Talk:Murder of Samuel Paty

POV reverts by ‎GPinkerton

A wide range of mainstream news organizations call the cartoons controversial:

[1] [2] [3]

"(CNN)France was irrevocably changed by the Paris terror attacks of January 2015. Three days of violence began with a massacre at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had previously published controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. They ended with a siege at a kosher supermarket."

Washington Post: "And when he introduced the topic of the controversial cartoons in class, he acknowledged that it might be hurtful to Muslim students and offered them a chance to look away."

BBC: "Earlier this month teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in a Paris suburb after showing controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to some of his pupils." Hardyplants (talk)

Of course they are controversial. People have been murdered because of them. Use of the term is fine. WWGB (talk) 04:21, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

@Hardyplants: I've been trying to deliver this point for a long time now and recieved a warning for edit warring. There's a centralized discussion at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#POV edits by Francis Schonken on Murder of Samuel Paty. Please join and let others know what you think so that an appropriate action can be taken to prevent any disruptive editing. Same goes to you, @WWGB. Since you're having second thoughts (thankfully you did), I'd encourage you to express that on the noticeboard to put it into effect. Thanks. Assem Khidhr (talk) 04:36, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Khidhr's edits are introducing a US bias, but this article isn't about Muhammad cartoons, it is about an Islamist terrorist attack in France. How do French sources describe the cartoons? For instance Reuters: "France has allowed displays of the cartoons, which are considered blasphemous by Muslims. This clearly shows that in France (the topic is an Islamist terror attack in France, not the cartoons generally) it isn't universally the case that the cartoons are considered controversial. French sources should take precedence per WP:BESTSOURCES. A Thousand Words (talk) 05:43, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree, the nature or otherwise of the cartoons is irrelevant, this whole nonsense sounds like victim-blaming, far from fit for the lead. If you want to write that American news shrank from defending freedom of speech then go ahead and add a US section to the international response. GPinkerton (talk) 05:38, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Does that really matter? This is an English encyclopedia covering topics all over the world. There are numerous sources that call them "controversial". The fact is it is clearly called such from a wide group of sources. They are not all from the US either. Also no one is "victim-blaming" which I find a childish POV argument to negate a refenced fact. Wikipedia is about what the sources say about a topic not our personal biases. Hardyplants (talk) 05:47, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes it matters. Calling something "controversial" means reasonable people can disagree with it. This is something else entirely. Here, the "controversy" is the basic incompatibility of free speech and Islamism. Add the word controversial to the lead is meaningless, and suggests there might have been some reason beside religious intolerance for the killing of Paty. GPinkerton (talk) 05:51, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

@1Kwords: This is the second time you quote a policy without bothering to read it. WP:BESTSOURCES points to sources that are good, unbiased, reputable, and authoritative. I can't see any prioritization of sources native to the country of origin of the article subject. Please pay a visit to WP:RSPSOURCES, where an extensive list of reliable sources is shown. In case there is consensus that a source's reliability is questioned in some concerns (e.g. Aljazeera neutrality when it comes to Arab-israeli conflict), an annotation is attached to restrict its scope of reliability. If you think all the sources me and others provided so far are unreliable when it comes to reporting the recent events in France, try to gain similar consensus for your theory. Otherwise, it's a personal opinion. On the other hand, being controversial is neither negative nor value-laden in the first place. It just refers to the fact that controversy was evoked as a result of the cartoons. Btw, consensus is starting to gather on this side: you now have me, vice regent, WWGB, Hardyplants, Masem at NPOVN vs. Francis Schonken, GPinkerton, Passant67 (who didn't engage in all discussions and admittted his limited English, which questions his ability to resolve such a nuanced aspect of language use), and you (who admitted the cartoons ridicule rather than merely depict). You might wanna think it through before I file an offical RfC or a request at DRN. Assem Khidhr (talk) 20:24, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Your argument then is with reliable news sources. clearly from your perspective they are all "unreasonable". Here is a German one: "He vigorously defended the controversial cartoons, saying they were protected under the right to free speech. He later added that "we won't renounce the caricatures."" - https://www.dw.com/en/france-muhammad-cartoon-row-what-you-need-to-know/a-55409316

