Cartoon on the alliance of anti-free speech bishops, imams
Posted on 11/05/2020 7:15:08 PM PST by ebb tide
PARIS (ChurchMilitant.com) - A prominent French bishop is bowing to Islam's blasphemy law and defending censorship of cartoons of Muhammad following the slaughter of three Catholics in Nice's Notre-Dame Basilica by a Muslim jihadi.
Cartoon on the alliance of anti-free speech bishops, imams
Arguing that the French republic's value of "fraternity" is stronger than its values of "liberty or equality," Toulouse archbishop Robert Jean Louis Le Gall, O.S.B. is insisting on "limits to freedom of expression because of the claims of fraternity."
The archbishop's remarks on radio France Bleu Occitanie broadcast Friday has sparked outrage among French Catholics and secularists who are comparing the prelate's acquiescence to Islam's blasphemy law with French President Emmanuel Macron's uncompromising refusal to surrender to Islamic Sharia.
Reiterating his "full support" and "the protection of the French Republic" for French Catholics in an interview the same day with Arab television Al Jazeera, Macron said: "I shall continue defending the freedom in my country to speak, to write, to think and to draw."
"I will never accept anyone justifying any physical violence on account of these caricatures," Macron emphasized, pointing out that the cartoons did not single out Islam for mockery but lampooned all religions and politicians, including himself.
"Archbishop Robert Le Gall is signaling that violent intimidation works and that means he is only going to get more of it," world-renowned Islamic expert Robert Spencer told Church Militant.
"If France at any point in the future becomes a Sharia state that enforces blasphemy laws and subjugates Christians as second-class and inferior, Robert Le Gall can stand up and take a bow," noted Spencer, author of the newly-published Mass Migration in Europe: A Model for the U.S.?, which exposes Muslim no-go zones in France.
Archbishop Robert Le Gall is signaling that violent intimidation works and that means he is only going to get more of it.Tweet
Spencer explained:
By encouraging threats meant to enforce Sharia blasphemy laws, Le Gall is doing all he can to bring about such a France. In doing so, he is pulling against President Macron, who has made it abundantly clear he will defend France as a free society that protects free speech. Future generations may regard the agnostic Macron as a greater defender of the Faith than Abp. Le Gall, whose submission and surrender would condemn future generations of Catholics to precarious lives of cowering before their Sharia-enforcing overlords.
In his radio interview, Le Gall insisted that people do not "have the right to insult religions" and "religions cannot be mocked, (because) we see the results."
The archbishop said that cartoons of Muhammad "are considered an insult to Muslims and Christians alike and they should not be spread further," when asked if it was right for the caricatures to be shown to schoolchildren.
"Sometimes we put fuel on the fire through Charlie Hebdo cartoons," he commented, "because these cartoons are against Muslims, but they are also against the Christian religion."
"Religions are not made fun of with impunity. We cannot afford to make fun of religions; we see the results of this," he reiterated.
However, the prelate's critics were quick to note that Le Gall has until now never condemned blasphemies against Christianity or Judaism in the French media.
Future generations may regard the agnostic Macron as a greater defender of the Faith than Abp. Le Gall.Tweet
Moreover, the jihadi massacre of four innocent people in Vienna, Austria, on All Souls Day had nothing to do with the cartoons.
"We publish caricatures every week, but people only describe them as declarations of war when it's about the person of the Prophet [Muhammad] or radical Islam," cartoonist Stéphane Charbonnier told Der Spiegel in 2012.
Nice's Notre-Dame Basilica after the jihadi attack on Catholics
"We are only criticizing one particular form of extremist Islam, albeit in a peculiar and satirically exaggerated form," said Charbonnier, one of the 12 killed by two jihadi gunmen at Charlie Hebdo's Paris office in January 2015.
Paris-based satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo regularly publishes offensive cartoons against Christianity and has been sued 13 times by various Catholic organizations, but never opposed by the bishops.
The caricatures against Christianity have been outrageously blasphemous — even depicting the Holy Trinity engaging in sodomy.
Revealing he has spoken to Pope Francis, President Macron told Al Jazeera he would not submit to an Islamic law on blasphemy: "These illustrations were drawn in France and the law applicable in France is not the law of Islam; it is the law of the sovereign French people."
Other bishops joined in the anti-free speech chorus against the cartoons. "Freedom of expression 'is sacred in France,'" said Bp. André Marceau of Nice, "but this does not mean that we must support the spread of vulgar and offensive cartoons, such as those made on Islam and the Catholic Church by Charlie Hebdo."
"How can the quintessence of the French spirit reside in vulgarity and malevolence? By laughing sarcastically at what matters most to another citizen, are we putting ourselves on an equal footing?" asked Abp. Jean Legrez of Albi. "Freedom of expression should never make fun of the respect due to the beliefs of others."
We cannot afford to make fun of religions; we see the results of this.Tweet
Vice president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Bangladesh (CBCB) Bp. Gervas Rozario said Charlie Hebdo "has committed an unforgivable injustice by publishing caricatures of Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam."
Islam prescribes the death penalty for those who insult or mock the religion's founder following Ibn Taymiyyah's landmark legal treatise Kitāb al-ṣārim al-maslūl ʿalā shātim al-Rasūl, stipulating that anyone "who curses (sabba) the Prophet Muhammad must be killed without further recourse."
Pope Francis' Muslim dialogue partner Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyeb demanded an international law banning criticizing or insulting Islam — a day before the jihadi attack in Nice's Notre-Dame Basilica.
