New Mohammed Shooting in Texas

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Yazata, May 4, 2015.

  1. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    A car just drove up outside an event center in Garland Texas (a Dallas suburb) that was hosting a Mohammed cartoon free-speech event. (CNN reports that one of those present was Dutch politician Girt Wilders.) Two men got out of the car with guns (I don't know what kind) and began shooting at the heavy security presence outside. One guard was hit, but his injuries are described as 'non-life-threatening' and he's already been released from the hospital. Other guards, who apparently included local police officers, immediately returned fire (it's Texas) and killed both gunmen. Bomb squad robots are nosing around their car as we speak and a large perimeter has been established.

    The police still don't know who the shooters were or what their associations were, but people are comparing this to the Copenhagen attacks.

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-05-03-22-31-03
     
    Last edited: May 4, 2015
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  3. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Similar memes in the victims and in the attackers, yes. Similar to the CH attacks also, of course.
     
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  5. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I wonder why no group has ever poked fun at the Catholic Religion for its hiding and protecting the priests that sexually abuse children? I've seen many times where the Catholic Church will pay off people to keep them quiet from imprisoning those who are breaching the law so that they may go forth and sexually abuse children in other perishes. Yes, must be something that no one bothers to write about I just can't explain why no one has.

    Here we have a group poking fun at the Muslim religion and this, as we know has been going on for some time, but those same people do not care about the well being of their own children when it come to molestation from the Catholic Church. Notice that while priests can get away with molesting children no one criticizes them but to anger Muslims there's plenty of that going on.

    I'm against any group from poking fun at another if it will incite a riot or endanger others. But lets be equal with out rage and try not to fan the flames of hate so that others feel compelled to take hostile actions against anyone. I realize that some radical Muslims tried to kill others in this latest incident but those putting on the event went out of their way to stir up the hornets nest and create a air of anger around them.
     
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  7. Bells Staff Member

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    So let me get this straight..

    Geller organised an event that deliberately set out to offend a religion and then she complains when people of said religion react as she set out for them to react, with guns (it is Texas)?

    The belief that people need to die over a cartoon is insane and bloody ridiculous aside, would Geller have been as supportive of free speech if some Muslims in the US held a convention or an event or competition about who could make the most offensive comments about the Jewish religion? We know that she held the child victims of Breivik's rampage and terrorist attack to be responsible for what happened to them because they were anti-Israeli and pro-Islamic children (and who *gasped * race mixed *gasp*) and she did not consider that camp on that island to be within the scope of free speech. Oh no, she believed that they were to blame and even commented on the colour of the victims and how they did not look like Norwegians. Breivik was not a savage to Geller. The victims were the savages, because there were Muslims among them and the Norwegians were associating with those Muslims, and Muslims, according to Geller, are savages..

    Geller deliberately set out to get this sort of reaction. And she got it.

    But hey, it has gotten two Muslims killed. This is the end goal, after all, right?

    "The good news? Both Muslim savages are dead."

    And at least one of them was black, so she got double goodness out of it, less race mixing. Conservative Christians are beside themselves.

    This cannot be compared to Charlie Hebdo. Charlie Hebdo drew satire about how they viewed the world, life and the people around them in France. Geller wasn't trying to recreate Charlie Hebdo. Charlie Hebdo did not set out to be malicious and hateful. She was only setting out to offend in the worst way possible to try to get a violent reaction, even offering a monetary prize on who drew the best (and probably the most offensive) catoon. Unfortunately two idiots gave her what she wanted and drew attention to her cause.

    They would have done more damage to her and her cause if they had just ignored it and her, because that is what she deserves.
     
    Last edited: May 4, 2015
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  8. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    A slew of comedians, maybe even most comedians, do do this; or insult the concept of God, or Jesus specifically, and sometimes in quite base terms. To date, I don't think any of them have been killed for it. When Piss Christ was produced, there were... protests and letter-writing.

    Some people do indeed complain about it. I certainly vociferously support such complaints: the thing is disgraceful and sick.