You are pushing a point of view (that calling them controversial validates the killing, that is not supported by any sources. Hardyplants (talk) 06:01, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Incorrect. You are unable to see that this is WP:UNDUE and WP:PROFRINGE and not fit for the lead. GPinkerton (talk) 06:05, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Now you are calling mainstream news organizations fringe.Hardyplants (talk) 06:09, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

No. I'm calling your insertions of this material into the lead of the article encouraging fringe. GPinkerton (talk) 06:11, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

How so when it is reported as such by many mainstream news sources.? Your view point is the one that is fringe. Hardyplants (talk) 06:13, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia reports what reliable sources say it does not advocate what should be said. Hardyplants (talk) 06:16, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

No it is not, and the attempt to shoehorn this stuff into the lead despite the ongoing discussion and in the face of existing consensus is a clear manifestation of the truth of the opposite of what you claim. Look at the lead of the article Charlie Hebdo shooting. Does it describe the cartoons as "controversial"? No. GPinkerton (talk) 06:19, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a reliable source that can be used in other articles. It seems that page may need to be edited also to report what sources say.Hardyplants (talk) 06:23, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Also Note that page has this in the introduction "Charlie Hebdo is a publication that has always courted controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders."

So you're hereby declaring your intent to POV-push beyond this article as well? Marvellous. GPinkerton (talk) 06:24, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Uh-oh! It seems like someone wasn't reading carefully:

1. Last paragraph in lead section of Charlie Hebdo shooting reads Charlie Hebdo is a publication that has always courted controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders
2. 2nd paragraph in lead section of Charlie Hebdo reads The magazine has been the target of three terrorist attacks: in 2011, 2015, and 2020. All of them were presumed to be in response to a number of cartoons that it published controversially depicting Muhammad.
3. There's a dedicated section in Charlie Hebdo called controversy.

All in Wikivoice. This boomeranged so bad, I guess. Assem Khidhr (talk) 20:24, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

It is important where the word "controversial" is being used. I'll take #2 here, as it is talking about the publication being controversial, and not the cartoons being controversial. We can say the publication of the cartoons has been controversial as there's numerous articles about the criticism from the Islamic community and their defense by the magazine and other groups, which is something in Wikivoice we can clearly identify as a controversial situation. We cannot identify the cartoons that way. In terms of the first point, while you are identifying a point in the lede, it is clearly sourced in the body under the background section, and per WP:LEDECITE as long as that is done in the body, the lede doesn't need to be cited. (That said, I do think that lede sentence is a tad too strong in Wikivoice, probably better to say "Charlie Hebdo has drawn controversy in the past with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders."). --Masem (t) 20:39, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

@Masem: As for #2, I'm afraid you've misunderstood the sentence somehow. The adverb controversially is modifying the next verb (depicting), not the previous (published), i.e. a number of cartoons published by the magazine that were controversially depicting Muhammad (depicting him in a controversial manner). If it were attributed to the publishing, it would've preceded the verb, I suppose -- that is, a number of cartoons, that it controversially published, depicting Muhammad. Also I agree with #1 being a bit subjective in tone. If you ask me, I'd replace always with repeatedly and it'll be good to go. Finally, it's somehow a false dichotomy to distinguish the controversiality of the cartoons from that of their publishing, because it's the cartoons that made the publihsing controversial in the first place: it's a perfect syllogism. Assem Khidhr (talk) 20:58, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I read it a different way, and that's due to poor phrasing as the text "depicting Mohammed" should be after "a number of cartoons" (that's what the cartoons were about), and "controversally" is applied to the publishing verb. But the phrasing can be improved, but it is still right to say in Wikivoice that the publishing act was controversial. Yes, I think its possible to argue after the fact the cartoons were too and in Wikivoice, but in terms of the event directed at Charlie Hebdo, it was their publishing act itself that was clearly controversial and why the attacks happened. The article should explain why the publishing of the cartoons was controversial, which may include descriptions of the cartoons outside of Wikivoice, but that's all part of a clear controversy that can be stated as such in Wikivoice. --Masem (t) 22:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Alright then. It's important to point out that other editors, nay, in this case, an uninvolved admin, think the cartoons can be descibed as controversial in Wikivoice. As you can see, this section was originally started when GPinkerton reverted the inclusion of this qualifier on grounds of consensus on the other side. This is proving apparently erroneous. Anyway, I'll wait for the NPOVN discussion to settle. Unless the matter is resolved there, I'll file an official RfC to vote for a final decision. Thanks. Assem Khidhr (talk) 22:15, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Assem Khidr's right that BESTSOURCES doesn't specifically apply here. It was WP:NONENG I was thinking of Citations to non-English reliable sources are allowed on the English Wikipedia. However, because this project is in English, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when available and of equal quality and relevance. In this case sources published in France are more relevant because this terrorist attack happened in France. The purpose of Wikipedia isn't to condemn cartoons. Other wikipedia articles constitute WP:OTHERSTUFF and cannot be used as WP:RS. One article at a time, please. A Thousand Words (talk) 02:32, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

