Chris Graham Twitter problem

[der Berliner 3,239]

If Police Scotland have so much resources at their disposal to investigate this maybe they will also investigate some of what has been written online about Rangers & it's support by the likes of McGillivan and Haggerty.

 

... or find the brickthrower or sentence the racist Griffiths or the sectarian Guidetti.

[RANGERRAB 3,254]

... or find the brickthrower or sentence the racist Griffiths or the sectarian Guidetti.

 

Very selective it would appear.i'm sure Scotland's top law man Mullholland QC won't put up with this will he?

[The Real PapaBear 0]

I didn't accuse him of Islamaphobia nor do I think he is only that sending that tweet directly to a muslim cleric demonstrated a lack of judgement. That he wasn't a director of Rangers at the time isn't really the issue but it didn't happen 20 years ago. I'm assuming he doesn't know the imam in question, in which case he chose to send something he knew would be offensive to someone he dislikes and with who he disagrees even though he's never met them. I'm sorry but how can that be viewed as anything other than inflammatory and aggressive? I was as horrified by those killings as Chris Graham but somehow I managed not to send offensive pictures to imams I've never met.

 

I don't feel it is a weak point, it's fairly well known that drawings of Mohamad cause varying degrees of offence to muslims, in that one he's giving someone a hand-job. That's not satire or a making a clever social point, that's just done purely to offend. How anyone can see that as anything but a lack of good judgement I don't know.

 

I'm not drawing any parallels between that cartoon tweet and someone making fun of the Ibrox disaster, simply making the point that claiming freedom of expression needs more thought. Aberdeen fans sing about it because they know it causes offence and outrage, exactly the same emotions that cartoon is intended to stir in an awful lot of people.

 

John, with respect, you are either missing the point or avoiding it. The character CG sent the tweet to is not an imam; he is no more a muslim cleric than Gerry Adams was a Catholic priest. Choudary is a nasty piece of work and the vast majority of Muslims will have nothing to do with him. CG was being offensive and deliberately so towards an extremist whose version of Islam would deny us all freedom of expression, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

 

Chris responded to the ranting of this eejit by sending him a tweet. He didn't send the tweet to the Central Glasgow Mosque. He didn't send it to the British Council of Muslims - he sent it to this clown; and the message it contained was that in this country we can be offensive and that we have the right to offend - and especially when it comes to religions. It was, if you like, an exchange of cultural ideas. Our culture against a culture that murders cartoonists.

 

Secondly, anyone mocking the Disaster is only ever doing so to be offensive towards Rangers. There is no attack on ideas or philosophy when they mock the dead.

The point here is that there is a strain of Islam which would deny us all the right to speak ill of their religion or mock their prophet and kill us for doing so. People like Choudary who would force their modes of behaviour on the rest of us have no grounds for complaint or offense when people respond, like CG did, by reasserting that right to freedom of expression robustly and, if needs be, offensively. But we must not forget, his target was an islamic extremist, not an Imam or Islam itself.

[barca72 440]

He may have been and I might have misunderstood him.

 

Chris Graham is going to feel heat from the media because he's made a number of enemies there in recent years. I don't see it as part of anything more than that. Paul Murray gets a fairly easy ride from the media because he's cultivated a number of friendships over the years. It's not rocket science.

 

Well, I guess we have a choice then. We can either deem the response today to Chris's tweet as payback by some journalists because Chris pissed them off, or we can see it as outright bigotry from Scotland's mhedia.

When you consider the other stories published today - the 4 mths. for singing TBB, the fact that the numptie who sent the threat to Lennon was officially banned from Ibrox etc., and then wonder why they do not publicly push Celtic to issue a request to have the fans who accompanied the guy who bottled young Keiran Murphy, to name and shame the perpetrator - I wonder if you think this is one-way traffic?

Now please understand I am not making judgement on whether Chris Graham was right wrong or indifferent in his tweeting, I am more concerned with the imbalance in the mhedia and how they treat Rangers.

In all conscience I have to ponder many times why they choose to publish stories that are unconditionally designed to feed the faux outrage of their readers.

[aweebluesoandso 290]

It's an agenda solely against our club and supporters by the Mhedia. , We know it and they know we know, and we know they know we know it.

 

So who gives a Tinker's curse what they say, not me, The club needs to learn to play the game.

[Bearman 9]

John, with respect, you are either missing the point or avoiding it. The character CG sent the tweet to is not an imam; he is no more a muslim cleric than Gerry Adams was a Catholic priest. Choudary is a nasty piece of work and the vast majority of Muslims will have nothing to do with him. CG was being offensive and deliberately so towards an extremist whose version of Islam would deny us all freedom of expression, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

 

Chris responded to the ranting of this eejit by sending him a tweet. He didn't send the tweet to the Central Glasgow Mosque. He didn't send it to the British Council of Muslims - he sent it to this clown; and the message it contained was that in this country we can be offensive and that we have the right to offend - and especially when it comes to religions. It was, if you like, an exchange of cultural ideas. Our culture against a culture that murders cartoonists.