    I disagree strongly here: it's probably as common to attack Catholics or Catholicism as Islam, or probably more so as Islam is seen protectively. (There's also occasionally the fear angle; I think Trudeau the cartoonist alluded to this in an interview recently.) As for fanning the flames of hate: it's more that unflattering images of Mohammed are reacted to in hostile ways, both in Islamic countries and Western ones, making it an issue of Islamic supremacism in a way. Islamicists seek to suppress Western culture where it infringes on their religious sensibilities without acknowledging or caring that such sensibilities are specific to themselves. Or, probably, they realise full well that their interpretation is a little fascistic, running counter to that supposition of superiority, and carry out violence anyway. It's little different in basis to the violence used by ISIS to suppress non-Muslims in the IS.

    Moreover, it cannot be blamed on Geller: she did not load their weapons, nor buy them the grenades. It is not an issue of self-defense. It is an issue of aggressiveness and violence applied by religious fascists. Unless now, every time someone lambasts a belief system, it is on par to attack the speaker with gunfire? Is this where 'fightin words' doctrine is meant to go? Does one prefer the vagarities of civil war? If so, say so. Catholics could shoot comedians and blame it on their victims: "well, he said something bad about the Pope". Anti-abortionists bombing abortion clinics could justify their actions on those performing (or 'committing', if you like) abortions within.

    It's all free game, in a shooting alley.
     
  9. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Where have you been? It happens all the time.
     
  10. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Well that is one way to get jihadist. Just bait a trap with a little free speech and wait for the jihadi to show up with their guns and bombs and the next thing you know, there is run on virgins in heaven. It kind of reminds me of hunting animals like deer. We don't need all that intelligence stuff, just set up a trap baited with a little free speech.

    The organizers were obviously prepared for this kind of thing. I think they have invented a new way of identifying and capturing jihadi in our midst.
     
  11. Bells Staff Member

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    Since when was what Geller was doing "Western culture"?

    The issue with Geller is that it is only free speech when it goes her way. If people make similarly disparaging remarks about Israel or Jews, she jumps up and down and considers it anti-Semitic. Yet she feels she should be free to hold a competition to see who could draw the most offensive drawing, with the specific intent to anger the "savages" as she calls them. This was the language used by Geller leading up to and during her little spiel. She did everything she could to offend.

    Frankly, it astounds me that it was allowed to go ahead at all. Her intent with this cartoon fiasco was clear right from the start:

    Pamela Geller, an outspoken anti-Islam activist and an organizer of the event, said the group decided to hold the event in the Curtis Culwell Center because members had heard that a Muslim group had a conference in the same room after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office.

    The event that Geller found so disturbing that she had to rush in to hold this event?

    The Muhammad Art Exhibit & Contest was organized by non other than full time bigot and blogger Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative. The exhibit was organized by Pamela Geller in response to a Muslim event held earlier this year at the same venue which was meant to combat Islamophobia. A representative of the local Council of American Islamic Relations chapter spoke had this to say about Geller's event:

    Alia Salem of the DFW Chapter of the Council of American Islamic Relations says supports free speech. “We should have free speech, and nobody’s stopping her from doing this, go ahead, maybe there’ll be some Muslims entering this, who knows.”

    But Salem says she hopes the Muslim Community will ignore this event. “While it is her right, it’s not really in good taste to be honest because it’s just a shameless attempt to get a reaction out of the Muslim Community, that’s how we view it. It’s not any attempt to promote free speech.”

    Especially when one considers her lead up to it, when she repeatedly likened Muslims to savages and several other choice terms to abuse and insult the whole.

    Of course no one can blame her. Geller herself is a religious fascist, who openly supports the mass killings of Palestinians.

    She went out of her way to incite violence, in every sense of the word. While she didn't load the guns, she sure as hell virtually begged them to pick them up and come after her and her cohorts by all available means. And in doing so, endangered the lives of her faithful supporters who attended the event. It is a shame that Alia Salem's voice was drowned out by Geller's frothing to draw this out with the specific intent to incite a reaction.

    In effect, Geller was the screaching voice that screamed out "fire" in a crowded theater and then watched as everyone blamed everyone who ran and were trampled for listening to her.

    There is a reason why her organisation is labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. At least we can be thankful that she kept her trap shut this time about Obama being a secret Muslim love child of Malcolm X who wants to destroy the US.

    Free speech my arse. She wouldn't know what free speech was if it came and bit her on her proverbial backside.