RfC on Describing Charlie Hebdo Cartoons in the Lede

Given what's already incuded in the body and what we can know about the cartoons from a NPOV, would it be appropriate for the lede to describe the cartoons as controversial/inflammatory Charlie Hebdo cartoons mocking/disparaging/ridiculing Muhammad instead of the current showing Charlie Hebdo cartoons depicting Muhammad? Assem Khidhr (talk) 06:37, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Survey (Describing Charlie Hebdo Cartoons in the Lede)

• Support, as per the arguments below. Assem Khidhr (talk) 06:37, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. There are 6 alternatives in the RfC. I want to know which ONE I am voting on before I vote in the affirmative. WWGB (talk) 06:46, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Good point. The slash here was meant to correspond to an or conjunction, meaning that you should oppose if no option seems right to you at all. If you agree to at least one of each of the slash-separated combinations, then you should support and probably specify that one option. Assem Khidhr (talk) 09:00, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• Support, because this is what NPOV sources say about them. Not saying so is a fringe POV. I support the wording "controversial". Hardyplants (talk) 08:46, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose This sprawling RfC makes no sense. Work out what you want to insert into the article before asking why it is wrong. The controversialness or otherwise is irrelevant to the case at hand. The cartoons are not described as such in any of the articles dealing with any of the numerous atrocities by those who controvert the publication of cartoon images they consider blasphemous. To add extraneous adjectives to the lead is unnecessary and adds nothing of factual import to the article. The people who oppose the free press are are meaningless minority and to describe them as such would be undue pandering to the extremists, who, naturally, are the only ones to oppose the images. Indeed, opposition to the images is ipso facto extreme. No, the motivation here is clear, and I oppose it! GPinkerton (talk) 09:07, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose French president Macron disputes that English-language sources are "neutral" in this and points out that what they write ends up legitimizing Islamist violence. Per France24: French President Emmanuel Macron has called The New York Times media correspondent to criticize English-language coverage of France's stance on Islamic extremism after recent attacks, arguing it amounts to "legitimizing" violence.. Further In his column about their exchange, Smith said the French president had argued "foreign media failed to understand 'laicite,'" or secularism, a pillar of French policy and society. Therefore I propose that per WP:NONENG, that the best sources available might not be the ones published in English-speaking countries. It now stands that the English-language sources being called upon to change this article are now themselves the subject of dispute. A Thousand Words (talk) 20:06, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

That seems false because there are sources from France that call them "Controversial". Also, there maybe strong forces in France to censor the fact that they are controversial but we are not in France. "French magazine Charlie Hebdo to republish controversial Mohammed cartoons as terror trials start"https://www.thelocal.fr/search/?q=Controversal+cartoons

Aug 27, 2020 "including some of France's most celebrated cartoonists, were killed...including hugely controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed" - https://www.thelocal.fr/20200827/waiting-for-justice-france-remembers-charlie-hebdo-terror-attacks-as-suspects-go-on-trial

"Mr Paty was beheaded in the street outside his school after showing controversial cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad to students, during a lesson about freedom of expression." - https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Macron-promises-immediate-action-against-Islamic-terrorism