 

Secondly, anyone mocking the Disaster is only ever doing so to be offensive towards Rangers. There is no attack on ideas or philosophy when they mock the dead.

The point here is that there is a strain of Islam which would deny us all the right to speak ill of their religion or mock their prophet and kill us for doing so. People like Choudary who would force their modes of behaviour on the rest of us have no grounds for complaint or offense when people respond, like CG did, by reasserting that right to freedom of expression robustly and, if needs be, offensively. But we must not forget, his target was an islamic extremist, not an Imam or Islam itself.

 

You are kidding mate, offending people is what we are trying to get rid of in society.

Edited March 13, 2015 by Bearman

[Blue Moon 1,113]

You are kidding mate, offending people is what we are trying to get rid of in society.

 

By banning freedom of speech? The Offensive Behaviour at Football Act is an invidious act that will almost certainly not survive the next time it is scrutinised. It has given a weapon to the serially offended and caused more problems than it has solved. No other section of society has been singled out for special treatment. The root causes of sectarianism are historical and complex and won't be solved by gagging orders.

[pmu 0]

You are kidding mate, offending people is what we are trying to get rid of in society.

Personally I do not go out of my way to offend. Switch on the telly and there are popular programs centred around offending people , comedians pushing boundaries of taste and decency and finally the Charlie hebdo cartoons themselves. However dare the man in the street attempt to wander into these murky waters of offensiveness. It's a fucked up world of double standards..

[RANGERRAB 3,254]

John, with respect, you are either missing the point or avoiding it. The character CG sent the tweet to is not an imam; he is no more a muslim cleric than Gerry Adams was a Catholic priest. Choudary is a nasty piece of work and the vast majority of Muslims will have nothing to do with him. CG was being offensive and deliberately so towards an extremist whose version of Islam would deny us all freedom of expression, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

 

Chris responded to the ranting of this eejit by sending him a tweet. He didn't send the tweet to the Central Glasgow Mosque. He didn't send it to the British Council of Muslims - he sent it to this clown; and the message it contained was that in this country we can be offensive and that we have the right to offend - and especially when it comes to religions. It was, if you like, an exchange of cultural ideas. Our culture against a culture that murders cartoonists.

 

Secondly, anyone mocking the Disaster is only ever doing so to be offensive towards Rangers. There is no attack on ideas or philosophy when they mock the dead.

The point here is that there is a strain of Islam which would deny us all the right to speak ill of their religion or mock their prophet and kill us for doing so. People like Choudary who would force their modes of behaviour on the rest of us have no grounds for complaint or offense when people respond, like CG did, by reasserting that right to freedom of expression robustly and, if needs be, offensively. But we must not forget, his target was an islamic extremist, not an Imam or Islam itself.

 

I think the problem is though it could cause offence to all muslims(not just Chaudrey) whether intentional or not.

Edited March 13, 2015 by RANGERRAB

[BrahimHemdani 1]

John, with respect, you are either missing the point or avoiding it. The character CG sent the tweet to is not an imam; he is no more a muslim cleric than Gerry Adams was a Catholic priest. Choudary is a nasty piece of work and the vast majority of Muslims will have nothing to do with him. CG was being offensive and deliberately so towards an extremist whose version of Islam would deny us all freedom of expression, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

 

Chris responded to the ranting of this eejit by sending him a tweet. He didn't send the tweet to the Central Glasgow Mosque. He didn't send it to the British Council of Muslims - he sent it to this clown; and the message it contained was that in this country we can be offensive and that we have the right to offend - and especially when it comes to religions. It was, if you like, an exchange of cultural ideas. Our culture against a culture that murders cartoonists.

 

Secondly, anyone mocking the Disaster is only ever doing so to be offensive towards Rangers. There is no attack on ideas or philosophy when they mock the dead.

The point here is that there is a strain of Islam which would deny us all the right to speak ill of their religion or mock their prophet and kill us for doing so. People like Choudary who would force their modes of behaviour on the rest of us have no grounds for complaint or offense when people respond, like CG did, by reasserting that right to freedom of expression robustly and, if needs be, offensively. But we must not forget, his target was an islamic extremist, not an Imam or Islam itself.

 

Whilst no one would argue with your final sentence, I think the issue here is where you would draw the line between allowable and non-allowable offensiveness. As RB points out whilst the re-tweet was sent to Choudary it is there for all Muslims to read and clearly grossly offensive to some if not most. Would you say that it is OK to be offensive so long as it is not the kind of offensiveness that might lead to a riot and who is to make that judgement, a policeman and/or the procurator fiscal as with the oft derided Offensive Behaviour and Threatening Communications Act? Or just a Breach of the Peace type situation?

 

It is easy to find ways to justify Mr Graham's actions but isn't it even easier just to admit that it was a silly, childish thing to do and whether he was a director of Rangers at the time or not, it shows he is not the type of person who should hold that office.

Edited March 13, 2015 by BrahimHemdani
isn't it even easier