Charlie Hebdo
What was done was vile.
Why it was done was obvious. There is NO disguising that this was the act of Islamist terrorists, amoral scumbags who thought murder an appropriate response to printed satire.
Islam has a very, VERY big problem - it can go on tolerating the insatiably violent, intolerant and murderous snake in its bosom, in which case it will invariably end up triggering an enormous backlash, or it can accept that yes, many parts of the world in which it would like to exist do NOT treat ANY religion as beyond the bounds of discussion (or even ridicule) and DO have a right to say what they like about it without being silenced or murdered.
Christianity has long since learned its lesson in this regard, and it is a lesson that for the most part was self-taught. I suspect that if the Islamic world wants to avoid having someone else teach it that lesson, possibly in a very painful and brutal way, it is obliged to demonstrate in no uncertain terms that the "peaceful majority" really does want a Reformation. Otherwise the silence of the "peaceful majority" will be interpreted as complicity in the vileness that the lunatic fringe is currently inflicting on the world.
Murder of journalists and aid workers, kidnap, forced conversion and enslavement of adolescent girls and genital mutilation of prepubescent ones, denial of women's rights and the beating of rape victims... the Western world is long past tolerating this sort of bullshit from the Church. It is time to stop pretending that things are any different when it comes out of the mosque - or any other place of worship. All tolerance for this behaviour needs to end and the penalties for engaging in it need to be severe and enforced without fear or favour.
Those who can't leave their cultural and political baggage at the door when they emigrate? They should be sent back where they came from, because we in the West don't need it or want it here. At all. Ever.
Why it was done was obvious. There is NO disguising that this was the act of Islamist terrorists, amoral scumbags who thought murder an appropriate response to printed satire.
Islam has a very, VERY big problem - it can go on tolerating the insatiably violent, intolerant and murderous snake in its bosom, in which case it will invariably end up triggering an enormous backlash, or it can accept that yes, many parts of the world in which it would like to exist do NOT treat ANY religion as beyond the bounds of discussion (or even ridicule) and DO have a right to say what they like about it without being silenced or murdered.
Christianity has long since learned its lesson in this regard, and it is a lesson that for the most part was self-taught. I suspect that if the Islamic world wants to avoid having someone else teach it that lesson, possibly in a very painful and brutal way, it is obliged to demonstrate in no uncertain terms that the "peaceful majority" really does want a Reformation. Otherwise the silence of the "peaceful majority" will be interpreted as complicity in the vileness that the lunatic fringe is currently inflicting on the world.
Murder of journalists and aid workers, kidnap, forced conversion and enslavement of adolescent girls and genital mutilation of prepubescent ones, denial of women's rights and the beating of rape victims... the Western world is long past tolerating this sort of bullshit from the Church. It is time to stop pretending that things are any different when it comes out of the mosque - or any other place of worship. All tolerance for this behaviour needs to end and the penalties for engaging in it need to be severe and enforced without fear or favour.
Those who can't leave their cultural and political baggage at the door when they emigrate? They should be sent back where they came from, because we in the West don't need it or want it here. At all. Ever.