Macron: Secularism has never killed anyone.

[Sarge3000]

I am French and not fundamentally a Macron supporter, more of a Macron critic in fact.
But damn I am proud of his declarations in the past weeks.
Standing up for enlightenment ideals in the face of brutal & relentless Muslim terrorism is to be admired.
Whilst nearly all other Western leaders including Trudeau refuse to stand for the ideals of freedom like cowards.

I think some people are being a little too liberal with the meaning of secularism. It simply means the separation of church and state, I fail to see how that has killed anyone.

And before anyone mentions Stalin, that's despotism not secularism. People like that are going to be tyrants regardless of their religious beliefs.

Indeed, secularism is quite a leap away from State communism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

[MilesAbove]

Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, Castro, and the Kim family disagree.

Secularism simply removes the state from religion. It would take them killing religious people specifically to remove them from government in order for this to hold water.

For instance, Nazis were about 60/40 protestant to catholic. Italy was, shockingly, Catholic and the Fascists allowed the Vatican to become a "country". the Kim family IS the religion (like divine kings of old).

We can get into a lengthy and pointless argument about whether or not people were killed "for the sake of secularism" in these other countries. But the three aforementioned were not killing for its sake for sure. They aren't even secular.

 

[Sarge3000]

France is playing a dangerous game according to Poltico EU

https://www.politico.eu/article/france-attacks-religion-secularism-radicalism-blasphemy-islam/



and

I agree that it is dangerous but I disagree that it is bad.
Exposing Islam for what it is, through bloodshed, is excellent to wake Europeans and Westerners from their torpor. It might be the tonic we all need to reinvigorate our weakened civilisation.

 

[12ga.]

I agree that it is dangerous but I disagree that it is bad.
Exposing Islam for what it is, through bloodshed, is excellent to wake Europeans and Westerners from their torpor. It might be the tonic we all need to reinvigorate our weakened civilisation.

I'd be more impressed if he were at least consistent. Not having tons of speech laws on the books you go to jail for but can taunt muslims sensitives freely. Or can dress x but not Y of course to attack muslim garb. Honestly, as an American, just looks like he's trolling them. We dont do that here.

Edit 'he" being macron.

 

[12ga.]

@12ga. from wiki.

Secularism" has a broad range of meaning. While its definition as the separation of religion from civic affairs and the state is the most common

Keep going.

"As a philosophy, secularism seeks to interpret life on principles taken solely from the material world, without recourse to religion. It shifts the focus from religion towards "temporal" and material concerns"

Commies are super charged secularism since they eliminate religion altogether.

 

[Sarge3000]

I'd be more impressed if he were at least consistent. Not having tons of speech laws on the books you go to jail for but can taunt muslims sensitives freely. Or can dress x but not Y of course to attack muslim garb. Honestly, as an American, just looks like he's trolling them. We dont do that here.
Edit 'he" being macron.

The satirists are taunting/trolling Islam but they've done so with every other religion/group in the past.
French culture takes satire very seriously, and honestly satirists make fun of every religion.
As someone that's relatively conservative, I regularly feel offended myself. Their main targets were usually the Christian majority in France. What happened is they started making fun of Islam, that created a massive backlash and actual killings (which didn't happen from other groups as we're used to being laughed at, culturally speaking), and now they're feeling a point of honor in continuing to make fun of Islam, as a sort of act of defiance. The difference with Macron is that he seems to want to make a point of pursuing the fight that's been started, which is unconventional for the string of weak leaders we've had in the past.

The question is how far its going to go. The nature of Islamic terrorism these days is that it's nearly impossible to prevent. I think Macron's attitude is also to avoid letting the hard-French-right dominate the scene which is happening at the moment.

 

[ineverpost]

Right. Secular Communism killed more than all religious wars combined. Beyond that Secular Capitalism is #2 and may destroy the planet once and for all.

