If your group can’t take a joke, your group is a joke. Especially if it is abusive imaginary parent who according to you does everything that is wrong with the world in order to “build character” and overall rules through fear only.

Murdering humans over a drawing is a sensitive topic for me. Please do not expect civility when discussing ancient barbaric pre-scientific belief systems.

Satire is a necessary way to call out impropriety in Democratic society. The humor softens the blow of the reality of horrible acts and makes less horrible but still bad acts easier to understand. As long as it’s not saying things that are just totally without merit or using it purely to spread hate, it should be staunchly defended regardless of who is offended by it.

Example of bad satire is something like a cartoon of an LGBTQ+ person going to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist saying it’s a mental illness and their head explodes. This is pushing the narrative that being gay is something to be cured and that gay people just can’t accept it. This can be considered satire, but like any type of speech it’s stating something designed to harm others. Satire is meant to over-exaggerate a problem, not make up a problem that doesn’t actually exist for the express purpose of hate.

I think most people would agree with the following: even if you feel the cartoon was in poor taste or was “punching down,” the shooting was a terrorist act that just served to reinforce the worst stereotypes about Muslims and—ironically—the offending cartoon itself.

Opinions can vary about the cartoon, but that’s the point of defending satire and free speech; what’s completely indefensible is violence that clearly isn’t in the service of self-defense. People who quibble about the definition of self-defense and even skirt the idea that the terrorists in this incident had a right to do what they did, in my opinion, are likely either sophomoric contrarians or bad faith actors intentionally trying to muddy the waters, akin to some far-right militia members on conservative subreddits.

It says a lot that there’s only one religion that I’m scared to criticize.

12 people were killed for publishing a cartoon of Muhammad.

A teacher was beheaded for showing a drawing of Muhammad.

Cartoonist drew Muhammad, leading to Danish embassies being attacked and riots broke out and people died. Later, people broke into his house to try to kill him.

Cartoonist had to live under police protection because of threats.

Creators of South Park were threatened for including Muhammad in an episode of the show.

These were just a few from the FIRST PAGE of a search engine, AND outside of Muslim majority countries.

This is before even considering every other ‘provocation’, leading to incidences like:

Salman Rushdie being stabbed on stage

A teacher forced into hiding for showing a picture of mahammad

A week ago I was in line to check out and there was a young woman in a hijab. When she turned to help me I saw her entire face and hands (all I could see really) had acid burns all over.

The paradox of tolerance will never be something I struggle with once The Fall happens. Regardless for whichever religion seeks to lynch me.

Reality keeps sliding into absurdity rendering satire mute.

Satire should be staunchly defended. Some people may find it offensive and they can go fuck themselves.

Satirical publications are often the last free press able to publish in authoritarian governments and have often played a critical role in communication to weaken oppressive regimes.

We can all occasionally suffer jokes in bad taste in exchange for freedom of the press.

In the words of Sam Harris: “People were murdered over cartoons. End of moral analysis.”

Prohibiting satire of religion is a form of blasphemy law, and blasphemy laws shouldn’t exist.

As in everything in life, your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.

If you don’t like the satire of Charlie Hebdo, your right is to not read it. If you don’t like a comedian who makes pedo jokes, your right is to not buy their tickets. If you don’t like a TV show that shows drug use, your right is to not watch it.

That’s it. That’s the end of your personal rights on that issue. You do NOT have the right to tell other people what they personally view, watch, read, etc…

If enough people share your view, that publication/comedian/show will either change or go out of business naturally because of lack of subscribers. That’s how it works.

I personally find Charlie Hebdo to be racist twits. But that doesn’t give me any right to kill them. I have the right to just ignore them.

It was depressing that every newspaper in the developed world didn’t print the cartoon :(

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.

I think the people’s presumption that they have some right to be free from offense has done way more damage than anything.

We pull back too much because Islamic nutjobs will get violent because you dared draw a picture that resembled their stupid prophet. By doing that, we are giving them what they want and telling other religious groups that if they get violent enough, we’ll stop to appease them too.

You can mock Jesus, Moses, Krishna and any other religious figure because their followers, at worse, are going to verbally protest, if they do anything at all. But draw fucking Muhammad and people will tell you to knock it off because we don’t want to upset the assholes who will riot and kill people because they can’t handle someone having a differing opinion. Society bends over backwards to not offend Islam out of fear.

In response, we should have doubled down. Make more cartoons, get more vulgar with it…go all in, not stopped to appease them. Some people did for a while immediately after the attack, but not enough and not long enough, imo.