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| Politics can help to overcome terrorism | Politics can help to overcome terrorism |
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| Your editorial writers and commentators and most of your correspondents (9, 10 January) wring their hands in impotence over the Islamist massacre in Paris. In fact, there is a great deal citizens of the rich countries can do to combat Islamic fundamentalism. First, the western powers should withdraw politically and militarily from the Middle East. Every western intevention for the past 150 years has served to strengthen fundamentalist Islam. In particular, they should immediately cut military and political collaboration with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, which are the principal backers of Isis and Wahhabism (whatever their recent protestations). Second, the people of the western countries should give every support we can to the brave and beleaguered secular and democratic political currents in “the Muslim world”, such as the Labour party of Pakistan and the trade unions in Iraq and Egypt. | Your editorial writers and commentators and most of your correspondents (9, 10 January) wring their hands in impotence over the Islamist massacre in Paris. In fact, there is a great deal citizens of the rich countries can do to combat Islamic fundamentalism. First, the western powers should withdraw politically and militarily from the Middle East. Every western intevention for the past 150 years has served to strengthen fundamentalist Islam. In particular, they should immediately cut military and political collaboration with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, which are the principal backers of Isis and Wahhabism (whatever their recent protestations). Second, the people of the western countries should give every support we can to the brave and beleaguered secular and democratic political currents in “the Muslim world”, such as the Labour party of Pakistan and the trade unions in Iraq and Egypt. |
| Third, in Britain, we should be campaigning for state schooling which is completely secular, depriving the Church of England and the Catholic church as well as other smaller churches of their anachronistic control of state schools. This is the medieval and barbaric hangover that should concern us. Parents have (limited) rights to impose their religion on their chilrden, but a democratic state has no business indoctrinating children in any religion.Please stop wringing your hands and get involved in politics that can really change things.Jamie Gough Sheffield | Third, in Britain, we should be campaigning for state schooling which is completely secular, depriving the Church of England and the Catholic church as well as other smaller churches of their anachronistic control of state schools. This is the medieval and barbaric hangover that should concern us. Parents have (limited) rights to impose their religion on their chilrden, but a democratic state has no business indoctrinating children in any religion.Please stop wringing your hands and get involved in politics that can really change things.Jamie Gough Sheffield |
| • I was disturbed by the letters in Friday’s Guardian. The responses made me ashamed to be a Guardian reader. Rather than condemning the killings, almost all played them down, tried to excuse them, or suggested the victims had somehow brought them on themselves. What’s happened to us? Have the past 15 years been so bloody that some people have run out of sympathy, and have none left for innocent cartoonists being gunned down in cold blood?Alasdair MurrayRichmond upon Thames, Surrey | • I was disturbed by the letters in Friday’s Guardian. The responses made me ashamed to be a Guardian reader. Rather than condemning the killings, almost all played them down, tried to excuse them, or suggested the victims had somehow brought them on themselves. What’s happened to us? Have the past 15 years been so bloody that some people have run out of sympathy, and have none left for innocent cartoonists being gunned down in cold blood?Alasdair MurrayRichmond upon Thames, Surrey |
| • Some of your correspondents have argued that the right to free speech must be tempered by the avoidance of offence. Whilst I applaud the humane values underlying this claim, I must disagree. There is not – and never could be – any universal definition of what is offensive. we all have our own internal calibration of what offends; I cannot know what you think or might feel and so any stricture that bars me from saying something offensive will inevitably fuel a creeping self-censorship which is the antithesis of freedom of speech. | • Some of your correspondents have argued that the right to free speech must be tempered by the avoidance of offence. Whilst I applaud the humane values underlying this claim, I must disagree. There is not – and never could be – any universal definition of what is offensive. we all have our own internal calibration of what offends; I cannot know what you think or might feel and so any stricture that bars me from saying something offensive will inevitably fuel a creeping self-censorship which is the antithesis of freedom of speech. |
| To live in a free society is to risk being offended. We can complain; we can retaliate; and we can shout aloud our discomfort. What we cannot do is shoot those who offend us. Je suis Charlie.Kath ChecklandHope Valley, Derbyshire | To live in a free society is to risk being offended. We can complain; we can retaliate; and we can shout aloud our discomfort. What we cannot do is shoot those who offend us. Je suis Charlie.Kath ChecklandHope Valley, Derbyshire |
