Recently the @jihadistjoe and myself were mentioned in an article. Soon after, his account was suspended. Richard Dawkins led the Twitter charge to have his account reinstated as he is a “clever satirist.”
Can you support these recent tweets Richard, which Tom Owolade highlighted, as what secular activists should call satire?
https://twitter.com/jihadistjoe/status/543847473434075137
https://twitter.com/jihadistjoe/status/544898354803900417
https://twitter.com/jihadistjoe/status/545267761413619712
As Tom succinctly puts it:
https://twitter.com/owolade14/status/546122668916105218
Dawkins though still does not get it …
Which is regrettable because:
My article outlying the issues with Jihadistjoe can be read here.
Update:
As not everyone is reading the original post, or is aware I am a free speech advocate:
Article written by John Sargeant on Homo economicus’ Weblog
Follow @JPSargeant78
Homo economicus' Weblog 
I think whether you regard jihadistjoe’s tweets as bigoted might depend very much on who you are and where you live. I think they might resonate a lot more say with Christians living in Pakistan, Christians and Yazidis who have recently fled (or indeed are still trapped in) certain areas of Iraq, Copts living in Egypt or Christians living in Northern Nigeria. Oh sorry I forgot Iran,Saudi Arabia. Oh and I don’t think secular activists get on well in any of these countries either. Islamism cannot be put into practice without Muslims and so far the record of so called secular or moderate Muslims driving out Islamist ideas has been patchy to say the least.
Well listen to ex muslims too https://twitter.com/cemb_forum/status/546294905262604288
I am not talking about ex Muslims who are British though even they don’t seem to have any widespread media presence. I am talking about countries where non Muslims are the minority and where ex Muslims stand a very goid chance of losing their lives if they disclose either non belief or conversion to some other faith. Do you or do you not think that jihadijoe’s tweets might strike some of the Christians of Mosul (who had done their best to get on with their Muslim neighbours for years only to see those neighbours designate them as Christians for IS and help to rip them off) as being accurate? Do you think that if you had been one of thd hostages at the Lindt café you might be less offended by these images? I’d bet good money that a very large percentage of non Muslims who are unfortunate enough to live in Pakistan would think these images were spot on. I hope that in ten years time you will still be able to worry more about this sort of thing than the dangers we face from Islamism and that the knife is never at your throat.
You need to read the other thousand posts on here. Start with the one on Peshawar as most recent. Look up ISIS too etc.
CEMB are made up of people that have had to leave those countries you mention.
Look, you just have no sense of humour. Depicting Muslims as camal shaggers as Joe does is ‘deadly accurate’ and ‘Private Eye esque’ satire. Know what’s not funny? Making fun of Dawkins.
Comparing muslims = nazis saying later deserve externinating (so ergo former) is not funny. If that tickles your funny bone more fool you.
I think they are risqué but not over the top, even by the satire standards permitted on our televisions today. Saying Nazis are nasty fascists that were rightly exterminated is widely accepted by everyone other than Nazis and their sympathisers. The picture and its caption clearly show Muslims holding a swastika, which, I’m sure you would agree, is something commonly done by Nazis. In that respect “likes peas in a pod” prettying much sums it up. I think JJ is ambiguous on purpose just to be controversial and prompt outrage. And there is certainly a disconnect between the tweet and the picture. It seems you have decided JJ means all Muslims should be exterminated, where I see it as all muslims that act like Nazis should be treated like Nazis.
This leads me to believe there is something more personal to this matter as looking through your blog website it’s not the first blog you have written about JJ and Professor Dawkins endorsing and supporting him, which seems to upset you.
It seems JJ is a convenient subject for you to criticise Professor Dawkins with, who I’m sure, doesn’t retweet all his material because he doesn’t agree with it all. I’m a big fan of Professor Dawkins and his willingness to put himself in the firing line to prompt discussion on the taboo subject of criticising Islam and the awful behaviour of some of its followers is admirable.
I personally wasn’t aware of JJ until a couple of days ago when Twitter banned him. Since the campaign to have him reinstated was trending globally I think this validates Professor Dawkins support for his account.
You should probably rethink using him as a scapegoat to critcise Professor Dawkins and stop making yourself seem jealous that JJ gets the attention of Professor Dawkins where you do not.
Professor Dawkins is an intelligent man and is wise enough to determine who he endorses and doesn’t need to justify himself to the likes of yourself.
I have volunteered for the Richard Dawkins Foundation.
Also wrote this article “Why We Need Richard Dawkins”
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-sargeant/richard-dawkins_b_4586293.html
So no this is not about an excuse to have a dig at Dawkins. It’s about as secularists tackling religious extremism and religious prejudice aimed at believers of a religion.
Secularism is not anti-religious – our language has to be clearer than sounding like bigots when saying “muslims using rape to have sex”, “Muslims and Nazis like peas in a pod.”
Replying to your earlier comment I often read your blog and often agree with a lot of what you say. With regard to this I think your response to these tweets is mistaken. I agree with some of the other commentators that jj is targeting Islamists in the images you have chosen to highlight and also many of those who claim that Islamism is ” normative” Islam.
The biggest problem is the caricatures he is borrowing from others; his captions do not mitigate. For example saying Islam promotes rape (which sexual slavery is, but that point is missing) with a picture saying “Rape helping Muslims have sex since 622.”
The image is muslims rape rather than have sex. That is the bigotry. It feeds the immigration bashers, fear and hatred of a minority.
There is a genuine critique of islam to be made, and how ISIS, BH etc use such concepts as slavery and sex with POW. That should not be confused with muslims here in UK – but we should never shy away from challenging attitudes and behaviour by anyone that undermine welfare and safety of others.
Twitter does not allow nuance. But I hope we can agree a poster saying “Rape helping Muslims have sex” feeds bigotry rather than critiques religion.
Glad you have enjoyed the blog and are commenting now. Twitter lacks space. If JihadistJoe wants to avoid bigotry easiest way is not using caricatures and language contained therein we would never tolerate if aimed at Jews for example.
I don’t think you can equate Muslims and Jews like that. If Jews did abominable things and claimed they were doing them in the name of their religion, then I believe many people would would find criticism in the form of satire totally acceptable. The fact is, they don’t.
Do read my previous post (linked to at bottom of this one) where I go into the satire and the caricatures used by JJ.
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Oh, he recently linked to @ViveCharlie, and has a tone i recognise. There’s also a familiar mix of fairly amusing tweets and not so funny, mixed in with bigotry and hatred. I think he’s just a nasty individual who is clever enough to use satire as a shield for bigotry and thinks himself as king of the trolls.
Also, I run a parody account and tbh, I’d be embarrassed to hit send on most of JihadistJoes tweets. He’s just not that good.