It's just people killing people. There's never been a time in human history where it hasn't happened, and it would be naive to think it can be stopped. People need to focus more on their immediate surroundings and work to improve what they can. Wasted energy to worry so much about the big picture, unless you want to be a scholar (which has no impact either).

 

[thehighking]

Fair enough, put it well and didn't go after Islam as a religion.

Interesting to see how leaders in the Islamic world spin it.

Agreed. I'm always for free speech but I think drawing cartoons of Mohammad is just unnecessary and offensive. I mean there are laws in a lot countries that make Holocaust denial a crime, so why isn't it a crime to purposefully offend Muslims by drawing cartoons of their prophet? Hate speech against other groups is prosecuted so why isn't this included when it's purpose is to cause offense?

 

[calavera2]

Agreed. I'm always for free speech but I think drawing cartoons of Mohammad is just unnecessary and offensive. I mean there are laws in a lot countries that make Holocaust denial a crime, so why isn't it a crime to purposefully offend Muslims by drawing cartoons of their prophet? Hate speech against other groups is prosecuted so why isn't this included when it's purpose is to cause offense?

Holocaust denial shouldn't be a crime. Giving Muslims that mile they would take another. I think its important to keep offending muslims on that point until they get the point. France shouldn't take a step back on their stance. Frankly neither should any other country.

 

[12ga.]

The satirists are taunting/trolling Islam but they've done so with every other religion/group in the past.
French culture takes satire very seriously, and honestly satirists make fun of every religion.
As someone that's relatively conservative, I regularly feel offended myself. Their main targets were usually the Christian majority in France. What happened is they started making fun of Islam, that created a massive backlash and actual killings (which didn't happen from other groups as we're used to being laughed at, culturally speaking), and now they're feeling a point of honor in continuing to make fun of Islam, as a sort of act of defiance. The difference with Macron is that he seems to want to make a point of pursuing the fight that's been started, which is unconventional for the string of weak leaders we've had in the past.

The question is how far its going to go. The nature of Islamic terrorism these days is that it's nearly impossible to prevent. I think Macron's attitude is also to avoid letting the hard-French-right dominate the scene which is happening at the moment.

We do too. Our comedians satire everyone. Again its the inconsistency that seems like trolling and sets the radical in motion because it seems like cultural tyranny to them. like Charb was no free speech advocate, rather a far-Left agitator who tried hard to get his political opponents banned while offending every traditionalist, of every stripe, he could.

 

[12ga.]

I agree that it is dangerous but I disagree that it is bad.
Exposing Islam for what it is, through bloodshed, is excellent to wake Europeans and Westerners from their torpor. It might be the tonic we all need to reinvigorate our weakened civilisation.

Civilizational collapse goes hand and hand with post modern secularism that you guys celebrate. How these new societies can be maintained for long without enough children of its own is the great imponderable, no?

The signature achievement of the sexual revolution that began in the 1960’s, from any big-picture historical perspective, is the amazing decline in fecundity in any society it touches. From Japan to the EU to European Russia secularism has caused a staggering demographic crisis.

Mass immigration is the preferred solution for the west (while Japan seems content to dwindle), because it gets them off the hook for not reproducing while providing ample cheap labor to do the chores that affluent westerners don’t want to do or pay enough to do themselves and buttresses a childless Social security system.

So while Macron may win with enough repression in the short term mathematics of traditional and religious societies always wins. And I don't mean the cafeteria Catholicism practiced in France.

 

[Ruprecht]

That was about the forcible redistribution of silver, gold, land and power. When that happens, people die, regardless of belief system. The church had a lot of wealth and power, the revolutionaries wanted it.

Secularism isn't a belief system that commands anything, rather to just have a separation between church and state; how you do it is up to you. There is no great book of secularism commanding how it needs to be done. The Christian Bible and the Quran, well they have specifics, rules, rewards, and consequences. There is more of a direct line to be drawn between the actions of its followers and the belief system.

