By now every political blog worth its salt will have commented on the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, in which twelve people were murdered because someone drew a cheeky picture of a rather popular religious leader. Anjem Choudary popped his head out to make some typically moronic statements; you will almost certainly have seen all that already, so I'll be looking a little further afield with this post...
Islamic Awakening is a British forum inhabited primarily by al-Qaeda supporters. First, let's see how the forum responded to the (non-lethal) bomb attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in 2011 over the magazine's first Muhammad cover:
According to some members circa 2011, the people behind Charlie Hebdo were being pursued by "angels of death" and would someday face "the fire of the hereafter":
This should not surprise us, as the forum is awfully quick to prescribe the death penalty for everything from mocking Muhammad to drinking tipple.
Now, moving on to the Islamic Awakening discussion about the most recent attack:
The initial response from the members was that the attack was "fishy". Bear in mind that these people consider 9/11 to have been an inside job; their default position when faced with an atrocity carried out by Islamic extremists in the West appears to be "it was a false flag operation!"
Rather oddly, the conspiratorial side of the discussion didn't make it past the first page. After a while, the members began taking it at face value that, yes, the murders were carried out by Muslims.
The last post above points out that Holocaust denial is illegal in certain European countries. This is true, and I personally do not agree with such laws - I think that Holocaust denial should be frowned upon by society, certainly, but not banned outright. However, what this fellow fails to grasp is that temporarily incarcerating someone for denying the Holocaust is a much lesser sin than murdering people for drawing a cartoon.
The crude analogies regarding free speech continued:
Well, if Roy Chubby Brown wants to run for parliament, then why not? Overtly racist parties such as the BNP have done it, so I don't see why a blue comedian should be barred.
This person argues that it is "liberal idiots" who think that it is okay to make fun of Islam, which is an interesting inversion of the norm:
Finally, and inevitably, the Islamic Awakening members began discussing the $64,000,000 question: were the attacks justified?
For at least some posters, the answer would appear to be "yes":
