US news outlets, as well as some UK outlets, and certainly many more elsewhere including France, cannot be said to have done as much, e.g.:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/arts/international/charlie...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1134...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/charlie-hebdo-puts-muhammad-on-c...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/01/12/hayat-bo...

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-charlie-hebdo-cove...

http://chicago.suntimes.com/nationworld/7/71/286127/charlie-...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/01/12...

Edit: it look like Buzzfeed went through a couple of sites:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/austinhunt/heres-who-is-and-isnt-pub...

How so? If an article says "trigger warning: (rape/Mohammed/spiders/flashing lights)", then people who don't want to be exposed to those things (e.g. due to PTSD, religion, phobias, epilepsy - or simply because it upsets them and they don't particularly want to be upset right now) can choose not to read it.

How does it erode someone's personal responsibility to give them the information they need to make that choice?

> where is my warning?

If there's a largish number of people for whom "trigger warning: trigger warnings" would actually make life less stressful, then I'd endorse people including that warning.

I don't think that population is very large. For that matter, I don't think it includes you.

Trigger warnings are also harmful because they legitimize the idea that you can be offended about pretty much anything you like and therefore such content should not be published. It enables people to behave like children, instead of grownups. Mature people don't get offended because someone says something they don't agree with.

EDIT: What I mean is the danger of those utility monsters you just referred to downthread.

From http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/30/the-wonderful-thing-abo... :

YOU DO NOT GIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY TO PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT.

Big thanks for the link.

Please edit your post to include a trigger warning: comparing epilepsy and religious belief may insult some people. See? Absurd.

There's no hard line. We use our best judgement, based on what we know of our audience.

However, I will note one counterargument that I find compelling, which is utility monsters. If we reward people for getting upset, that gives them an incentive to get more upset. I don't know the best way to deal with this, but I suspect that "no trigger warnings" is not optimal.

This kind of thinking, that society should accommodate a populations likes and dislikes, is why we get groups that want to forbid Mohammad cartoons and others in the same country that want to forbid religious clothes like Burqa. No matter the combination, forbid one, forbid both or neither, you will always end up with one or both groups being offended and wanting government to intervene.

The alternative as I see it is to not acknowledge the problem, making it a point that what ever people like or dislike is their own problem.

Good point. However people keep saying that it's all about extremists, not the general population of Islamists, therefore I would also think that (by definition) that population of extremists (who would be offended by such pictures) is not very large.

I relate to the OP that trigger warnings are an insult to my intelligence. If such a thing offends me, I should be able to judge it by myself or stop reading. The title is explicit enough to assume the "triggering" content is present.

Longer response:

I accept that you, and others like you, don't like trigger warnings. What concrete action would you like me to take in response to this?

If the answer is "stop posting this thing that I don't like", well... sorry, but I'm not going to do that. I think there's a lot of good that comes from trigger warnings, and I don't think the harm they do to you outweighs that.

Meanwhile, other people are saying "I don't like when you post things like this. Please warn me when you're going to post them." That costs a lot less to comply with.

You think it does, but you couldn't be further from the truth. The very concept of trigger warnings are costly: Anytime you want to voice an opinion, you're forced to enumerate all the possible ways every reader might be offended or triggered or upset by what you're saying. It's an unscalable solipsistic self-centered notion that implies people are not in control of their own feelings and emotions and how things affect them (I say this as someone who has dealt with mild PTSD). Trigger warnings on banal content trivialize the whole thing, and encourage people not to help themselves.

Getting triggered sucks and is painful and throws everything off balance and is just a horrible thing to experience. But only a fool feels those things and blames the stimulus that brought up the associations. The last time I felt those feelings, I realized that I needed to get help or I was always going to be a broken, unhappy, scared person.

The problem as I see it comes from the fact that a bunch of teenagers on tumblr co-opted trigger warnings from legitimate uses (like on PTSD and abuse forums) and started applying them to idiotic things like fat shaming and otherkin.

(I don't read tumblr, or any blogs where I think trigger warnings have gotten out of hand. It's possible such blogs exist. That doesn't mean my own use of trigger warnings is excessive.)

Not everyone can easily get help. If you want a therapist for example, that costs time, possibly money, and depending on your social circle you might fear being made fun of or cast out if they discover.