"French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the target of a massacre by Islamist gunmen in 2015, republished on Wednesday hugely controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to mark the start of the trial of alleged accomplices to the attack." - https://www.france24.com/en/20200901-france-s-charlie-hebdo-to-republish-mohammed-cartoons-at-start-of-terror-trial — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hardyplants (talk • contribs) 22:33, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support I support calling them controversial at the very least given how most Muslims (~2 billion) found the cartoons to be offensive, so much so that you have protests against the government of France in many Muslim countries, not to mention boycotts on both national and community levels. This is not a "meaningless minority" as one person above put it. Case in point: [4] [5] [6][7] [8] Maqdisi117 (talk) 01:23, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
  • @Maqdisi117: There are most definitely not 2 billion Muslims in the world, and if there were, they would still be a minority, and even is every one of them were an Islamist opposed to the free press, as the examples your have quoted do not suggest, they would still constitute an extremist minority to whom we should not give undue weight, per WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE. GPinkerton (talk) 01:53, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
• Support given the extensive evidence of similar wording in reliable sources and elsewhere on Wikipedia, as outlined by Assem Khidhr below. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 05:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (Describing Charlie Hebdo Cartoons in the Lede)

This matter was extensively discussed on and out of the page with the situation almost stalemating; however, only few editors were involved. Still, the discussion came to evolve a bit, which is why I filed this RfC to get more input and hopefully reach a consensus. For previous relevant discussions, ascendingly sorted by date, see:

1. Talk:Murder of Samuel Paty/Archive 1#Nature of the depiction, discussing whether the cartoons defamatorily depict Muhammad.
2. Talk:Murder of Samuel Paty/Archive 1#UNAOC, discussing whether the cartoons should be called inflammatory in wikivoice in the lede.
3. Talk:Murder of Samuel Paty/Archive 1#RfC preparation, discussing how should we file this request.
4. Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#POV edits by Francis Schonken on Murder of Samuel Paty, discussing whether a number of edits, including one engaging in the matter in question, conform to NPOV.
5. Talk:Murder of Samuel Paty#POV reverts by ‎GPinkerton, discussing whether removal of "controversial" was legitimate.

Since I'm voting for inclusion, I'll give a recap of the arguments given throughout those discussions as grounds for my position:

1. Being controversial is not value-laden and to report something as such imposes no committment on Wiki to either side of the controversy.
2. Referring to the controversy is encyclopedically significant since it historically contextualizes the killing.
3. Showing both cartoons that Paty showed would go against WP:GRATUITOUS, with one of them extremely likely to be perceived by a considerable number of Wiki readers as signifcantly more offensive. As such, it is important to convey what the cartoons contain in the prose. In this context, to say that they plainly depict rather than mock or ridicule their subject would be misleading.
4. The cartoons have repeatedly been described as controversial, inflammatory, ridiculing, lampooning, and/or mocking in reliable sources (as per WP:RSPSOURCES) and by French officials. Here are some examples:
   Occurrences in reliable sources

   • The BBC wrote French President Emmanuel Macron has said he can understand why Muslims were shocked by controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
   • The CNN titled an article Charlie Hebdo to reprint controversial cartoons as terror trial begins.
   • The Independent wrote Many people around the world have defended the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish inflammatory cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed in the wake of the massacre at its Paris offices and the following attack on a kosher supermarket, in which three gunmen killed 17 people in total.
   • Reuters wrote The middle school teacher knifed to death on the street of a Paris suburb on Friday showed his teenage students a cartoon lampooning the Prophet Mohammad as part of a class on freedom of expression earlier this month, parents said.
   • Charlie Hebdo was banned before in France for disparaging the death of General de Gaulle, a national symbol (note the Times article being titled The Provocative History of French Weekly Newspaper Charlie Hebdo)
   Occurrences in official statements

   • French ex-Foreign minister Laurent Fabius described the same cartoons as pouring oil on the fire.
   • French ex-president Jacques Chirac condemned the magazine's decision to republish previous cartoons of Muhammad and described it as overt provocations.
   • American ex-president Barack Obama commented on the same cartoons: "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam".
5. With the reservations made on WP:OTHERSTUFF and WP:POINTy behavior, being adopted in other Wiki articles, let alone highly assessed ones, still bears some meaning to the overall community consensus. For this reason, here are some examples where the cartoons or other very similar ones were called as proposed here:
   Occurrences in Wiki