| • Freedom of speech is a relative concept already limited by legislation. Libel, slander and incitement to racial hatred are crimes, as is denial of the Holocaust in Germany. Perhaps we should discuss whether figurative representation of Muhammad should be banned in the interests of public safety and social harmony, while continuing to tolerate satire of religion or any other belief or ideology. Such a limitation would hardly constitute a crippling assault on values that most of us hold dear, but might assuage concerns of many who are offended by images of the prophet.Simon SweeneyYork | • Freedom of speech is a relative concept already limited by legislation. Libel, slander and incitement to racial hatred are crimes, as is denial of the Holocaust in Germany. Perhaps we should discuss whether figurative representation of Muhammad should be banned in the interests of public safety and social harmony, while continuing to tolerate satire of religion or any other belief or ideology. Such a limitation would hardly constitute a crippling assault on values that most of us hold dear, but might assuage concerns of many who are offended by images of the prophet.Simon SweeneyYork |
| • Your editorial (9 January), which defends the decision to not publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons by appealing to the faulty logic underlying the calls to publish them as a matter of freedom of speech, is misguided. The cartoons have now become part of a news story and for that reason alone should be published. It is the responsibility of a media organisation to keep its users well-informed so they can form their own opinions on these issues. We should not have to search for this information elsewhere. David LobinaLondon | • Your editorial (9 January), which defends the decision to not publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons by appealing to the faulty logic underlying the calls to publish them as a matter of freedom of speech, is misguided. The cartoons have now become part of a news story and for that reason alone should be published. It is the responsibility of a media organisation to keep its users well-informed so they can form their own opinions on these issues. We should not have to search for this information elsewhere. David LobinaLondon |
| • Has the Guardian taken all leave of its senses in donating £100,000 to Charlie Hebdo? The “war on terror” is fought on two fronts. One is the hard war in the form of bombs and tanks. The other is the soft war in the form of the ideological demonisation of Islam. Charlie Hebdo quite consciously played its part in the soft war. It is no Private Eye. And the claim it is left is a dubious one. For when it comes to Islam many parts of the French left have a shabby record, from the way the French Communist party opposed Algerian independence onwards. While the killings have to be opposed, is it any wonder that when petrol is poured on the raging fires of Muslim-baiting some people are liable to be burnt? By donating this money to a journal that the Guardian itself would condemn if its so-called satire were directed against Judaism, it seems to have learnt nothing.John Curtis Ipswich, Suffolk | • Has the Guardian taken all leave of its senses in donating £100,000 to Charlie Hebdo? The “war on terror” is fought on two fronts. One is the hard war in the form of bombs and tanks. The other is the soft war in the form of the ideological demonisation of Islam. Charlie Hebdo quite consciously played its part in the soft war. It is no Private Eye. And the claim it is left is a dubious one. For when it comes to Islam many parts of the French left have a shabby record, from the way the French Communist party opposed Algerian independence onwards. While the killings have to be opposed, is it any wonder that when petrol is poured on the raging fires of Muslim-baiting some people are liable to be burnt? By donating this money to a journal that the Guardian itself would condemn if its so-called satire were directed against Judaism, it seems to have learnt nothing.John Curtis Ipswich, Suffolk |
| • I too want to resist the language of “war” (Tariq Ramadan, 10 January), whether metaphorically or literally meant, and whether it refers to a fight against politically motivated killings, against a particular religion and its adherents, or against terrorism as a phenomenon. Safety and human rights cannot be protected by violent hostility. They can come only from the building of understanding and respect, locally and globally. It will be hard to escape the dynamic of spiralling action and reaction but it must be done. We need the language of wisdom and kindness, not the language of war.Diana FrancisBath | • I too want to resist the language of “war” (Tariq Ramadan, 10 January), whether metaphorically or literally meant, and whether it refers to a fight against politically motivated killings, against a particular religion and its adherents, or against terrorism as a phenomenon. Safety and human rights cannot be protected by violent hostility. They can come only from the building of understanding and respect, locally and globally. It will be hard to escape the dynamic of spiralling action and reaction but it must be done. We need the language of wisdom and kindness, not the language of war.Diana FrancisBath |
| • Watching the Unity March of 1 million-plus people in Paris on Sunday, it reminded me of the Iraq anti-war march of up to 2 million people in London and 15 millon people in 800 cities around the world on 15 Februrary 2003. Would the march in Paris would have been necessary if the earlier march had been listened to?Chris HoldenLondon | • Watching the Unity March of 1 million-plus people in Paris on Sunday, it reminded me of the Iraq anti-war march of up to 2 million people in London and 15 millon people in 800 cities around the world on 15 Februrary 2003. Would the march in Paris would have been necessary if the earlier march had been listened to?Chris HoldenLondon |
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