(Actually, as it happens, I approximately never write anything that needs trigger warnings. I'm mostly speaking in the first person for simplicity, and as a hypothetical "this is what I think I would do if I wrote about such things". I don't recall ever issuing a trigger warning though, so it's possible that I'm being somewhat hypocritical here.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801995

There was a good piece in the Guardian about their own use of swear words within the last week which I read on my mobile and can't find (I'm pretty sure it was a column in some section, Culture or G2 or something - it wasn't an official statement), but they had a great example of how every other newspaper reported on the John Terry racism case (football/soccer in the UK) by quoting him as saying "F@@@@@g black c@@t" or equivalent, ironically leaving unfiltered the one word that actually offended the player he said it to.

Like I said, I can't find the piece from the last week, but here's a 2010 article showing how much more willing the Guardian is to risk offense when it comes to swear words: http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2010/apr...

Like I said, a bit off-topic but I think interesting in the discussion of the Guardian's warning of offending people.

Consider the following statement :

"Maybe most Jews are peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing zionist cancer they must be held responsible"

Is the above sentence racist? anti-semitic? Blood libel? Incitement to hatred and violence? Possibly prosecutable?

Well here is what Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corporation, the head of one of the largest media organisations in the world tweeted a few days back :

"Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible."

I'm pretty sure that if he'd said this about Jews, it would not have had 7k retweets and he'd also have been forced to 'apologise'.

... oh wait, I forgot it's not Reddit.

Well I don't think many jews, or muslims for that matter (muslims do it too) would be offended by a reasoned criticism of circumcision. It is usually the hot topics like Israeli actions, or depiction of Prophet Muhammad that seems to trigger passions.

You are essentially taking away their right to do something.

Like... harming other people, specifically children? Oh, they are so oppressed /s

Maybe truly radical elements are in fact the tiniest sliver, but I'd appreciate some leeway for those struggling to understand how that sliver is so intimately involved in just about every major violence and armed conflict across the world.

It's a shitty thing to equate islamic terrorists (Al-Qaeda, in this case) with Islam. Al Qaeda kills eight times more muslism than non-muslims: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/surprising-study-o...

And Daeh is killing muslims and blowing up mosques: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/07/isis-s-grue...

The idea that this is a clash of civilisations, rather than terrorists seeking to control co-religionists, is designed to drive both sides to their respective extremists.

Furthermore, it could reasonably be that Guardian here follows somewhat common trend not to sit silently and subdue to terrorism threats but to at least display subtle retaliation. Or it was author's take at this while still getting published. Could be flat-out wrong on this one, though.

The Office 365 ad that is actually inserted inside the article text has three times the screenspace relative to the cover picture.

Iromically, The Guardian is based on the UK, which has laws that prohibit sending "by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character"[1].

Here is an example of a successful prosecution under said law: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-19883828

1: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127

Remember The Guardian isn't a satirical magazine, but a newspaper. It doesn't have the defence against purposeful offence that comes with the former.

The editor of the Observer(?) and WaPo were duking it out because the editor of the Observer admitted that he and his staff were frankly terrified of reprisals, and that it was important to admit that publicly, especially if a paper makes the decision not to republish, and that appealing to "sensitivity" as a reason for not republishing the cartoons was a cop-out. The WaPo editor stood by the "sensitivity" excuses. I obviously completely agree with the former.

Every other faith (and other large group of people) seems to have accepted it however.

This is obviously false. In England the film "Life of Brian" faced multiple bans from local councils on being shown at cinemas. Glasgow had a 30 year ban that ended in 2009. The comedian Stewart Lee faced legal action and a vicious campaign after his opera "Jerry Springer: the musical"; Jewish groups (rightly) decry Holocaust denying cartoons or cartoons comparing treatment of Palestinians to anything that happened in Nazi Germany; Sikhs in Birmingham (UK) violently protested a play, causing it to be stopped.

Life of Brian: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west...

Stewart Lee: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N9EUe8jNr6o

Sikh protest stops play: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/dec/20/arts.religion1

You have no right not to be offended, it just doesn't exist.

