I dislike Reason magazine most of the time, but there is some inevitable overlap on liberal and human rights values. One of those overlaps covers the disputes over Charlie Hebdo. Reason isn’t wrong on this one.

The massacre at the Paris offices of the venerable satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has been met with near-universal condemnation, but a growing chorus of self-appointed arbiters of good taste are going public, following up cursory denunciations of the murders with caveats that Charlie Hebdo is a “provocative,” “racist,” “Islamophobic,” “homophobic” publication who brought much of its trouble on itself.

Richard Seymour at Jacobin makes this point most succinctly in the final paragraph of his article…

Speaking of which, why are so many people … Read the rest

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Via AFP on Twitter:

AFP Photo Department ‏@AFPphoto 2 hours ago
More than 230,000 rally in France after Islamist attacks #AFP #JeSuisCharlie

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The IHEU has a passionate and moving post on Raif Badawi.

It is reported that officials have carried out the first 50 lashes of a 1000-lashes sentence against Saudi liberal, Raif Badawi. The charges related to his running of a Liberal Saudi website, focused on advocating greater religious freedom, which was deemed “insulting to Islam” and a threat to the state.

The order papers indicated that the lashings should be “severe”. Witnesses said that despite the severity of the beating today, Raif Badawi “did not flinch; he held the victory symbol and [a] guard had to hold his hand down“.

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) has consistently protested the prosecution and detention of Raif Badawi

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A terrific essay by Kenan Malik – je suis charlie? it’s a bit late.

The expressions of solidarity with those slain in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices are impressive. They are also too late. Had journalists and artists and political  activists taken a more robust view on free speech over the past 20 years then we may never have come to this.

Remember the fatwa on Rushdie? That’s when it started – people saying “wellllllllll maybe he really shouldn’t have…”

It’s partly fear, Kenan says, but not only that.

There has also developed over the past two decades a moral commitment to censorship, a belief that because we live in a plural society, so we must police

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Raif Badawi did receive those 50 lashes today.

What follows is making me writhe with rage and grief and more rage, so be warned.

The CBC reports:

“We received confirmation that the 50 first lashes were given this morning,” Mireille Elchacar told the CBC Radio showQuebec AM,adding that Badawi spoke with his wife not long after receiving his first 50 lashings.

“Of course she is devastated. I think he was not very fond of giving details to his wife to not scare her, so he did not give any more details.”

Elchacar, who is a spokeswoman for Amnesty International, said Badawi is not in good health.

“They decided to make him see a doctor before the lashing

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Guest post by Salty Current

I posted the other day just after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, referring to a film I’d recommended back in 2011 – It’s Hard Being Loved By Jerks.¹ It was a documentary about Charlie Hebdo’s decision to publish the Danish cartoons and the court case that followed. What was clear in the film was that the staff at CH, a leftwing, antiauthoritarian publication, were very concerned that their publishing the images not contribute to racism or be seen as supporting the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant Right. The choice of cover, with Mohammed in despair saying “It’s hard being loved by jerks,” was quite brilliant, targeting the Islamists and separating them from the Muslim community.

CH … Read the rest

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Via Twitter –

John Moffitt ‏@JohnRMoffitt 2h2 hours ago
#JeSuisCharlie I couldn’t be more proud to hear that 87 yr old Uderzo (father of Asterix) coming out of retirement!

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Via Samantha Power on Twitter –

 … Read the rest

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Via Twitter – the popularity of #jesuischarlie

That little bright spot in the northwest corner of the US/Southwest corner of Canada – that’s the Vancouver-Seattle corridor. C’est nous.… Read the rest

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Stéphane Charbonnier in the Toronto Star in 2013 said firmly that Charlie Hebdo is not racist.

Charlie, our Charlie Hebdo, is feeling decidedly ill. Because an unbelievable lie is going around, among more and more people, and we hear it every day. According to them, Charlie Hebdo has become a racist sheet.

One day, an Arab taxi driver tells someone who works for the paper, whom he recognizes, to get out of his car – supposedly because of images mocking the Muslim religion. Another day, someone refuses to do an interview with us because he “doesn’t speak to a newspaper full of racists.”

We’re almost ashamed to recall that anti-racism and a passion for equality among all people are and

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Tehmina sent me this Wednesday evening my time, moments after I’d gone offline for the day. It appeared at Left Foot Forward yesterday and now I’m cross-posting it (LFF is cool with that). Tehmina is the director of British Muslims for Secular Democracy.

Debunking Nine False Assumptions you may have heard in the aftermath of the Paris atrocities

False Assumption One

“Charlie Hebdo magazine was needlessly provocative.”

