If this is true, if the French professional basketball player Akin Akingbala has really been fired for a retweet about Charlie Hebdo it just exposes the sham around 'free speech' in France once again. People aren't stupid, they can see the double standards.
From Dr Yasir Qadhi's FB:
It has just been reported that the French professional basketball player Akin Akingbala (originally from Nigeria) has been fired from his team for re-tweeting a message that began, 'Je ne suis pas Charlie', meaning 'I am not Charlie,' in reference to the cartoonist who was killed. The tweet then went on, 'I am Ahmed the dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture, and I died defending his right to do so #JeSuisAhmed'
Notice:
1) that his crime was to merely retweet something from the account of an activist who began this tweet (and tens of thousands of people retweeted as well)
2) that this news item is barely making any rounds in any mainstream media outlet
3) that this is not the first (nor, it appears, the last) of a line of people who have been arrested or otherwise penalized for saying something that was deemed insensitive to the Hebdo attack.
4) the complete and total hypocrisy of advocates of 'FREE SPEECH'. It appears the only defensible free speech is when Islam is being criticized.
In a way, these news items are good, because it shows what many have been saying all along: the issue really has nothing to do with the absolute right of free speech, and everything to do with the right to provoke and anger and insult a select group that is already politically marginalized and socially vilified, and expect no response.
http://www.metronews.fr/…/twitter-je-ne…/moby!6BbNuZi5kgMZw/
PS Just in case anyone misunderstands, I was and remain extremely vocal in criticizing the killing of the cartoonists, so much so that ISIS issued a death threat against me for it. The question here is whether the Hebdo incident and its reaction really is about free speech or not, and all indications appear that it is not.
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