   • Class C Charlie Hebdo lead section reads: The magazine has been the target of three terrorist attacks: in 2011, 2015, and 2020. All of them were presumed to be in response to a number of cartoons that it published controversially depicting Muhammad.
   • Last paragraph in lead section of Charlie Hebdo shooting reads Charlie Hebdo is a publication that has always courted controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders
   • There's a dedicated section in Charlie Hebdo called controversy.
   • See the description of a white-supremacist cartoon as inflammatory in the Class B article Lynching in the United States.
   • In a reference to previous Danish cartoons, Class C The Cartoons that Shook the World lead section reads: The book itself caused controversy before its publication when Yale University Press removed all images from the book, including the controversial cartoons themselves and some other images of Muhammad

Assem Khidhr (talk) 06:37, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

RfC on the Motive of the Crime

Should we describe the event of Paty showing the cartoons in class as a motive for the crime? Assem Khidhr (talk) 06:38, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Survey (Motive of the Crime)

• Support, sounds like WP:COMMON sense to me. Assem Khidhr (talk) 06:38, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose, this is anything but. The motive was Islamism on the part of Anzorov. It had absolutely nothing whatever to do with anything done by Paty and to suggest otherwise is abhorrent! GPinkerton (talk) 09:00, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose: really cases of blaming the victim are inhumane. A Thousand Words (talk) 19:57, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
• Support: This is the widely understood immediate cause. Extremist Islamism was a background condition, in the same way racism was a background condition in the Murder of Vincent Chin. But that does not mean we should ignore the full course of events——for Chin, it was a dispute at a strip club that angered racists, and for Paty, it was depictions of Mohammad that angered an extremist. To acknowledge this fact is not victim-blaming; it is an accurate portrayal of the circumstances. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 23:53, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
  • @WhinyTheYounger: So the motive of the assassination of JFK was what, the election of an American president?! The motive here is the Islamism of the murderer; the circumstances and life-history of the victim do not form part of the motive. Is the motive of gangsterism the honest hard work of the people whose money is extorted? Of course not! GPinkerton (talk) 00:02, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
    • @GPinkerton: No. One of the more notable things about JFK's assassination is that the Warren Commission was unable to pinpoint an overriding motive; it was a confluence of factors. Regardless, it is entirely plausible to say Islamic extremism was a factor here, but what we write about it in this article depends upon what reliable sources say. They overwhelmingly discuss the murder of Paty in the context of both Islamic extremism and his portrayal of the cartoon, often explicitly identifying the cartoons as the immediate factor that motivated Anzorov to murder him—see e.g. here, here, and here. I am frankly confused as to how this is even controversial. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 00:17, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
      • @WhinyTheYounger: Yes, a confluence of factors. Factors that conflowed in Oswald's head, not in Kennedy's. The motive of the crime was the desire on the behalf of Anzarov to martyr himself in the suppression of free speech. The reason that Paty's background is mentioned is because he was the victim, not because he supplied a motive. This is like saying the motive of the assassination was the desire to ride in an open top car. GPinkerton (talk) 00:40, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
        • @GPinkerton: This is a flawed analogy. You are right that it would be wrong to say, for instance, that the cause of Lincoln's assassination was his decision to go to the theater per se. It was rather because he led the Union during the Civil War, defeating the South and freeing the slaves. That, along with John Wilkes Booths' racism and Confederate sympathies, was a primary motive of the assassin. Imagine how utterly bizarre it would be to say that acknowledging the specific reason for Booth's actions is a form of "victim blaming" against Lincoln. So too with this case, which, again, is what is established in reliable sources, a fact for which you appear to have no rebuttal for. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 05:12, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
• Support I think user @WhinyTheYounger: has a good point. It would be strange to say that it was Islamism and Islamism alone that was responsible for the death of Samuel Paty. Rather, it was a combination of things, including the fact that these cartoons were shown in the classroom. Merely pointing this out, is not to blame the victim, it's just an established fact. Maqdisi117 (talk) 01:28, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
  • @Maqdisi117: Should we also point out that Islamists have killed around 250 people in France in the past five years? Should we point out this is all just Islamists' reaction to some cartoons that were published two years before Anzarov ever arrived in France from Russia? Shall we point out numerous journalists have been killed by Islamists because of the Islamists' own opposition to freedom of the press? Shall we point out that all the "controversy" is generated by jihadists? Merely pointing this out, it's just series of established facts. GPinkerton (talk) 01:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion (Motive of the Crime)

