they support freedom of speech, yet there are so many exceptions. There is no freedom to criticize minority communities, like Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Asians, LGBT or women. There are doctrines and tenets in the west that you're not allowed to criticize - like the holocaust narratives or the victimhood narratives by minority groups like blacks.

You may surely have a point here, but if you present it in a kind of outrageous way, it will not serve your cause. So let me rephrase according to my own views, and hopefully you could agree with it.

In Western countries, you find these things about speech: laws about freedom of speech, and the more recent phenomenon of social  justice warriors (SJW).

I have a definition of SJW that is likely more extensive than its current meaning. I include in the definition of SJW individuals who fight some kind of speech to defend their own beliefs.

In Western countries, laws about free speech have be designed to protect people from governments, administrations and institutions trying to put abusive and illegitimate restrictions on free speech.
But those laws were never been thought to protect free speech from SJW.

I'm not far from beginning to consider the guy having beheaded the teacher as a kind of very extreme case of SJW.

In European countries, hate speech is by law never accepted as free speech. This might be different in US.
Targeting a group because of what they are is considered hate speech here.

On the other hand, targeting a group because of what they think, what they believe or what they do is usually never considered hate speech, although locally some courts may settle otherwise.

Sexual identity (being homosexual, heterosexual, transsexual, etc.) is considered of what an individual is, so targeting LGBT because of their sexual identity is considered hate speech is most Western countries.
On the other hand, targeting LGBT because they claim some political rights is not considered hate speech.

Regarding religion, the law protects from discriminating people solely based on their faith, e.g. at work, even if criticizing religions itself is allowed.

Now, the problem is that Muslims tend to claim that what they believe is what they are, so that targeting Islam, especially mocking Prophet Muhammad, is hate speech by definition.
But such claim is not accepted, at least in France, hence the misunderstanding between France and the Muslim world.


In France and some other countries, it is illegal to deny Holocaust, gas chambers, or crimes against humanity.
While I believe it is morally wrong to deny Holocaust and such, I also believe that this should not be legally forbidden.
Morally wrong and legally wrong are two different things and should not be confused.


Next, there is the rising problem of the social justice warriors, whether they are from far left wing or from far right wing.
SJW hound people to discourage some kind of speech that is still considered lawful.
Laws protecting free speech are currently powerless here, social networks play a bad game too because they live from the buzz caused by SJW, and worse, political forces are connections with some SJW groups, so are not always willing to improve the law to stop that phenomenon.

You're missing the point. The Muslim world is lagging in the scientific, technological, or economic arena. But none of these imply a crisis within Islam. Far more than the west, the Muslim world retains a unique and strong religious and cultural identity and the families units are closer and more intact.

This is not crisis.

You don't understand the point here: lagging in the scientific, technological, or economic arena is because of Islam as religion and this is why we say there is a crisis within Islam.
That Muslims don't want to see it or connect the above lagging with Islam is different and also an indication of the Islam crisis.

First you have to note that barely masses will be able to make the connection between scientific, technological, or economic lagging and religion.
Same problem in other cultures in different contexts.
This is the job of intellectuals to think and do the connection and enlighten the masses.

At the end of the 19th CE, Muslim intellectuals were able to recognize that Islam was in crisis.

Nowadays, when Muslim intellectuals want to propose a progressive and liberal approach to Islam (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_and_progressivism_within_Islam), they are called atheists or traitors sold to the West and they are hounded not only by ulemas and screaming mobs but also by their governments.

So sure, by breaking the thermometer, one can still claim there is no fever.

Note that Qur'an-alone intellectuals are among those targeted by ulemas and Muslim governments.


That scientific lagging in Muslim countries is linked to Islam as religion comes from the fact that in Islam, everything is created by God whatever the way He created the Universe.
So if He created the Universe with these laws, then this proves that God is All-Powerful.
And if He created the Universe with those laws instead, then this also proves that He is All-Powerful.

This way of thinking barely encourages positive attitude towards science, because, after all, it doesn't matter what are the laws of Nature since in any case, God created them.

On the other hand, science works and makes progress by putting forward hypotheses (i.e. theories), challenging them by experiences and observations, disproving some, corroborating others.

If Muslims want to stop lagging in scientific arena, they must do science for what it is and to increase common human knowledge, and not for proving that God is great and that Islam is the true religion.

Regarding technological arena, in order to make technological progress, as an engineer myself, I can tell you that you need a mindset that allows you to transgress the state of the art.
Progress and transgress proceed from the same mindset, that is to go beyond some recognized limits.

But here is the catch: you cannot have technological progress without allowing some degree of social transgress.
In Western countries, they managed to make substantial technological progress when they allowed themselves to make some social transgress, including free speech, freedom of religion, women rights, greater acceptance of sexuality outside marriage.

Muslim intellectuals I mentioned above, Al-Afghani & Co, thought it was possible for the Muslim world to catch up West with technological lagging without having to compromise Islamic social rigor and accept so-called Western immorality.

But that program didn't work, it couldn't work that way.

[amin]

The problem I see, with the identity "Muslims" we had to take too much burden on ourselves, had to justify rogue elements who bring religion onto everything and in their fight  with their real and unknown enemies,  as infact many started idolizing things like Prophet, Quran and the Arab symbols,  rather seeing those with reason. In many cases we do not know if things are really true as the media and the world is more Islamophobic and these things sells easily.