Who is the zealot and fanatic?

Is it

(a) he who insists on his right to continue being gratuitously offensive after provoking devastating violence?

or

(b) he who responds with violence after a deliberate campaign spanning years to gratuitously offend him?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/01/07/after-charlie-hebdo-attack-u-s-catholic-group-says-cartoonists-provoked-slaughter/

What lessons can be learnt from the gunning down of Charlie Hebdo?

• The Racial & Religious Hatred Act 2006 is a good thing after all.
• Free speech is not absolute.
• Causing gratuitous offence deliberately can cause death to self and others
• It is the demonstration of how hubris operates.
• No good will come out of being deliberately and gratuitously offensive for no good reason.
• Terrorism wins because it is unlikely that Charlie Hebdo will publish more offensive cartoons of Muhammad.
• Even if there are no more gratuitously offensive cartoons of Muhammad this does not mean criticism of Islam and Muslims will cease, so no big deal really, you can all turn over and go back to sleep again, after acknowledging that liberal hegemony is indeed being challenged and will continue to be challenged. 

1. Can liberals be zealots?
2. Can liberals be said to "worship" free speech when they make a point of causing gratuitous offence to those with religious beliefs?
3. Do some atheist liberals zealously make a point of causing gratuitous offence to those with religious beliefs because they think they are stupid, backward and deserve to be offended?
4. Should the British be grateful that their government did something right for once by passing the Race & Religious Hatred Act 2006?
5. If the French had the equivalent of the Race & Religious Hatred Act 2006, would the gunning down of Charlie Hebdo have taken place?
6. Were Charlie Hebdo abusing their right to free speech?
7. Was it necessary for Charlie Hebdo to publish gratuitously offensive cartoons of the prophet Muhammad?
8. Why did Charlie Hebdo find it necessary to publish gratuitously offensive cartoons of the prophet Muhammad?
9. Was the publication of gratuitously offensive cartoons about religion an expression of atheist hegemony in France?
10. Was it necessary for the French government to allow Charlie Hebdo to be deliberately and gratuitously offensive?
11. What was the point Charlie Hebdo making that could not have been made in less inflammatory terms?
12. Was the point that Charlie Hebdo was making through gratuitously offensive cartoons only that secularists are in charge and could therefore use their position to cause gratuitous offence to Jews, Christians and Muslims as and when they felt the desire to do so?
13. Should the French government now pass the equivalent of the Race & Religious Hatred Act 2006 to protect both non-Muslim and Muslim French citizens?
14. How many Muslims converts will there be from Jews and Christians who will be understandably impressed at how much more effective Muslims are at showing that their religion is not to be insulted with impunity?
15. What is hubris in French?

Is Geoffrey Clarke of UKIP guilty of inciting religious hatred?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ukip-candidate-geoffrey-clarke-calls-1495957

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/news/article/2517/outrage-as-gravesend-ukip-candidate-geoffrey-clark-calls-for-forced-abortion-of-disab#.UNClwOc_Pew.twitter

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4704117/Ukip-candidate-takes-controversial-stance-on-abortion.html

http://geoffreyclark.webs.com/manifesto

HEALTH CARE AND THE NHS
...  Other items for review: ceasing all free IVF treatment on the NHS; cutting unecessary waste e.g the destruction of drugs in care homes when residents move on to the next care home or the next world; the pregnancy abortion time limit; compulsory abortion when the foetus is detected as having Downs, Spina Bifida or similar syndrome which, if it is born, could render the child a burden on the state as well as on the family. CLARIFICATION TO AVOID CONFUSION AND MISREPRESENTATION: I do not, and UKIP does not, endorse any of these ideas: they are suggestions of matters for the review body to properly consider in light of the stated desire of all political parties to reduce the national debt.

Geoffrey Clarke got into trouble over this for his perceived callousness towards the disabled.  I would not have put it quite like that however.   My modest proposal was to give the parents of the unwanted unviable disabled infant and their proxy the midwife the option of committing infanticide without getting into trouble with the law.   However, what is in fact more shocking was what he said about the Koran and Muslims.

THE KORAN NEEDS TO BE UPDATED
Here are some passages from the Koran [Penguin Classics version]:-

WOMEN: 4:24
You are forbidden to take in marriage married women, except captives whom you own as slaves.

WOMEN: 4:25
If any one of you cannot afford to marry a free believing woman, let him marry a slave-girl who is a believer.

WOMEN: 4:34
Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior over the others and because they spend their wealth to maintain them.

What sensible person believes that stupidity today? Anyone who does believe it today must be a scumbag and must be told so. Stop being squeamish about telling scumbags that they are scumbags, just because they happen to be Muslim scumbags.

The Koran is 1300 years old and is in desperate need of updating so men cease to abuse it. You will doubtless agree that the Koran needs to address women as well as men, and a lot of updating is needed. How can such a book be respected – quite aside from being followed? UKIP has a solution. The leaders of the main faiths should get together in 2013 and agree to update all their holy books by 2020 then re-issue them as appropriate for the world in which we live today, not for the world of hundreds of years ago. Then, women were subservient and it was "sort of OK" to have slaves. Today it is unconscionable behaviour. 

I am not so much shocked by this reference to Muslim "scumbags" (for we already know how deeply Islamophobic both UKIP and the BNP are) but by his scriptural ignorance of the Bible - a religion that he claims to wish to defend.

http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/14-34.htm  
You will find many more offensive references to women there than you ever will in the Koran.

Below is another questionable sentence:

"Defend the freedom of religion, other than wearing the burkha."

However, for this ungrammatical non sequitur of this sentence, and for proposing that the Koran be updated, he should be expelled for the crime of inciting religious hatred under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006.

Section 29B:
(1) A person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred.

The House of Lords passed amendments to the Bill on 25 October 2005 which have the effect of limiting the legislation to "A person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening... if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred". This removed the abusive and insulting concept, and required the intention - and not just the possibility - of stirring up religious hatred

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_and_Religious_Hatred_Act_2006

I think any group of people with a holy book would feel threatened if someone whom they knew hated their religion, their holy book and them and who called them "scumbags" were threatening to rewrite or "update" their holy book.

It can be safely inferred that someone who calls Muslims "scumbags" has every intention of stirring up religious hatred.

A successful prosecution is certainly possible, in my opinion.  It is pretty much an open and shut case.




HELP ME ANNOY THE FEMALE-DOMINATED PC BBC

Would you like to nominate Claire Khaw for the iPM New Year Honour for being the most entertainingly philosophical, political and theological Woman of the Year?  Go on, go on, go on!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0089nbb/features/new-year-honour