@GPinkerton: I'd like to remind you of WP:BLUDGEON. Your behavior on this vote (and to some extent the other RfC) seems to correspond to this sort of disruptive editing. With you repeatedly adding disputed material on the main page too, without bothering to open a discussion or seek dispute resolution, you're being quite uncooperative. Assem Khidhr (talk) 04:24, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

No, what you mean is that I disagree with you. That's not non-cooperation. This is not a vote. GPinkerton (talk) 04:28, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

No, @GPinkerton:, what they mean is you are indeed bludgeoning this talk page with a zealous insistence on acknowledging nothing about this heinous attack but the role of Islamic extremism—the relevance of which is not at all disputed here or in the article—in a way that would be much more suitable on Conservapedia or elsewhere. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 05:07, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Leaving aside the personal attacks, can you explain you explain why you believe the policy of WP:NPOV should be ignored? If the motive is known and has been established beyond question both by investigation and by the explicit declarations of the killer himself both before and after the killing, why are you interested in speculating on the possible cause or antecedents of the killer's own actions, which by their nature diminish the responsibility of the murder for his crime by strong implication, which runs contrary to the established fact that he was a self-declared jihadist who considered his attack on Paty an act of faith in a holy war against free speech and the other values of France. I'm struggling to see why other speculative points of view should be inserted unsourced into the article. I have yet to read anywhere that "the motive of the crime was in some way the responsibility of anyone but the killer and his numerous accomplices (alleged pending prosecution outcomes etc.)", and until I do I will continue to point out that this is unsourced, POV speculation, and wrong as well. GPinkerton (talk) 05:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Protesting against freedom of speech in Syria, Libya, and Iraq?

— Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Vice regent (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion. (diff)

GPinkerton (talk · contribs) has been citing this as evidence for protests in Syria, Libya, and Iraq against Macron's defense of freedom of speech. I thought this was both unsupported and too vague to be reported in Wikivoice. When I tried here and here to WP:HANDLE and reword the statement into ... Macron's defense of the caricatures, which is more concrete, verifiable, and mutually agreed upon, he reverted the change thrice:

• once automatically
• and another manually, both without new sources or even arguments in edit summaries.
• and then automatically again, citing in protest at President Emmanuel Macron's defence of the right to show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad from the same source, even though it explicitly refers to the cartoons.

The second revert was to be my last. Since the user in question didn't bother to start discussion, I initiated this in a last attempt to assume good faith, even though I'd be stating the obvious. Notice that this is the third disputed matter within a short period of time, and is concurrent with two ongoing RfC processes. Please hop in to reach consensus. Assem Khidhr (talk) 05:11, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

How is it mutually agreed upon? I am disputing it, and only you are trying to edit war your preferred (objectionable) wording into the text, despite, as I have said, quite misrepresenting what the cited source says. The source says: "France has urged Middle Eastern countries to end calls for a boycott of its goods in protest at President Emmanuel Macron's defence of the right to show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad." Assem Khidhr is trying to rewrite history by saying Macron defended the cartoons themselves, which is false entirely. Instead, Macron has defended, and the source says he defended, the "right to show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad". So I have reverted Assem Khidhr's POV editorializing, which in any case violated the Engvar policy. GPinkerton (talk) 05:25, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Nowhere does the reliable source say, nor the protesters themselves, that they are "against free speech". The protesters perceive themselves as being opposed to, what they consider, "Macron's hostility toward Islam". This included Macron's statements made before the murder where he said "[Islam is]a religion in crisis all over the world".VR _talk 05:23, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Nonsense, see above. GPinkerton (talk) 05:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC) Also, I'll forgive you for not being familiar with the topic, but as point of fact that article (which is Turkish state propaganda not fit for quotations of fact in any case, especially in an article dealing with their continued genocidal conduct in Syria) was published after the attack and nowhere claims Macron's comment, which can hardly be rationally disputed, happened before the Islamists struck. (again) GPinkerton (talk) 05:40, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• On a related note, we should spin out the reactions section into a separate article like 2020 France-Muslim world row. There are a lot of mutual tensions between the French government and Muslims both in and out of France and the Paty murder is only a small part of it. A lot of these protests are against other grievances not related to this topic.VR _talk 05:23, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

No, that would be a obvious POV fork. GPinkerton (talk) 05:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Also, see WP:CANVASS GPinkerton (talk) 05:32, 19 November 2020 (UTC)