Some
considerations about the nature of free speech, dialogue and double
dealers.
Shortly
after the Paris event of january 7th one
of my facebook friends posted this comment : “Not even 35 hours
have gone since the killing and already we see the flourishing of “Je
ne suis pas Charlie” signs everywhere”. At that time we were far
from expecting the huge show of solidarity in the silent march of the
following sunday. We were frantically trying to build unity around
our goal : to show the terrorists that they failed to kill CH (they
had shouted that they had done that when leaving the building ), and
that Charlie was still alive. So we were incensed. I had to see what
those guys proclaiming that “they were not Charlie” had to say.
And I stumbled on the blog :
I
read it, I read all of the comments, some of them favourable, some of
them critical. At the end my opinion of the value of it was somehow
like the answer from a publisher to a young would-be author : “your
book is both good and original. Unfortunately what is good is not
original and what is original is not good.”
The
good (but not original) part was his analysis of the internet age
click-button kind of fast and cursory thinking and the comfort one
feels when expressing it in the anonymity of pseudonyms. Nothing that
has not already been told in countless articles and books since the
epoch making writings of media era prophet Marshall McLuhan.
The
original (but not good) part was applying this to the “I am
Charlie” hashtag. In order to make his point that most of the
wearers of the “je suis Charlie” sign did not have any clue about
the true nature of this paper and were inconsiderately following the
crowd the author had to depict CH as a despicable rag not worth
supporting it in any way, following the french (and arab) maxim that
“if you want your dog killed, say he has rabies”.
Furthermore
he had to argue that the claim of many that they were demonstrating
for the right to free speech was a pretension of double dealers. Had
he stopped at that we would have agreed. But he felt the need to
denigrate the icon of free speech in France, Voltaire, by taxing him
with that same blemish, completely overlooking the historical
context. More of the topic later. Let it suffice for now that the
intention of the author in doing this is clear : french people are
not that much advocates of free speech.
But what stroke me most is the almost total ignorance of french
reality transpiring in many remarks of readers in foreign countries,
particulary the american ones. Now, as a man fond of travels and
learning about different cultures I know that it is easy for
misunderstandings to arise when one first encounters another
civilisation. And from my personal experience in life that
misunderstandings lead to hate, hate being the germ for war.
One australian woman was sensible enough to note that
“the events in Paris are extraordinarily complex” and I settled
to the task of unravelling this complexity, one knot at the time.
But
too many people need to color the complex reality of this world by
using only black and white.
Hate
works effortlessly with the use of a few cursory phrases or sentences
(“we have avenged the prophet !”). Peace, to be achieved, needs
the dedication of entire lives, the writing of whole libraries and
the unity of purpose of immense crowds, made of individuals, each
with a different agenda. Peace also needs constancy in our efforts
and is at a disadvantage in the internet age of fast travel, fast
food, fast reading and fast....thinking. Curiously enough, the author
of the article made this point clear, that was one of the good parts,
but failed to see that he was himself subject to this evil of modern
age.
One
of the most damaging misinterpretation in our present case is the
view that CH is “an infantile rag” whose sole business is to
throw abuse at religion and gratuitously humiliate and poke fun at
“already oppressed and powerless minorities”. In choosing their
target the terrorists well knew the effect their action would have on
unsuspecting foreigners. Both the terrorists and the reactionary
connived in promoting the picture of CH as “filthy” and
“offensive”. It was an easy job if you stop at the front page,
“judge a book by its cover” and know nothing of the context. So
to countering the site that carefully and painstakingly selected a
handfull of the most (apparently) “offensive” drawings
without
explaining the context, the advocates of CH had to create an other
website that explained, drawing after drawing, why they could not
possibly be misread at the time of their publication because
everybody in France knew what they were alluding to.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/01/07/charlie_hebdo_covers_religious_satire_cartoons_translated_and_explained.html
The
main point here is that the drawings never represent the view of CH's
staff but actually the view of its racist or rightist enemies in
order to show how laughable and despicable they are.
Why
did so many americans convince themselves that the pictures were
really “offending” when almost no frenchman would deem them so ?
It all boils down to different representations of the notion of
“religion” in different cultures. America is a nation whose
founding myth is that of the Mayflower, a group of persecuted
puritans who took refuge in a far away land. The american people is
made of successive waves of emigrants, often fleeing persecution. I
once wrote that America is a land of refuge for all persecuted
minorities...except for its own natives ! From this particular
history resulted an impregnation of the idea that one should respect
the religion of other people unconditionally.
