Two gunmen shot dead at 'draw the prophet Muhammad' contest in Texas

What an idiotic comparison. Presidents and Prime minister's are necessary to society. What did this competition do for society apart from cause the death of 2 people.

I'm prefer to blame ignorance of the organisers for organising a competition designed to offend a group of people with a very short fuse.

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I'm only writing one message, there's no point arguing with those who will never give in. Also, when there's a clear answer, it doesn't need justifying and arguing to make it so. So here you go:

I resent the way you tarnish all Muslims as "the muslims". We're not all intolerant, open your mind and stop gassing rubbish lmao.

I & 99% of the followers of Islam have no affiliation with extremists who carry out such acts, nor do we condone it. I am offended by the nature of the competition, but not enough to start killing people over it because I respect that these people drawing it are not followers of Islam and as they don't live in a Muslim country, sharia is not & cannot in any way, shape or form be applicable to them. I think it's better to sit back and stay quiet because it's not worth it. Just because 1% feel the opposite, does not give you the right to brand us as all the same, sir.

However, I've seen you comment on many posts about Islam, quick to judge us all as extremists etc etc. Why not look on the streets and have a look at how many of us are actually like these extremists? Why not observe how peaceful the majority are?

With over 1.6/1.7 billion Muslims in the world, if we were all terrorists, non-Muslims wouldn't even exist anymore. Js, because you don't seem to be aware of this.

You do realise that's the same rhetoric they employ against us. If you celebrate their deaths then you're no better than the jihadists in my book. Something very sinister about the glee with which people comment on these types of things.

A draw Muhammad contest is just needless, pointless escalation of the situation. This is the sort of thing that causes wars. No different to the sort of idiotic, gratuitous provocations that used to happen in NI, no different to the kinds of things you probably get enraged about like Islamist demonstrators burning poppies.

for ****'s sake

Nobody's saying (as far as I understand) that the cartoonists didn't have the right to do what they did. The sole bone of contention was whether it was morally reprehensible. The actions of the gunmen are completely irrelevant to this assessment.

Thus, rather than this being true:

"It is 100% irrelevant whether it was meant to antagonize muslims,the pope,anyone. If any specific minority finds itself offended and decides to retort to killing than said minority IS 101% in the wrong"

It is in fact one of the few, if not the only relevant factor.

What makes that the sole bone of contention? Nothing in the OP confines the debate to this.

As to whether it is morally reprehensible, that is subjective, but I believe it depends on intent. Was their sole intention to wind up Muslims or to protest censorship or to mock a figure who is held up as being perfect?

I don't think morality comes into it. Would it have been nicer of them not to have this convention? Sure.

Morality exists for every decision in everyone's life, or at least one form of morality, alternatively called the morality of the good life or the morality of aspiration. It should be noted that there isn't a dichotomy between this 'good life' morality and duty-based morality (e.g. moral imperatives not to kill), but rather a spectrum - whether to do something like this, which at best is nakedly and unnecessarily offensive and at worst is an incitement to discriminatory hatred, falls somewhere close to the line.

Your first proposition is pretty questionable. Is the choice of soup at lunch more moral than a baguette? I don't think that either duty or eudaimonia necessarily have much bearing on that kind of decision, without inventing further facts.

I believe that morality consists in adherence to principles which derive from rights held by other people. I don't honestly think that the idea of morality makes much sense in the absence of considerations of whether one's actions might infringe the rights of others. I don't think, for example, that it makes sense to consider the morality of the actions of someone who lives his entire life alone on a desert island. If he comes across a turtle and tortures it, however, then we might consider the morality of that. Meanwhile, if you take the old Greek idea of seeing morality through the prism of personal betterment, then it's perfectly sensible to consider the morality of the pursuits of an isolated person. But that's not a view which I subscribe to.

With reference to the above, I don't think that people have a right not to be offended. As a result, I don't think that offending people per se is an immoral thing to do, even if done on purpose. I don't think it's immoral to gatecrash a funeral and dance on the grave (at least not on the basis that it's offensive) although that would clearly be a dick move.

