Talk:Murder of Samuel Paty

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: [1] [2] [3][4] [5] 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)

From your above comment It appears you do not understand those policies GPinkerton. Hardyplants (talk) 05:52, 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)
          • @WhinyTheYounger: No, the motive of the assassination had nothing to do with anything Lincoln did; the motive is nowhere said to be have in any part Paty's which is what this RfC is all about trying very hard to suggest. And yes a suitable rebuttal is that, no, no source has said "the motive of the attack was something other than jihadism" and the long-running war against Islamism and free speech, as represented by these cartoons, which are almost as old as the killer was. GPinkerton (talk) 05:44, 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)
    • It is a lie to claim that a violent ideology has nothing to do with murder. The penalty for blasphemy according to Sharia law is death. Sharia could have stipulated that the punishement for blasphemy is a fine, two days in prison or being stripped of your rank, but no it is death. A Thousand Words (talk) 06:43, 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. (See diff and the discussion below)

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)

Oopsy! Macron did say he'll defend the cartoons themselves. Read We will not give up cartoons: Macron in homage to murdered teacher from France24. Assem Khidhr (talk) 06:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Is English your first language? Macron did not defend the cartoons, he defended all cartoons. He said: "We will not give up cartoons". I don't know how it could be clearer: Islamists want cartoons banned, Macron says no, cartoons should not be banned. This is about free speech, and has always been about free speech, just as Paty's class was about free speech. They killed Paty, now they want Macron. Or France. Or they wanted both for a long time, the issue is the same; free speech is allowed in France, Ilsmaists object to this, and some kill people in order to prove their point. Read it again. GPinkerton (talk) 06:25, 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)

TRT World would be considered reliable in this case as Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources says

Consensus exists that TRT World is reliable for statements regarding the official views of the Turkish government but not reliable for subjects with which the Turkish government could be construed to have a conflict of interest. For other miscellaneous cases, it shall be assumed to be reliable enough.

This is something that I'd consider "miscellaneous". We can take this to WP:RSN if you want.VR _talk 06:25, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Vice regent: That would be unnecessary because "not reliable for subjects with which the Turkish government could be construed to have a conflict of interest" certainly covers the two topic on which the article is fictitiously cooked up, namely, the Syrian Civil War, in which Turkey is a belligerent, and the ongoing legal action between France and Turkey over this very issue. How the Turkish government could not be "considered to have a conflict of interest" here is beyond absurd to suggest, and you retract it. Policy already covers this issue; Turkish propaganda is not to be used as for claims of fact, especially in contrived misinformation like this. GPinkerton (talk) 06:30, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

But this information is neither about the Syrian war nor about legal action. Its about protesters who feel that Macron's comments displayed hostility towards Islam.VR _talk 06:36, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Vice regent: Are you joking? This supposed event, which labels the victims of Turkey's ongoing genocide in the region occupied by its armed forces and its allies "terrorists", presents as fact claims that happened in places presently occupied by forces loyal to Erdogan, one of the major proponents of the anti-free speech lobby. How can you suggest this has nothing to do with the civil war? In which reality would that be the case? Here on earth, claims of the opinion of the masses of an occupied territory cannot be reliably attributed to the sate media of an authoritarian Islamist occupier. It's really funny to read read your claims here, given your strenuous allegation about non-reliable sources in other discussions ... I wonder why that might be. The source cannot be used, and the events as described almost certainly never took place, given the usual reliability of wartime statements from official Turkish sources and their clear conflict of interest in reporting the latest genocide in their long history of genocide in the region. GPinkerton (talk) 06:44, 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)

• I am going to remark as a user very rarely involved in Islam-, Europe- or Middle East-related articles or issues that Assem Khidhr (talk · contribs) has been handling this evidently week-long conflict with GPinkerton with remarkable grace and patience given the latter's apparent desire to push a very specific POV (specifically, an effort to make sure everyone knows they think Islam is incompatible with free expression, e.g. The people who oppose the free press are are [sic] 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.). The edits made above by Assem were reasonable attempts at handling the problem; GPinkerton is being aggressive and relying on extremely torturous interpretations of otherwise plainly stated facts from reliable sources to preach their point. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 05:41, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
  • @WhinyTheYounger: The comment above contains and obvious and defamatory falsehood. I have not, until now, mentioned Islam once in this discussion. I urge you to retract your unfounded and provocative claims! GPinkerton (talk) 05:46, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Claims of canvassing

In refutation of GPinkerton (talk · contribs)'s last straw, which I was already anticipating, here is a list of the editors I notified, noting, importantly, that my notice referred to the RfC above, not the current discussion, where he for some reason decided to post the note:

• Francis Schonken (talk · contribs), a chief editor who was the first to disagree with my proposal. I notified them here.
• A group of previously uninvolved admins I randomly chosen from here:
  1. 78.26 (talk · contribs), here
  2. BOZ (talk · contribs), here
  3. Liz (talk · contribs), here
  4. BD2412 (talk · contribs), here
• Masem (talk · contribs), a previously uninvolved admin who participated in the discussion at NPOVN. He was supporting calling controversial in Wikivoice and was the only admin to participate. Note that no other user particpated in NPOVN that I didn't notify, except if they already participated by the time I started posting notices. I notified them here.
• Vice regent (talk · contribs), a previously involved user who to some extent shared my view. I notified them here.

Assem Khidhr (talk) 06:01, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• Perhaps you could explain the criteria you chose for deliberately deciding who not to notify? GPinkerton (talk) 06:10, 19 November 2020 (UTC)