Manufacturers of outrage and assorted agitators do not need any kind of “provocation” for their actions.  When Jyllands-Posten published the Danish cartoons in September 2005, protests in Muslim-majority countries did not start until four months later.  Mona Eltahawy’s interview with Jytte Klausen, the Danish-born author of the Yale Press’s forthcoming book, “Cartoons That … Read the rest

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Originally a comment by Salty Current on Charlie Hebdo is not racist.

This is a tough one. I don’t think you can legitimately make the claim that Charlie Hebdo was a racist publication, but to say as a blanket statement that it was not racist, full stop? That seems extremely unlikely, given what we know about the pervasiveness of racism*.

I didn’t write that title, but honestly if this is how people are going to be arguing, I don’t think a real discussion can be had. People haven’t been making general statements like “No one’s immune from racism.” They’ve been arguing for the past day or so that CH is a racist publication, using a couple of cartoons as … Read the rest

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From the IHEU –

IHEU ‏@IHEU 1 hour ago
The international symbol of humanism; redesigned in solidarity.

http://iheu.org/iheu-statement-on-charlie-hebdo-attack/ …

#JeSuisCharlie #FreeRaif

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Bill Donohue put out one of his press releases yesterday, saying that the people at Charlie Hebdo deserved what they got.

Killing in response to insult, no matter how gross, must be unequivocally condemned. That is why what happened in Paris cannot be tolerated. But neither should we tolerate the kind of intolerance that provoked this violent reaction.

Those who work at this newspaper have a long and disgusting record of going way beyond the mere lampooning of public figures, and this is especially true of their depictions of religious figures. For example, they have shown nuns masturbating and popes wearing condoms. They have also shown Muhammad in pornographic poses.

Evil theocratic bastard. Yes we should and must tolerate … Read the rest

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The New Yorker’s next cover, by Ana Juan:

… Read the rest

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Maryam also rejects the claim that the people at Charlie Hebdo brought the massacre on themselves or even perhaps deserved it.

A quick look at the English-speaking media shows that whilst many condemn the violence itself, they also assert that Charlie Hebdo courted (and maybe deserved?) a strong response from “Muslims”. Charlie’s regular cartoonists did not spare Islam, any other religion, nor fanatics and bigots.

This trend in the media requires our attention. Apparently secularists, agnostics and atheists must keep silent and do not deserve the kind of respect that believers are entitled to; nor can they enjoy free speech to the same degree.

Religion and religious figures deserve respect; people with no religion and thus no religious figures – … Read the rest

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Salty Current has a post explaining the nature of Charlie Hebdo’s satire.

In 2011, I recommended a documentary about the paper and their struggles surrounding the publication of anti-Islamist cartoons. What struck me in the film, surprising given the paper’s (often self-promoted) image as not just irreverent but irresponsible, was how thoughtfully the people at Charlie Hebdo approached humor in this case.

Guess what, they didn’t approach it the way, say, Ricky Gervais does, basically saying that (as Salty puts it) “humor should offend.”

The attitude of the editors at Charlie Hebdo, as shown in the film, was quite different.

They recognized the potential for harm to innocent people and went to great lengths to avoid, as

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Photos via Stephanie Beauge of AFP on Twitter:

New York Times World @nytimesworld · 4 hours ago
A crowd gathered in Toulouse for the national moment of silence for the #CharlieHebdo victims http://nyti.ms/1tR6TG7

This one made me choke up:

Grégoire Lemarchand @greglemarchand · 5 hours ago
#JeSuisCharlie #AFP

… Read the rest

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Meanwhile things continue to get more horrendous every day in northern Nigeria.

Bodies lay strewn on the streets of a key north-eastern Nigerian town following an assault by militant Islamists, officials have told the BBC.

The Boko Haram group attacked Baga town on Wednesday, after over-running a military base there on Saturday, they said.

Almost the entire town had been torched and the militants were now raiding nearby areas, they added.

…

Musa Alhaji Bukar, a senior government official in the area, said that fleeing residents told him that Baga, which had a population of about 10,000, was now “virtually non-existent”.

“It has been burnt down,” he told the BBC Hausa service.

Ten thousand people either killed or driven … Read the rest

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Maryam wrote a letter to Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief, Gerard Biard.

Dear Gerard

I spoke on a panel with you in November last year at the International Feminist and Secular Network in Paris.

I am writing to express my outrage at the cold-blooded murder of freethinkers at Charlie Hebdo today and to give my unequivocal support.

Freedom of expression and the criticism of religion and Islam are basic rights. Clearly, free expression without the right to criticise religion is meaningless. Throughout history, criticism of religion (that which is deemed sacred or taboo) has been intrinsic to human progress.

And that, of course, is exactly why the murderous theocrats hate it and kill it wherever they can. They don’t want human … Read the rest

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