On
the other hand, in France and other latin countries as well, the idea
of “religion” is deeply rooted in the fact that the catholic
church was not only a religion, but an almost totalitarian political
power, exactly like what Islam is in some countries today. When the
author of the blog mentionned Voltaire's name he carefully avoided to
allude to the fact that this great man had been a refugee for the
greatest part of his life. For instance it was because he had to flee
to England that he first heard of the concept of free printing.
Unthinkable in catholic dominated France ! Now, this man so often
depicted as a deadly adversary of christianism risked his life,
freedom and property in defending the memory of the protestant Callas
who had been injustly accused of a crime and executed only because he
was a member of the persecuted minority. The church had also the
power to send blasphemers like the knight François de la Barre to
the stake. Since that time all of the political left wing and a large
part of the right wing partake of a common anticlerical cultural
background and this explains why the french people so massively
demonstrated in favor of CH, even when disagreeing with it
politically. Oscar Wilde once wrote that “America and England are
two nations separated by the same language”. One could say today
that America and France are two nations separated by the same
humanism.
Is
Charlie Hebdo intent on attacking religions for the sake of it ?
Now,
the misrepresentation of CH in foreign countries has led many to
believe that this paper was uniquely single-minded to defame
religions all over the world. Some of the comments absurdly asked why
they were no covers against buddhism or....atheism ! They could not
realise that CH's business was, like every other satirical paper,
only to comment the events of the week preceding its publication and
if the main event of the political internal life of France during
that week had bearings to religion, then they had to include religion
in their choice of the topic of the week. CH has never been an A-Z
for “bouffeurs de curés” (priest-hater) and it is silly to count
the number of covers that attack this or that religion in order to
show that they were not evenhanded in their treatment of the subject,
like they were counting votes in a polling-booth ! If some creeds are
not or less attacked than others, it is simply due to the facts 1)
that these creeds give no or fewer occasions to laugh at them 2) that
their representatives in France have a low-profile and very seldom
get to the front page.
One
former collaborator of CH accused it to contribute to the growing bad
climate about muslim immigrants in our country but the answer to that
claim is that it did not contribute to when in fact it was only
reflecting it. Should CH have abstained to comment and only in the
case Islam was the subject ? That was the quandary it fell into after
the first attack some years ago (at that time they were no
casualties, only material damage) They were faced with a dilemma with
no satisfying choice : either they submitted to the dictate of the
terrorists and thereby encouraged them to use the threat of violence
in order to achieve their goal or they continued along the same lines
as before the attack with the risk to be misinterpretated in some
muslim quarters as being intent on defaming their religion. Charb
choose the second way, declaring a bit dramatically that he would
rather die standing up than live on his knees !
One
other claim against CH is that it seemed partial as to the jewish
faith. Once again the answer is that the french rabbi keep a very low
profile. They do not usually comment on social questions and make
public declarations only when the jews are victims of hainous crimes.
In the aftermath of the attack there had been a string of assaults
against some mosques, without human casualties, unanimously
condemned. Although the muslim minority in France is subject to some
degree of ostracism, they had never been recently victim of murder,
except by islamists terrorists !. The jews are almost always the
victims of islamist terrorism. Three years ago Mohammed Merah killed
a rabbi and his two young children. Last year Mehdi Nemmouche killed
a pair who were visiting the jewish museum of Bruxelles. So the
climate is tense, but nevertheless CH did some caricatures of rabbis.
Often one of them is depicted in a trio with an imam and a cardinal
rejoicing together about the grip religion continues to maintain on
politics. The orthodox rabbis in Israel have also been made fun of :
The
caption reads “No to the jewish shariah !” The rabbi says : the
bitch has no underwear !
And
no need to add what the stand is on the palestinian matter :
the
palestinian flag is divided between : occupied territory, annexed
territory, asphyxiated territory and encircled territory ! And the
UNO has pain to recognise Palestine (a pun on the double meaning of
“recognise”) the man asks : who could have put you in such a
state ?
Some
drawings denounce xenophobic reactions in Israel and the colonisation
:
the
caption reads : africans go home ! One says : palestinians also ! And
an other : er...no...
the
second picture is titled : 1300 new lodgings in Jerusalem East. The
golf player adds : and one golf-links. The man used as a hole says :
are you not going a bit too far ?