     
  12. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisters_of_Perpetual_Indulgence

    It's Islamic Law. the very basis of Islamist faith and practice, that blasphemy is punishable by death. (As is adultery, leaving the Islamic religion, and all kinds of things.) In Islamists' minds, God's perfect Law takes precedence above any secular law. Judgement and Salvation depend on that.

    I don't like the idea that when immigrants move to a new country, the host countries must change their age-old cultures to conform to the beliefs and prejudices of the new arrivals. I mean, if the freedom of expression that prevails in Western countries is going to drive you to commit murder, then don't move to a Western country. If you intend to kill your own daughter for having premarital sex, because conducting 'honor killings' is the tradition in whatever hell-hole you come from, then this probably isn't the right place for you.

    Typically, it's going to be offensive speech that's most in need of free-speech protection. If speech isn't offensive to somebody, then nobody is going to be threatening violence to suppress it.
     
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  13. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    There's a time for when anyone should see that what they are doing is only making matters worse. This is a case in point. I agree that freedom of speech is something we need and have but when you know you will only antagonize others why do it? I'm certain no one would start making cartoons of black men being hanged by the Ku Klux Klan nowadays so why do we need to make a bad thing worse with this kind of speech defaming others no matter who they might be.
     
  14. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    People may behave badly. There are social conventions to deal with them. However they still have a right to do it as long as it is not criminal.
     
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  15. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    I think its time to stop babying people and catering to their delusions. It's time for folks to put their big boy pants on and begin acting like responsible and civil adults.
     
  16. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Pouring salt on an open wound doesn't make sense to me. As I said there's a time to do things and then there's not a time. I just do not know why people with any sense would stoop as low as those Muslims who were there the day before speaking about Sharia Law. Just because some people don't have any scruples doesn't mean you need to follow them.
     
  17. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Why have a Draw Mohammed Day? Simply put, because Mohammed is a concept, not a person.

    What is the objective of "Draw Mohammed" day, event or week or month? To puncture the rigid sense of superiority and propriety that exists around a figure that is probably as mythical as real - specifically, to offend those who consider it so sacred they would consider killing for it. That's basically the line right there. Why exactly should we exist in a society where we have to be careful what we say, or else little Johnie might go rage-bot and pick up an AK? And if that 'law' about retribution for hurt feelings survives this contest, what's next? Don't question socioreligious excesses - well, some of them, anyway - or else Little Johnie will shoot people. Don't question the rights of women in religion, or else Little Johnie will shoot. Don't question the supremacy of my religion, or else I and all the Little Johnies will shoot. And then finally: Just be like us, and there'll be no need for shooting. No thanks. If puncturing helps - and I think Piss Christ did take some starch out of the Christian zealots and/or intellectuals - then punctured you will be, and should be. The alternative is to feed the crocodile, hoping to be eaten last. I will not take that choice.

    Should others be bullied? Of course not. If you think you're being bullied, there should be legal recourse. That said, it's tough about someone being mean to your imaginary figurehead, but suck it up. Sue, if you like. Just be sure you have the facts on your side and don't then go ragebot afterwards.

    (PS: the "you" is the figurative you, obviously.)
     
  18. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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    Above Philadelphia Daily

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    Above Winning cartoon sponsored by: “As part of its contribution to the Center for Inquiry’s Campaign for Free Expression, the Council for Secular Humanism invited professional and amateur artists to submit their sharpest, cleverest, and most ingenious creations touching on that most sensitive subject: religion.”

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    Above cartoon by Al Nisbet.

    NSFW:

    http://religiousfreaks.com/the-insurgent-jesus-caricatures/
     
  19. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks for showing them but I've not seen them while I'm surfing the web.
     
  20. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Moses was also an iconoclast.

    Do Jews have icons for "GOD"
     
  21. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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    The American Freedom Defense Initiative said it specifically picked the venue for Sunday's event, a school district-owned facility, because it had hosted an event denouncing Islamophobia in January.

    After the shooting, an ISIS propagandist that Simpson had earlier asked his readers to follow tweeted, "Allahu Akbar!!!! 2 of our brothers just opened fire" at the Texas event.

    "If there is no check on the freedom of your speech, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions," tweeted the propagandist, who was identified by two American groups that monitor jihadi websites as Junaid Hussain, a British ISIS fighter in Syria who goes by the name Abu Hussein al Britani.

    http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/04/us/garland-mohammed-drawing-contest-shooting/
     
  22. Bells Staff Member

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    Except that convention is not an age old culture. Unless going deliberately out of one's way to offend is part of American culture?

