But as I said, Holocaust denial is not banned primarily because it is untrue (as there are plenty of other untrue things you can say without legal repercussions) but it is banned because of its hate speech nature. I cannot imagine that anybody in the world who seriously questions the truth of the Holocuast does so for any reason other than to spread hate. This is the reason it is banned. This is reflected in the laws that ban it. They and the associated punishments are in the category "hate speech", not in the category "telling lies". If you question the historical truth of the Battle of Trafalgar or the Gettysburg Address, people will shrug their shoulders and look the other way. Do you honestly not see why that is?

You can't insult a religion, you can only insult people. That's the whole point. The opinion and reflection about any group is all right as such, even if it is hard to hear. If you want to put into prison all the hate feeding masses, you'd have the half the christian world in cell for homophobic hate. Even I don't want that. But in order for religious people to walk free, the price for it in a French mind is the ban of blasphemy. No way around it. It's pure deductive logic.

The issue is broader: blasphemy is a religious concept only. All legal concepts have to be secular by nature in a state where religion and state are separated. When religious beliefs are attacked in such a way that freedom of religion is at risk, the legal wording for it must be secular because it is a secular justice system. Not that difficult to walk that bridge, frankly. The French got it. Other countries, even well renowned functioning democracies, don't.

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Es wird nichts ausgelassen, um mich hier herauszuekeln. Ein Lehrbuch. False accusations and attacks continue. There is no stopping righteous people when they are wrong.

I don't know, but does the French understanding of blasphemy extend to the state itself. Is it legal to piss on the flag in public, for example?

This is not blasphemy. I have the feeling that the word is used in its original sense in French and in a metonymic way in English. French don't do metonymy with legal terms. They keep it clear. We had the same with Bush's "crusade".

I'm sure some people don't actually need any forged documentary evidence in order to be convinced that the "Holocaust didn't exist"....

This is probably in the wrong thread but anyway post is here and the quote is here "Third atheist blogger killed in Bangladesh knife attack"

Ananta Bijoy Das wrote criticisms of both Islamists and Hindus but so far the people arrested for similar attacks were not Hindus.

One way of looking at it

One year after the attack, CH brought out a special issue today http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/wo...sary.html?_r=0

And this in an hour.

http://www.tvguide.co.uk/detail/2272...s#.Vo1en5MrKMI

Charlie Hebdo in hot water again for this cartoon depicting drowned child Aylan Kurdi.

"What would little Aylan have grown up to be?”
“Ass groper in Germany”.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/201...-racism-debate

Yay! Je suis, erm, Charlie.

Black humour can be in bad taste.

I guess all those sympathy subscriptions have run out

I think that's what a lot of the Je suis Charlie brigade still don't understand. Freedom of expression is exactly that, no matter how crass. If you don't like it, don't buy the magazine. The alternative is far worse.

It just reeks of desperation... "look at us, we're still relevant.. we'll even desecrate the memory of a dead child for our high brow principles and flagging sales"

Its sad, its pathetic but c'est la vie

True, it's not funny or thought provoking on any level, but then again, most of their stuff isn't. It's just been created for shock value alone.

I don't agree with their politics. I don't like their bad taste. I don't even like the style of their cartoons. But for as long as they are not hurting anyone, I'm glad we live in a society that is mature and intelligent enough to tolerate it.

It's satire, and designed to provoke a response. Using the dead boy may be highly distasteful, the the sentiment they are conveying is that the migrants allowed into Europe are proving to be as a whole less than the desperate and needy victims that we first thought.

The general sentiment in Charlie Hebdo is that anything is up for ridicule. Even prophets. Even dead boys.

I don't read it. Have they had dead cartoonists yet?