Quote of the day 8th January 2015
"As a Muslim, killing innocent people in the name of Islam is much, much more offensive to me than any cartoon can ever be"
(Iyad El-Bagdadi on Twitter yesterday)
(Iyad El-Bagdadi on Twitter yesterday)
Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria
Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Comments
"Thats offensive" is no point at all. Either something is wrong or it isn't wrong, who cares who it offends
So to be honest Lyay El-Bagdadi, I really dont care what you do or do not find offensive, and like so many others on so many things, you miss the point completely.
Killing innocent people is not offensive, Its wrong, and it is unlawful.
Its that point that brings the whole thing crashing back to where it belongs. Charlie Hebdo never acted Unlawfully or wrongly, the gunmen did.
Iyad El-Bagdadi is responding to people who claim to be acting in the name of the God he worships, and who murdered twelve innocent people, apparently because of cartoons that the killers seem to have found offensive.
I presume it was for that reason and that reason only that he selected the word offensive rather than the word wrong.
With all due respect, it completely and utterly obvious that Iyad was condemning the murders at Charlie Hebdo and making the entirely valid point that even if you don't like the cartoons, murdering people is a far more wicked action than writing and publishing them.
I thought the way he put it was extremely powerful and extremely clear, which is why I quoted him.
he didn't, he used "I find that offensive"
which merely weakens the entire quote, into a none argument, rather than empowering it
And can I respectfully suggest that in this particular case there was an extremely good reason why he could not ransack the Thesaurus for every word for evil and use most of them. He was posting on Twitter where you are limited to a maximum of 140 characters for a tweet.
One of the few good things to come out of the horrible actions of Islamist extremists in the past year or so is that both mainstream Islamic leaders and ordinary, decent Muslims have been much more outspoken and unequivocal than was sometimes the case in the not-so-distant past in condemning such atrocities and saying "This is not what our religion teaches" rather than keeping their heads down.
It takes a certain amount of guts to issue that kind of condemnation even for non-Muslims - look at how few British newspapers have reprinted any Charlie Hebdo cartoons - and it must take more courage for ordinary Muslims to do so.
I think we should give credit where credit is due.