Nothing in the OP thus confines it but debate ITT has generated this way (for good reason - nobody in their right mind is condoning anything else).

We cannot see inside their heads, so we do not know whether that was a significant part of their goal. The overt, publicised goal of the event did not include that as a significant part of their goal, and that's the only evidence we have as to intent thus far. Whilst I am sure there were some there who had this goal, I doubt most of them had 'I want to cause the greatest upset to Muslims possible muhahaha' as their intent. They probably knew that their actions could cause Muslims to feel wound up, but that's different to a direct intent.

How could they have achieved their goals through less offensive means? The whole aim of the event was to draw Muhammad to protest religious fascists who seek to censor such an activity in free speech. For them to self-censor by refraining from drawing Muhammad would completely defeat the purpose and the spirit of their cause.

What a lack of respect for religion in this thread; obviously it's wrong to kill someone but show me a Muslim that's not offended by a drawing of the prophet

I argued above that the idea of a right existing independently of the law was nonsensical; to me, this necessarily precludes your conception of morality.

I believe in (act) utilitarianism, which seems to necessitate there being a question of morality in every decision. The degree of judgment of others which is entailed in each decision of theirs depends on a) how important the decision is and b) how clear-cut the moral considerations are in that decision, both in the sense of the extent to which they are disputable, and the extent to which a balancing act must take place. The choice between soup and a baguette contains relatively little moral content in both of these regards, but there can still be some moral content in that choice (especially when one takes into account one's own personal preferences/needs).

I accept that act utilitarianism isn't exactly a popular theory and is often thought to be outdated. However, in the little reading I've done (I've only ever studied non-legal philosophy for fun, never formally), it strikes me that most of the arguments against it are misconceptions of its strengths. For instance, the 'utility monster' - if it could be shown that one existed to a sufficient extent to substantially alter how people acted, that person would effectively be a god and should be worshipped as such. In fact, the only weakness I see in it is that it opens up possibilities for abuse in how the class of beings, the utility of whom matters, is defined. Personally, I use the class of humans, but I accept this could be seen as somewhat arbitrary.

If you're an act utilitarian, then why are you arguing that the intentions of the people putting on the contest are relevant?

The intentions aren't relevant to the morality of the action itself, but they are relevant to the moral judgment of the person taking those actions.

"Individual rights only exist as a legal concept. They cannot be a moral concept because a moral "right" must be absolute (otherwise it would merely be a moral consideration) - and it is clearly possible to devise simple thought experiments to show that no right is morally absolute (even the right to life - consider the classic dilemma where you can divert a train which is going to hit two people to only hit one - the 'one's life does not make it morally indictable to divert the train)".

Or, in other words, only the peculiar context of positive law makes sense of a non-absolute right.

How can an action have morality independently of a person taking the action? Do you think that a boat sinking and killing everyone onboard is immoral? That sounds like a dodge.

Freedom of speech is needed even more than anything else.

BTW, the event DID NOT cause the death of two scumbag muslims, the event organizers didn't force them to go and try to kill people.

Why stop at the event organizers? By your logic, it's muhammad that's responsible for the death of these two scums. If muhammad didn't exist, there would be no draw muhammad contest, and there would be no deaths. But you won't like this argument because it makes yours look terrible.

I'm not distinguishing the morality of the action, I'm distinguishing its morality from its moral judgment. I can do something immoral e.g. inadvertently without incurring moral blame.

It's a complete abuse of language to say that 'I have a right to x unless countervailing considerations indicate that I should not have x', in that it necessarily implies that everyone has a right to everything which they could have in the absence of countervailing considerations, and thus defines 'right' substantially too broadly for it to have any useful meaning. The train situation illustrates that one can sometimes have a moral duty to cause someone's death.

As for the rule/principle distinction, first, I'd recommend reading the first couple of chapters of Dworkin's Taking Rights Seriously, which pretty much conclusively illustrate that principles, as opposed to just hard rules, do have application in the law. Second, I don't see how principles have anything to do with rights.

That makes no sense to me whatsoever. To my mind, if something is immoral then it is blameworthy. I don't see how you can have immoral actions without culpability.