It hardly seems a year since the Paris terrorist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo office and the kosher supermarket, but yes, tomorrow it will be the “anniversary,” if you can call it that. Today’s Jesus and Mo is about the cover of the anniversary issue, which I posted about yesterday and reproduce below. The email with the Jesus and Mo link came with the artist’s note:
The anniversary is tomorrow, but today’s Wednesday so here’s a comic. I do like the Charlie Hebdo cover, which has rubbed all the right people up the wrong way.
That’s the thing about religious satire – it automatically delivers offence in the right dose: the amount of offence you take is exactly the amount you deserve.
The cartoon needs no commentary:
The cover (Translation: “One year on. The assassian is still with us.”)
Exactly.
‘And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make.’
Paul McCartney
A truer description of everyday actions there never was.
“Francis condemned killing in God’s name BUT warned religion could not be insulted.”
There’s that ‘butt’ again.
“Francis condoned killing in God’s name AND warned religion could not be insulted.”
Fixed it for you.
Does Francis not read here? Of course religion can be insulted. Ridiculed, even.
OK, he’s not a native English speaker, so I’ll cut him some slack, but he really ought to learn the distinction between “cannot” and “ought not”.
…as if that were a bad thing.
But, I see the Vatican has not lost its sense of humor:
Oh really? Care to spend 10 seconds googling “religious calls to violence” (“Kill them all; God knows those who are his”)? Or perhaps someone will be made happy by taking his daughters and dashing them against the rocks (Psalm 137.9)? How ’bout the blood coming up to the horses’ bridles (Revelation 14.20)?
Are we done here yet? No? Goddamn it, I forgot all about stoning the non-virgin woman and the disobedient child. I just *hate* it when I do that.
How can monotheists think they have successfully distanced themselves from believing in a “violent God” when the entire narrative structure of their religion is one in which God has deliberately set up the world so that it may purge both sin and the sinful, thus restoring it to its pristine beginnings? It’s an authoritarian honor culture system with a built in hierarchy of submission to one’s place and purpose — and a built in depiction of modern rebellion which must be quashed.
The very best you’re going to get out of that framework is a capacity to sit back and let God wrSo what? Since God is still supposed to work through faithful human followers, it’s still a recipe for violence. It does no good to insist that kind acts of human love are manifestations of God but strong actions imposing divine justice are not.
The Book of Revelations for example is simply inexcusable, “metaphor” or not.
“The very best you’re going to get out of that framework is a capacity to sit back and let God wreck His ultimate vengeance in His own time and way.”
I don’t know how that sentence got truncated. A miracle!
lol!
g*d was kind of an open-carry type of guy. I would expect, originally from Texas.
“That’s the thing about religious satire – it automatically delivers offence in the right dose: the amount of offence you take is exactly the amount you deserve.”
Brilliant line. This site is a fountain of amo. Pardon the pun.
Indeed, brilliant!
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
Sounds like one of my former journalism associates who was of the opinion that a journalist who didn’t get arrested or sued at least once in every year simply wasn’t doing his job properly and should get a more suitable job. Like toilet cleaning.
My French is not really up to challenging a translator – good enough to pick my way through the paper, and I can survive domestic conversation – but I’d read the “court toujours” part of the caption as more like “is still running around.” Courir – to run ; court – past compound tense. Though the “pastness” of the running doesn’t jibe with the “continuing-ness” of “toujours.”
Court is 3rd person singular, present tense. It’s an irregular verb. 🙂
http://french.about.com/od/verb_conjugations/a/courir.htm
Superb cover. The murdered cartoonists would have approved. But god doesn’t have blood on his hands, as it doesn’t exist, but the Vatican does have blood on its toxic, duplicitous, dysfunctional hands. In my mind’s eye, I see instead the pope and his long line of disgusting predecessors in this caricature. Now that would be a cover!
Don’t leave the Chief Rabbi, several variants of Orthodox Primate, no end of Hindu gurus and a hoard of imams out of the blame.
One of the first things my tradition of Wicca teaches new students of the Craft is that there is nothing worse than taking any religion seriously including ours. They are all creations of human imagination and the best of them is a useful metaphor.
🇫🇷
As a French native speaker, the correct translation of the title goes something like this: “One year later: the assassin is still on the loose”. We often say as an idiomatic expression that someone “court toujours” meaning that it’s still out there somewhere doing it’s deeds without anyone bothering him.
Off topic, I’m Professor Ceiling Cat long time reader but this is my first post ever. Glad to weigh in with my little contribution.
Bienvenue, MrFunk. Glad you decided to join the conversation!
merci beaucoup.
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