Seems pretty straight forward to me that they wanted separation of Church and state, and their anticlericalism lead to murders which started with wealthy bishops and the appropriation of land and wealth, but continued on into the notable massacre of Nuns.
The actions were the very founding of French, "laïcité" (including the destruction of religious iconography, bans on religious dress and renaming of streets etc to remove religious expression from the public sphere), so trying to divorce their actions and attitudes towards the clergy from secularism seems entirely unsupportable.

 

[Ruprecht]

Secularism simply removes the state from religion. It would take them killing religious people specifically to remove them from government in order for this to hold water.

For instance, Nazis were about 60/40 protestant to catholic. Italy was, shockingly, Catholic and the Fascists allowed the Vatican to become a "country". the Kim family IS the religion (like divine kings of old).

We can get into a lengthy and pointless argument about whether or not people were killed "for the sake of secularism" in these other countries. But the three aforementioned were not killing for its sake for sure. They aren't even secular.

That's precisely what the Jacobins did in France.

 

[brother mouzone]

you guys have to understand already that this word means nothing anymore.
you overused it so now it's meaningless. try genderphobe or transphobe or whatever else they teach you at your local antifa touchbutt club these days.

Apparently it's racist to point out how fucking poor pakistan is

 

[12ga.]

That's precisely what the Jacobins did in France.

Thats precisely what War on Terror is about but not talked about in polite company. It's about eliminating the extremists (about 10% in any muslim society) So the 10% atheist's and 80% normals can speak out and become secular.

 

[goldennirvana]

lmao @ people in pakistan being able to afford anything french except maybe french fries

French fries are Belgian.

 

[Ruprecht]

Thats precisely what War on Terror is about but not talked about in polite company. It's about eliminating the extremists (about 10% in any muslim society) So the 10% atheist's and 80% normals can speak out and become secular.

Well you could certainly say it's about secularisation with the nation building in Afghanistan against the Taliban and against Islamic State, although obviously there's a lot of other motivations there.
It's also certainly not to say the separation of "church" and state is a bad thing, after all people have also been killed in the name of abolitionism and environmentalism.
It's just strange for the French president in particular to say secularism has never killed anyone in contrast to religion, given the history of his country.

 

[Senzo Tanaka]

Agreed. I'm always for free speech but I think drawing cartoons of Mohammad is just unnecessary and offensive. I mean there are laws in a lot countries that make Holocaust denial a crime, so why isn't it a crime to purposefully offend Muslims by drawing cartoons of their prophet? Hate speech against other groups is prosecuted so why isn't this included when it's purpose is to cause offense?

I've brought it up before in these topics but have you seen Monty Python's the Life of Brain? No one has ever attacked Muslims like Monty Python did with Christianity. It's a funny and poignant movie even to this day. If you are a Christian, you might not find it funny but those that respect dark comedy or are not religious, it's a great work of comedy.



Can you imagine if someone did this with Mohammed what would happen? This is why there is difference between religions:

To consider criticism hate speech or have laws against it is effectively silencing comedy and bad ideas. Religion is just a set of ideas and a belief system. It's not something you are born into. It should be allowed to be discussed and even mocked.

 

[Rocco Siffredi]

Secularism has never killed anyone.



Extremists teach that France should not be respected. They teach that women are not equal to men, that little girls should not have the same rights as little boys.

I tell you very clearly: not with us.



I have seen too many lies, I want to be clear: what we are doing in France is to fight terrorism which is done in the name of Islam, not Islam. It claimed the lives of over 300 of our fellow citizens!



I was made to say: "I support the cartoons humiliating the prophet". I am in favor of people being able to write, think and draw freely in my country. It's a right, it's our freedoms. I understand that it can be shocking, I respect that, but we have to talk about it.

He needs to read up on the USSR and Maoist China. Secularism has killed more than religion and it is not even close.

 

[reveler]

europe will stand up to islam once china says its ok.