    I don't disagree with you, Yazata, but what Geller did is not a part of American society. Sure, free speech laws allow her to incite hatred and she does that very well and she tends to pop back up when she loses attention or the stage which she likes to inhabit, since even Jewish groups no longer wish to have anything to do with her because she is such a vicious character.

    It wasn't freedom of expression that she is fighting for. It is a form of bigotry that she is able to maintain because of the free speech laws that she enjoys.

    No one can agree with the very notion of people shooting others because of a cartoon. That said, America does not have a history of satire, like the French do. In fact, the media in the US is vastly different to what it is like in France, or other European countries or even in my own country, where lambasting one and all is common. The impression I have when I look at the things Geller was saying and doing leading up to this 'draw Mohammed' convention, is that she was deliberately yelling fire in a crowded theater and watching people trample over each other. She feeds off this sort of thing and always has. And Geller is not so supportive of free speech or freedom of expression when such freedom goes against her religious beliefs. At all and she incites violence against others who disagree with her, which in and of itself is against what I would deem to be Western ideology.

    Aside from revulsion at what those two men intended to do, I am also repulsed by the hypocrisy of Geller and the deliberate viciousness with which she conducted herself prior to and after this shooting. As Brian Levin notes, the only thing separating Geller and the terrorists who intended to shoot up that convention is violence. Had they camped outside that hall with signs saying death to Christians and Jews as a form of freedom of expression, Geller would not have been so free or happy about their exercising their right to free speech. Hence the absolute hypocrisy of her hate filled bigotry.

    No one deserves to be shot for their religious belief or ideology. Even someone as repulsive as Geller and her incitement for violence against others. They would have done more damage to her and her horrid ideology if they had just ignored her entirely and frankly, not given her what she desperately wanted.


    There are two parties that are assuredly satisfied after the attack at the "Draw Muhammad Contest" in Garland, Texas on Sunday.

    One is probably Pamala Geller, the organizer of the event and president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative. Geller has dedicated her life to vilifying Muslims. Under the protection of free speech, her organization sponsors the "Draw Muhammad" contest and routinely demonizes Muslims with billboards across the country.

    The two gunmen/pawns played exactly into her divisive Islam vs. the West narrative and she responded the day after the shooting by saying: "This incident shows how much needed our event really was. The freedom of speech is under violent assault here in our nation. The question now before is -- will we stand and defend it, or bow to violence, thuggery, and savagery?"

    The other group that must be pleased today is ISIS, whose followers, according toABC News, have been sending messages about the event in Texas, referencing Charlie Hebdo, and saying it was time for "brothers" in the US to do their part.

    [...]

    While they resort to different means, both the extreme anti-Islam movement and the violent Islamist movements self-servingly promote the belief that the future must involve a battle against one another to the death. Both claim to be victims of aggression by the other, and both are trying to convince the rest of us to join their war.


    Was the shooting justified? Certainly not. It is repulsive. My biggest gripe with this is her hypocrisy and her feeding off this and calling for "war". It's obscene. What is going to happen if some hapless retard takes a gun and shoots up a Mosque because it is a "war"? She is deliberately adding fuel in the hope of a violent response and in doing so, deliberately endangered the lives of the police, and the people who went to that draw Mohammed convention (which frankly, is something I am still trying to wrap my head around).

    No one is saying that free speech or freedom of expression is bad. But sometimes, when one goes out of one's way to offend and demean whole groups of people, some within that community will not respond with calm or ignore the offense and some will fight back with violence. This is exactly what has happened in Texas. The irony of the whole demand for freedom of speech is that Wilders, who was also at the event with Geller, wants to ban the Quran - apparently it is only free speech for some, not all.

    Freedom of speech needs to be protected. I just hate finding myself on the same side as someone like Geller in that regard. Makes me want to vomit.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That work of art was completely misrepresented by the offended religious parties - they didn't get it, and had they been violent in their reactions (as was threatened, btw, and a short step from the physical & legal measures that were taken) the perps would have been in the position of the fuckwits who beat and killed Sikhs in the wake of 9/11.

    There have to be draw muhammad events, or something of the kind, or Islamic people will never know what's outside the box, never come to understand their religion as one religion among others.
     

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