I'm religious, and I think that people should be absolutely free to satirize religion if they want to. What someone else believes isn't my affair, I definitely think my faith has lots of room for improvement from an organizational perspective, and there are plenty of religious ideas I think are toxic and wrong. Why shouldn't we have nuance and differing opinions? Why should anyone have the right to hurt others through their religious practices? We should be criticizing those things and calling them out and trying to make them stop, whether we practice religion or not. I think the treatment of women and queer people by a great deal of religious groups is wrong and should be criticized. I don't think government and religion should be intertwined at all. Just because I practice in a faith doesn't mean my faith is the authority on anything, but universally we should not be hurting others.
Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
Satire’s dead, but I’d love to see a revival of both it and serious human existence within my lifetime c:
Satire may have been instrumental in its own demise.
People see satire and are either smart enough to understand it - maybe even find it funny, or are offended by it. Those who are offended generally become more entrenched in their beliefs and those who aren't either don't see the satire for the warning it is, or do, but mostly choose not to do something about the subject.
And since people have seen what the satirised subject could be like, and they didn't take action, the subject might take the opportunity to move a little closer to the form it took in satire.
Given this and enough time, satire and reality can become indistinguishable.
And here we are.
It is hard to make satire now when we seem to be living in an age that satirizes itself.
Satire should be free. Hate speech should not. People shouldn't be killed for either. I don't particularly cry when bigots die though.
All that said, there's reasons some jokes just aren't worth telling. There's times and spaces, and for some jokes there's neither and that's ok.
Reality keeps sliding into absurdity rendering satire mute.
Obviously it's horrible to kill people over speech. Cartoons do not justify violence or terrorism.
But we also shouldn't pretend like speech is necessary or valuable just because it's offensive or that offending people to the point of violence is noble.
If someone was killed for saying the n word that would be a tragedy and should be condemned. But we shouldn't all go around yelling the n word just to assert our free speech or pretend like the guy saying the n word was a hero for doing it.
Charlie mostly draws satire of people in power or with influence. Do you think they only do that to be offensive?
No, speaking truth to power is an important part of satire and political discourse in general. I haven't seen the original cartoon but if that's what it was then I'm all for it, though Muslims are very marginal in France and don't hold much power.
This was in response to all the people, including a lot in this thread, that also probably haven't seen the cartoon but want it published everywhere and for us to show more pictures of Muhammed. In that case people are valuing something not because of its message but because it offends and "triggers" people, which is the same rational for some of the worst right wing "comedy".
Offensiveness can be a means to an end, such as showing the corruption of the powerful, but when it becomes an end unto itself it simply becomes cruelty.
Indeed, that's why those cartoons don't target Muslims but the islamists or politicians (Islamism is a political ideology) who try to influence others.
I think what they do is really different from the people in this thread posting offensive cartoons for the sake of freedom to do so. In fact, freedom of expression is much more regulated in France than in the USA. If you post racist content with no indication that it is a satire or some other good intention, you can get condemned for racism. The former leader of the far right party Le Pen who just died yesterday have been convicted multiple times for his racism in the media.
There is a big difference between the two!!
You do not chose to be black, you chose what fairytale to believe in.
You do not try to convert other people to be black, religious try to convert others into their nonsense.
You do not kill people for stopping to be black, Islam does.
Religion NEEDS to be mocked, because it is ridiculous and it is infecting everything around us.
I wouldn't care about anyone's religious beliefs if they practiced for themselves and left everyone else alone, but they never do. They have to spread their bullshit and infiltrate governments to try to legislate their bullshit.
I agree with your sentiment although the n word wouldn't have been my choice for that analogy.
I agree with intentionally provocational speech hiding behind the 'free speech' disguise being stupid, but I think its also important to see a difference between racial slurs and discrimination based on things that people can't change, versus legitimate criticism of religion - which, although not always easy to get out of (I.e. cults, trapped family members, cultural norms) I see as still a fundamentally voluntary behaviour that you can to an extent opt out of as a belief system, as opposed to discrimination on race, sex, disability, nationality, etc.
Now of course that doesnt mean I will go into religious buildings and shout obscenities or try to have edgy atheist rants at inoffensive elderly worshippers - but the saying that "your freedom ends where mine begins" holds true for me, and I won't tolerate outward discrimination on religious grounds, the forcing of those belief systems inside secular systems like schools or courts or governments, and I think I'm well within my rights to criticise harmful and unacceptable behaviour undertaken for 'religious' grounds, which would otherwise be crimes or offences. (I.e. animal torture/sacrifice, child marriage, slavery etc.)
I don't have any issue or opinion or dog in the race with the prophet Muhammed, but those idiots made it important to say "muhammed the prophet is a giant cunt who should be laughed at and get a pie in the face" every now and then just to remind everybody how getting to talk works.