Now
the line between antizionism and antisemitism is easily crossed and
that is the reason behind the clash between Siné and CH. CH deemed
the drawing of Siné antisemitic because this was an attack ad
hominem (the nephew of the president) and not about religion. Siné
was able to publish his own weekly but went bankrupt the next year
and now has a monthly magasine with a circulation of 14 000 (compared
to CH's 60 000 weekly). This line was also crossed by the would-be
comic Dieudonné who was indicted for “hate-mongering” many
times. He once declared that he felt that the nazis had not gased
enough jews. Some of the comments in America claimed that there
should be a limit to free speech, unaware of the fact that in France
such a limit exists in the law. CH was once indicted on ground of
this law, the plaintiff being the muslim religious authorities. But
they lost the case. Now it is a tribute to their fairness that these
same muslim authorities were all unanimously condemning the killing
and marching in unity with all other french people in memory of the
victims. This is the real France. But when Dieudonné was indicted,
american journalists jumped to the conclusion that we had double
standards !
One
comment to the blog came from a jew stating that he could understand
how muslims would react because jews had been caricatured by racists
before World War II. However there is a huge difference : before the
War Israel did not exist and unless they were rich or famous jews had
no hope to find a refuge anywhere in the world. They were so
desperate that when some of them reproached them their passivity and
urged them to combat the nazis they answered that it would be useless
since nobody on earth wanted them.
The
situation of muslim minorities in Europe is at odds with such a
picture. Even if they were persecuted (which is far from being the
case, in France at least) they could still rely on countries with
muslims as a majority extending all the way from the Atlantic coast
to the Pacific. By the way, many of them are actually refugees from
those countries, fleeing violence from either islamists or
dictatorial governments. And if any one should sincerely believe they
constitute such “an oppressed minority” how could he/she explain
that thousands of african and asian people, often entire families,
drown every year in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean and be
part of this “oppressed minority” ? Please do not answer that
they are ignorant of the circumstances : almost all of them have
relatives already in the place. The truth is that in any nation the
latest arrivals are also the poorest. I have read the heart-rending
tale of the Kouachi brother's childhood :
But
if there is a teaching here about the roots of terrorism, it would be
misleading to conclude that it originated from persecution of a
particular religion. It is neglect of the poor that led to the
situation, and neglect itself was not the result of a deliberate
attempt at harassment of any one community, but of an economical
crisis that forced governments to reduce their budgets. Furthermore,
the Kouachi brothers are an exception with their profile : the huge
majority of young frenchmen going for the Jihad are in fact well
educated, well integrated in french society and in some cases even
successful contractors. Every generation of young men and women had
to find a cause to defend in order to give an aim to their life.
Before WW2 some found it in the spanish war. To my generation it was
the Vietnam war. Today, for some young romantic misfits wishing to be
the “Robin Hood” of our time, it seems that the Jihad could be
fulfiling that goal, particulary those who are not of arab descent
and recent converts to Islam.
In
countries far away from Europe, the suspicion that french muslims
formed a “powerless and oppressed minority” probably arose from
the growing real racists campaigns elsewhere in Europe (PEGIDA in
Germany, for one) and the 25 % of french vote that went to the
extreme-right in an election where only 25 % of the constituency
cared to express itself. During the silent march of more than 4
millions people on Sunday 11th the only conspicuously
absent leader of french political parties was Marine Le Pen, the head
of this extreme-right party. She claimed that she had not been
“invited”!
Was
Charlie Hebdo contributing to the bad climate ?
What
led some people to believe that it actually was the case is the
continuing debate in France about the laicality of the law and its
consequence on the wearing of the veil by muslim women. From the
establishment of this law in 1905 after a century of skirmishes with
the catholic church until the late eighties this law, stipulating
that the french state is secular and neutral in matter of religion
and therefore civil servants are not allowed to wear religious
symbols that may give rise to suspicion of partiality, this law then,
did not raise any difficulties. But when militant islamists began
aggressively to challenge the law and demand that women civil
servants be allowed to wear the veil, they were confronted by equally
aggressively militant defenders of the secularity of the law. If you
allow the veil, you must also allow the cross and the kipa and the
law is reduced to naught. Conflicts that were settled with
flexibility up to that moment became national affairs and compounded
by the blackmail of terrorists taking hostages and demanding that the
french law be cancelled in exchange for the life of the hostages !
Naturally they knew that no state in the world would oblige and their
aim was to create further division inside french society. CH, as a
leftist and rather anarchist paper is a partisan of secularity and
some of the caricatures are addressing this matter. But to put things
in perspective, veil wearing civil servants women are only an
extremely tiny minority. Nothing forbids them to wear a veil (with
the exception of the “burqa” that covers the body entirely and so
prevents any recognition of the person) outside of the office or the
school and if you travel to France you could see many of them
everywhere in the streets and shops. But you could also see many more
muslim women NOT wearing the veil. The problem with the veil and many
other topics raised by militant muslims is that we can never know if
the choice to wear it or not is really an individual expression of
free will or somewhat dictated by a male dominated culture. Likewise
the islamists demand that the food offered in the lunch-stalls of
schools be “hallal” or that public swimming pools had schedules
for male-only or women-only customers, like hamams in Turkey. And
even worse is the fact that some recent immigrants from backward
areas continue to practice excision on their girls or arrange forced
marriages. What led to the caricatures is the sense of indignation at
those scandals. One french writer, Boris Vian, said : “le rire est
la politesse du désespoir” [laugh is the politeness of despair].