In 2015, Pope Francis made remarks that seemed to justify violent Muslim mobs protesting against Charlie Hebdo's caricatures of Muhammad. "If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch," Francis said while pretending to throw a punch in the direction of the person organizing his trips.
Francis-Hypocrites
Ping
“fraternity” is stronger than its values of “liberty or equality,”
um, no, it’s not
(wanders off muttering, bunch of chinese propaganda hogwash coming from a religious man for crying out loud what’s this world coming to?)
The popes and bishops of the Crusades would slap these cowardly idiots silly then lock them up and throw away the key...
Free speech, and freedom in general, is not a characteristic of any religion. Freedom implies a freedom to sin, a freedom to heresy and a freedom to be of a different religion, all of which are anathema explicitly, as in the case of Islam, or implicitly, as in Christian sects and most other religions. Freedom is basically possible only where no one sect has an overwhelming majority and they have to find a way to get along together. Even then they tend to make law as much as they agree on.
Certain religious practices and customs get made fun of and the practitioners will write you letters, pray for you and stop subscribing to your publications. You have offended them.
Certain other religious practices and customs get made fun of and the practitioners will run out and kill people who had nothing to do with what offended them.
One of these is not an acceptable response in a free and civilized society.
I wonder if the bishop can figure out which one.
If you can not "afford" to make fun of religions then you are living under the control of a cult.
Freedom to sin if of course part of being human.
We shouldn’t but since we ALL DO then obviously we are free to do it.
I don’t know what kind of sect you belong to and God knows I don’t want to :)
But extremism on any side is bad news.
ciao
Well you can’t do a LOT of things now on twitter or FB or even TV.
Trump was kicked off the air during his speech today on multiple channels once it was decided he was “lying”
We need to do some self surgery too.
We keep looking straight at muslims while white college grads want to kills us just as much...many of them.
They HATE Christians.
It’s a several front war.
“Whoever does not embrace the Catholic Christian faith is lost, like your false prophet Muhammad.”
-St. Peter Mavimenus (d. 8th century), martyr from Gaza. Response reported in the Martyriologum Romanum when he was asked to convert to Islam by a group of Muslims.
“There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist…. From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy. Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that a certain book had been sent down to him from heaven. He had set down some ridiculous compositions in this book of his and he gave it to them as an object of veneration.”
-St. John Damascene (d. 749), Syrian Arab Catholic monk and scholar. Quoted from his book On Heresies under the section On the Heresy of the Ishmaelites (in The Fathers of the Church. Vol. 37. Translated by the Catholic University of America. CUA Press. 1958. Pages 153-160.)
“We profess Christ to be truly God and your prophet to be a precursor of the Antichrist and other profane doctrine.”
-Sts. Habenitus, Jeremiah, Peter, Sabinian, Walabonsus, and Wistremundus (d. 851), martyrs of Cordoba, Spain. Reported in the Memoriale Sanctorum in response to Spanish Umayyad Caliph ‘Abd Ar-Rahman II’s ministers that they convert to Islam on pain of death.
“Any cult which denies the divinity of Christ, does not profess the existence of the Holy Trinity, refutes baptism, defames Christians, and derogates the priesthood, we consider to be damned.”
-Sts. Aurelius, Felix, George, Liliosa, and Natalia (d. 852), martyrs of Cordoba, Spain. Reported in the Memoriale Sanctorum in response to Spanish Umayyad Caliph ‘Abd Ar-Rahman II’s ministers that they convert to Islam on pain of death.
“On the other hand, those who founded sects committed to erroneous doctrines proceeded in a way that is opposite to this, the point is clear in the case of Muhammad. He seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity. He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the contrary, Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms—which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants.”
-St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), Theologian and Doctor of the Church. Quoted from his De Rationibus Fidei Contra Saracenos, Graecos, et Armenos and translated from Fr. Damian Fehlner’s Aquinas on Reasons for the Faith: Against the Muslims, Greeks, and Armenians (Franciscans of the Immaculate. 2002.).
“As we have seen, Muhammed had neither supernatural miracles nor natural motives of reason to persuade those of his sect. As he lacked in everything, he took to bestial and barbaric means, which is the force of arms. Thus he introduced and promulgated his message with robberies, murders, and bloodshedding, destroying those who did not want to receive it, and with the same means his ministers conserve this today, until God placates his anger and destroys this pestilence from the earth.
[…]
(Muhammad) can also be figured for the dragon in the same Apocalypse which says that the dragon swept up a third of the stars and hurled down a third to earth. Although this line is more appropriately understood concerning the Antichrist, Mohammed was his precursor – the prophet of Satan, father of the sons of haughtiness.
[…]
Even if all the things contained in his law were fables in philosophy and errors in theology, even for those who do not possess the light of reason, the very manners (Islam) teaches are from a school of vicious bestialities. (Muhammad) did not prove his new sect with any motive, having neither supernatural miracles nor natural reasons, but solely the force of arms, violence, fictions, lies, and carnal license. It remains an impious, blasphemous, vicious cult, an innovention of the devil, and the direct way into the fires of hell. It does not even merit the name of being called a religion.”
-St. Juan de Ribera (d.1611), Archbishop of Valencia, missionary to Spanish Muslims, and organizer of the Muslim expulsions of 1609 from Spain. Quoted in several locations from his 1599 Catechismo para la Instruccion de los Nuevos Convertidos de los Moros (my translation).
“The Mahometan paradise, however, is only fit for beasts; for filthy sensual pleasure is all the believer has to expect there.”
St. Alfonsus Liguori (d. 1787). Quoted from his book, The History of Heresies and their Refutation.
Pleasantly surprised by Macron here.
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