Jason Manford's Facebook post

Started by AngelsSonata, November 15, 2015, 05:11:55 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

AngelsSonata

I don't know how many people have seen this, though if you're unaware of the comedian Jason Manford posted, here is an article about it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/11/14/jason-manford-paris-attacks-terrorist-facebook_n_8562942.html

Now I'm curious to know what everyone thinks about this. Personally I believe Facebook was right to take down his post. You cannot call Allah a c**t and then go ahead and claim it was aimed at extremists. It doesn't work like that. Muslims, and Muslim Extremists both believe in Allah, the two groups just interpret his teachings in a different way. It would be like calling Jesus Christ a c**t because of Christian extremists, you'd still be offending all Christians.

Those are my two cents on the matter. As I'm said, I'm curious to know what other people think.

Caehlim

I think you're misreading his sentence. Grammatically the sentence is an if - then statement. The second clause is predicated upon the first.

He's saying that if a person believes that their god endorses harm to others, then that god, as they believe him to be, is an *expletive*.

A non-extremist would not believe that their god endorses harm and therefore their god would not be an *expletive*.

I wouldn't necessarily call his content appropriate, but I don't think it's inappropriate in the way you're suggesting.

My home is not a place, it is people.
View my Ons and Offs page.

View my (new)Apologies and Absences thread or my Ideas thread.

Yukina

I second Caehlim's opinion. Upon reading Manford's post, it's quite clear to me he's raging at the horrible acts of extremism that exist in this world.


Sho

The way I took it was he was saying "that particular version of Allah, the one that these terrorists believe in, is a c-word if he's ordering familiess slaughtered while they simply enjoy themselves". It's a sentiment I agree with; I think it was just his way of saying that their vision of Allah is not what most people who are Muslim believe in, and that these terrorists have perverted the image of Allah.

That's my take, at least. I don't think he was ever insulting Islam as a whole, or Allah in general.

Vergil Tanner

#4
I agree with the others; he was saying that "If Allah condones this, then he's a dick," and I happen to agree. Any God who could condone terrorist attacks on innocent civilians is not a god worthy of worship.

And even if he did just say "Allah is a C**t" even if you disagree with him, he has a right to say it. Once you start saying "Oh, you said something mean, we're going to censor you," that's when freedom of speech goes out the window. He has the right to say "I think Allah is a dickhead" on his FB page, just as everybody else then has the right to say "Fuck you" if they want to. Was it hate speech? Was it actively condoning violence against a certain group of people? Was it telling people to commit violence against people? No? Well, he has a right to say it, and IMHO, Facebook doesn't have the right to take it down because that is removing his right to freedom of speech. It's that simple, in my mind. Freedom of speech is not "You can say what you want as long as you don't offend me." It's "You can say what you want as long as you don't incite violence against me."

"I disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Vergil's Faceclaim Archive; For All Your Character Model Seeking Needs!


Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by that of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion. Therefore it is unnecessary to have all the qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

Dubbed the "Oath of Drake,"
A noble philosophy; I adhere...for now.

Caehlim

Quote from: Vergil Tanner on November 15, 2015, 04:11:01 PMIMHO, Facebook doesn't have the right to take it down because that is removing his right to freedom of speech.

I don't believe his right to freedom of speech also includes the right to use another person's (or in this case corporate entity's) server space and internet bandwidth to post content that that person (or corporation) does not endorse. If he purchases his own web-domain, servers and internet connection then he can use them to host whatever content he pleases. You may have the right to write what you like, doesn't mean you can come spray-paint it on my wall without my permission.

Secondly he explicitly gave Facebook permission when he clicked to accept Facebook's terms of service.
My home is not a place, it is people.
View my Ons and Offs page.

View my (new)Apologies and Absences thread or my Ideas thread.

