PARIS, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Six teenagers go on trial behind closed doors on Monday, accused of involvement in the beheading of French history teacher Samuel Paty by a suspected Islamist in 2020 in an attack that struck at the heart of the country’s secular values.
The teacher had shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression, angering a number of Muslim parents. Muslims believe that any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous.
This is terrible news. Obviously no one needs to be killed for such a thing.
Still, I can’t help but thing it’s also ridiculous to draw pictures of Muhammad. No one knows what he looks like. These people just use Islamophobia to post racist caricatures.
Also, Muslims love their prophet more than most people I know love their mothers. THIS IS NOT TO EXCUSE THEIR BEHAVIOR but seriously Muslims view their prophet like a big brother. Like literally love the guy like family. There’s 2 billion Muslims. You only have to really anger one or two to get attacked. Once again, not an excuse for them. This is murder.
This is a thing in France, we have caricatures for everything. Muhammed isn’t an exception, and shouldn’t be. It’s not islamophobia. This was a freedom of expression class too, it should be talking about controversial topics.
My understanding is that the point is that he’s supposed to be an “every man” kinda guy. Mohammad could be any of us. If you depict him, it makes us not him.
So apparently he’s also a gang of murderous psycho teens. Or I guess the kids stopped being him once they saw the picture and reverted into psycho murderers
Thank you for trying to explain. I don’t like it but I appreciate you typing it out. Despite this, I still can’t wrap my head around how a, as you say, racist caricature can rationally warrant a brutal murder in response. Someone making fun of my mother or brother would not elicit such a reaction from me. When the reaction is so extremely out of proportion with the crime and we hear these explanations why this makes sense, the religion and it’s followers who feel such a way become their own caricature. Even without the cartoons.
Do they hope to elicit fear and respect? Because this sort of psychopathy from any social group does the opposite. Respectfully, there is a difference between condemning such an act full stop, and disagreeing with what they did but still thinking it makes sense and people shouldn’t do things that force such an action. The later is what leads Western countries to conclude Islam is incompatible in societies that have, perhaps, once held such a worldview, but in the last thousand years have collectively agreed that is no longer allowed.
You claim only one or two may attack… but holding the same mindset as the killers is still not compatible with Western ideals. I can think someone is an idiot who is going to hell, but that should be the extent of my involvement in their life and the rest is between them and God.