Religious people will always have a struggle between their notions of the sacred and others' freedom to ignore those notions. Those using their minds will see the necessity of freedom of conscience -- there is no faith without choice -- and accept its implications for speech. But the temptations and ignorances that move people to dictate to others are, I think, common to all religions. Yes, the mainstreams of Christianity and Judaism have gone much further in thinking this through, but we'll always have to guard against this instinct.

«freedom of expression and freedom of the press don't extend to insulting, showing contempt, blaspheming, trampling, mocking the faith or values of co-citizens». The justification: «insult is violence».

Possibly they are afraid of being mocked. Realizing that people didn't have to take (the idea of) god seriously was transformative for me.

Their email forward about Charlie Hebdo described a cartoon of pope benedict xvi «taking position on pedophilia» (sodomizing children), here's the drawing: http://culturebox.francetvinfo.fr/tendances/evenements/dessi... . The cartoon is not actually related to Charlie Hebdo, which goes to show they don't read it. That said, here's a drawing that's really be Charlie, lampooning the catholics for a hush-hush attitude to pedophilia: http://stripsjournal.canalblog.com/archives/2010/03/31/27376... . It's accurate: those well-to-do catholics I've talked to, including priests, reacted to the scandals strictly by being preoccupied with perception of the catholic church.

I am a Muslim and frankly find these attempts at "satire" pathetic. Apparently those who find Islam a hair in their globalization ointment can't argue from a position of reason and have to resort to calumny and provocation.

I fail to see how the attacks have anything to do with racism. Islamophobia is not racism.

> Send me some photographs or your mother or spouse and let me modify those images. Let's see if you are able to ignore or laugh them off.

Well, I'm not sure they would consent to me sharing photos of them, but you can have mine :) Just add me as a friend on Facebook (Tom Primozic), and you'll have a collection of photos you can use! I'll gladly laugh at them, I promise (unless they're not funny or are disgusting or such, but I will evaluate them on purely objective standards, without taking any offence).

Muslims, particularly those in the US and Western Europe (i.e. we're not talking about Chechens), tend to be darker skinned on average. It may not be an entirely racist prejudice, but there's certainly often a racist element to it.

See also the term "urban", which in the US is frequently a dog-whistle term for "black people" despite there being plenty of whites in city downtowns.

And therein lies the rub: would you subsequently gun someone down because they made photos of your loved ones which you find distasteful?

Almost nobody would.

You can argue that only a tiny number of people would murder me, but then it's only a tiny minority of Muslims who consider murder when they hear of Muhummed cartoons.

Well, it's true. Don't ad-hominem them, it gives them power (because they can rationally say that you're wrong).

> we should not allow Islamophobic groups to use the Frenh murders to spew their Islamophobe material in mainstream media

I agree. But depictions of Muhammad, insulting as they might be for Muslims, aren't Islamophobic.

I agree wholeheartedly.

They may have decided to preface their article with this message because they feared retaliation by zealous Muslims who would not otherwise expect to see a depiction of Muhammad in the Guardian.

I don't think it detracts any from the content of the reporting, though.

# On topic #

There are two possible extremes to consider:

1. A world in which any idea or custom is subject to criticism. Nothing is sacred. We can criticize, laugh at, depict, and mock anything that anyone believes. Publicly. Without fear of violence.

2. A world in which NO idea or custom is subject to criticism. Everything is sacred. Do not criticize, laugh at, depict, or mock anything that anyone believes.

My problem with religious extremists is that they, in general, seem to want World #2 for themselves and World #1 for everyone else. I'm more of a "World #1 for everyone" sort of person, and you're free to mock me for that if you'd like.

>They may have decided to preface their article with this message because they feared retaliation by zealous Muslims who would not otherwise expect to see a depiction of Muhammad in the Guardian.

Seems like content to me.

You may not like what was said, but please do not engage in dishonesty.

- The fact that I don't embrace the concept of trigger warnings.

- The fact that I responded in agreement to another comment.

- The fact that I suggested the warning could have been placed in response to a fear of retaliation.

- Me. Just, in general.

- All of the above.

But since none of the downvoters had enough gumption to actually say what they didn't like about my comment, we'll never know. :)

My pet theory for what motivates these squads of downvoters is a mix of laziness and cowardice.

;).