Vergil Tanner

And I don't think Facebook should be allowed to legally ask you to sign away your right to freedom of expression. Nobody honestly thinks that Facebook endorses everything their users say, and there are some utterly reprehensible groups and people on FB whose posts FB DOESN'T police. Is this all about selectively choosing who you remove and who you don't? You either go through and remove all the comments of that type, or you remove none of them. Removing some over others when they're saying the same or similar things is victimising one person because they have more eyes on them.
Facebook is a Social Media site, and gives users their own page to say what they want there to their friends and "followers." So long as he isn't directly abusing somebody or inciting violence or hatred against a group of people, then I don't see the problem. Tumblr, for all its faults, largely lets its userbase run their blogs the way they want with very little interference.

The whole point of a Social Media site is to provide a space to talk about your opinions and the things you want to talk about and to keep in contact with people you want to contact. I don't think they have the right to say to somebody that they're not allowed to express their opinions because they personally don't want people thinking they somehow endorse it, when I doubt that any sane person would assume that they endorse or agree with them just because they didn't ban him for doing it. Because that's what they did; they didn't just take the post down, they temp-banned him for speaking his opinion, which wasn't even that bad or offensive. That, in my opinion, is just plain wrong.
Vergil's Faceclaim Archive; For All Your Character Model Seeking Needs!


Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by that of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion. Therefore it is unnecessary to have all the qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

Dubbed the "Oath of Drake,"
A noble philosophy; I adhere...for now.

Cassandra LeMay

Quote from: Vergil Tanner on November 15, 2015, 04:11:01 PM
And even if he did just say "Allah is a C**t" even if you disagree with him, he has a right to say it. Once you start saying "Oh, you said something mean, we're going to censor you," that's when freedom of speech goes out the window. He has the right to say "I think Allah is a dickhead" on his FB page, just as everybody else then has the right to say "Fuck you" if they want to. Was it hate speech? Was it actively condoning violence against a certain group of people? Was it telling people to commit violence against people? No? Well, he has a right to say it, and IMHO, Facebook doesn't have the right to take it down because that is removing his right to freedom of speech. It's that simple, in my mind. Freedom of speech is not "You can say what you want as long as you don't offend me." It's "You can say what you want as long as you don't incite violence against me."
It's a bit more complicated than that, once you take into account that different countries have different laws when it comes to how far the right to free speech extends.

Here in Germany, for example, I would get into trouble with the law if I made some public statements about how great a guy Hitler was and that he was right doing what he did to the Jews.

Should that statement be acceptable if I made it on Facebook where my comments might be hosted on a server in a country where such statements would be protected as free speech? Should my comment be blocked from viewing by German users, blocked altogether?

I sure don't have the answers to that, but it's a whole big complicated mess, once you start looking at different laws and regulations and try to square that with how information is exchanged on the internet.
ONs, OFFs, and writing samples | Oath of the Drake

You can not value dreams according to the odds of their becoming true.
(Sonia Sotomayor)

Vergil Tanner

Well, I personally think it would be morally wrong if not legally wrong to punish you for that opinion, since that's your opinion and you have a right to hold it. I think Germany is way too strict on that sort of thing. I can understand it, of course, don't get me wrong, but it's still too far in my book. That's creeping into 1984 "you have an opinion that the State finds distasteful, so we're going to punish you for it." It's called Thought Crime Policing, and - ironically - that's exactly what Hitler himself engaged in (among other things).

Different countries have different laws, but that doesn't mean that your universal human rights should change and it doesn't mean that they're right just because it's a law. Laws can be wrong, otherwise they'd never be changed.

And it's a little different here, since Mamford is in the UK and the Facebook is a USA based country, where that sort of comment definitely IS protected under Free Speech laws because...well...do we have a law against insulting religion or religious figures? No. Neither the US or the UK is a Theocracy and we certainly don't live under Sharia Law, so why is he being punished for an opinion that isn't even unreasonable?
Vergil's Faceclaim Archive; For All Your Character Model Seeking Needs!


Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by that of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion. Therefore it is unnecessary to have all the qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

Dubbed the "Oath of Drake,"
A noble philosophy; I adhere...for now.

ThePrince

Quote from: AngelsSonata on November 15, 2015, 05:11:55 AM

Now I'm curious to know what everyone thinks about this. Personally I believe Facebook was right to take down his post. You cannot call Allah a c**t and then go ahead and claim it was aimed at extremists. It doesn't work like that. Muslims, and Muslim Extremists both believe in Allah, the two groups just interpret his teachings in a different way. It would be like calling Jesus Christ a c**t because of Christian extremists, you'd still be offending all Christians.


I just want to point out that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Allah literally means God, they are both trace their religion back to Abraham. Muslims recognize Jesus Christ as a prophet, but not the way to salvation.

So calling Allah a c**t is literally like calling Jesus Christ a c**t
RP Request Thread
O/O's
I am what I am. I am my own special creation.
So come take a look, Give me the hook or the ovation.
It's my world that I want to have a little pride in.
It's my world and it's not a place I have to hide in.
Life ain't worth a dam till you can say I am what I am.

Vergil Tanner

#10
Quote from: ThePrince on November 16, 2015, 02:05:58 PMSo calling Allah a c**t is literally like calling Jesus Christ a c**t

1) And I am perfectly fine with that, because even if he does exist, if one person saying that he's a c**t is enough to cause him to break down into tears, he isn't much of a Celestially Divine being. And if it's enough for him to condone executing that person, he isn't exactly as merciful and forgiving as his propaganda would have you believe.

2) Not quite. That's the source of an entire Schism in the Christian Doctrine; those that believe that Christ is in fact God personified, and then those that believe that those two are entirely different entities; that Jesus is the son of Yahweh, and not an aspect of Yahweh. Christianity isn't unified on that point (or, to be fair, any other point other than God Exists, and even then there is a small fraction of denominations that are atheistic in Doctrine, which I find just plain weird, but whatever).
A better analogy would be "Calling Allah a c**t is basically calling Yahweh a c**t," which is true (that calling one is calling the other). And hey, I personally think that the character of God, as portrayed in the bible, is one of a massive c**t to everybody not in his chosen little group. BUT that's derailing the topic into a subject that I don't want to get into.

What I actually want to ask is:

So?

How does changing "Allah" to "Jesus" in that sentence change the overall point that he should be allowed to say it, even if you disagree? Unless the point was that he wouldn't get banned for "Jesus is a c**t" so he shouldn't be banned for "Allah is a c**t," which I agree with. :P
My point is a general one; why does who he's insulting matter in any way, shape or form, assuming for a moment that he was just saying "X is a c**t." Which, as was covered earlier in the thread, wasn't what he was saying exactly. XD
Vergil's Faceclaim Archive; For All Your Character Model Seeking Needs!


Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by that of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion. Therefore it is unnecessary to have all the qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

Dubbed the "Oath of Drake,"
A noble philosophy; I adhere...for now.

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Vergil Tanner on November 16, 2015, 02:20:07 PM
And hey, I personally think that the character of God, as portrayed in the bible, is one of a massive c**t to everybody not in his chosen little group. BUT that's derailing the topic into a subject that I don't want to get into.


Not that he treats his own followers that much better, at least in the Old Testament. ;)

Vergil Tanner

This is true; I think Dawkins said it best when he summarised "The God Of The Old Testament." XD
Vergil's Faceclaim Archive; For All Your Character Model Seeking Needs!


Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by that of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion. Therefore it is unnecessary to have all the qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

Dubbed the "Oath of Drake,"
A noble philosophy; I adhere...for now.

HannibalBarca

Christopher Hitchens summed up god pretty well, also.
“Those who lack drama in their
lives strive to invent it.”   ― Terry Masters
"It is only when we place hurdles too high to jump
before our characters, that they learn how to fly."  --  Me
Owed/current posts
Sigs by Ritsu