Is
Charlie Hebdo deliberately making fun of an “already oppressed and
powerless minority” ?
I
have mentionned before that the muslim community is not powerless.
All the militancy of islamists is actually financed by Saoudi
Arabia's and Quatar's rulers. There is even a suspicion that those
states support ISIS and DAESH in Syria, where the islamic archaic law
(shariah) is exactly the same as in Saoudi Arabia. I already said
that this view probably proceeds from the perception that racist
campaigns all over Europe are on the growth. But the situation in
France is not comparable. In all the other european states muslim
immigration is a relatively recent phenomenon and asian or african
people are considered aliens to western culture. On the other hand
Algeria was, until its independence in 1962, actually part of the
french territory, like today the carribean islands of Martinique and
Guadeloupe or french Guyana. This is why the Algerian war of
independence has been so atrocious : all wars are, but civil wars are
even more, if possible. Now, if it is true that algerians were an
oppressed majority in their own country before independence, they
nevertheless had a much better appreciation of french culture than
say, afghans or nigerians and reciprocally french people on the whole
have a better appreciation of northern african culture.
Almost
all of the northern african previous generations of immigrants are
rather well assimilated and share studies, work and lodgings with the
rest of the population. As always with racism, it is the economical
crisis that worsened the situation of the wave of newcomers. They
were perceived as competing for jobs and welfare and many came from
backward areas. They lived in suburban ghettos and the youth had no
traditionnal parental ascendancy to look over them, so they
developped wild. American readers naturally make analogies to the
situation of coloured peoples in the U.S. But there is a great
difference : in the U.S. The majority and the minority share the
same christian religion (when they are religious people) and the
leaders of both could rely on the same cultural heritage. There was
almost no knowledge of Islam until 09/11 and even after that some
people thought that Sikhs were muslims only because they use to wear
turbans ! The shock was so great that it led Samuel Huntington to
write about the “Clash of civilizations” which we are supposed to
witness. But this view has been widely critisized. The clash is not
between entire civilizations, seen as undifferenciated blocks facing
each other but between different levels of culture attained in
different countries and even by different layers of society inside
those countries. There is a rough correlation between the economical
situation of those layers and the more or less liberal interpretation
of the creed. It is true that the more recently arrived immigrants in
Europe come from backward areas and practice their religion in a very
litteral way, and are therefore much more susceptible to being
“offended” by drawings of the prophet. But such drawings have
never been aimed at illiterate people who could barely have seen them
unless some mischievous provocateur had flouted them under their very
nose. They were always directed at terrorists, dictators and ulemas
who justified their criminal activities by covering them with this or
that verse of the Quran, notably the necessity of “Jihad” for
every Faithful. The aim of the depiction of the prophet is to show
that if he were to return in this world he would be horrified at the
deviation from his original teaching, like Jesus would. How
convenient it is for terrorists to see the pictures as “defamation”
of the prophet ! And how convenient it is for some readers to endorse
that claim, thereby dispensing with any disquieting further analysis
!
Was
CH choosen as a target only because of its use of free speech ?
When
reading Scott Long's article you would believe it is the case. A
muslim commented that Islam was not her religion, it was her
identity. For french people, CH too is a part of their identity, even
as some commentators malignantly underlined the relatively poor
circulation. But long before the student's huge demonstration of May
1968 the sketchers had become icons of every young generation thanks
to their rebellious spirit, humour and constant debunking of pompous
authority, social hypocrisy and disguised racism. They are also
animal rights defenders, pro-environmentalists and anti-consumerist.
Why then have many americans with the exact same profile so easily
gobbled the claim of its enemies that it was a “racist rag”
intent on making fun of an“already oppressed minority” ? I have
mentionned that american people are generally more puritan than
french people and it is undeniable that some caricatures are sexually
explicit and crude. But sexual “liberation” has always been part
of the program since the californian “Summer of love” (1967) and
the students's upheaval in May 1968. It is at the same time that
feminist and gay and lesbian movements really began to take flight
all over the western world. Now that does not mean that every one of
us controls his or her conscious or unconscious sexual life and
sexual intimations are still considered deprecatory by many. CH was
choosen as a target because it exemplifies the sexual freedom of
western society, a freedom of mores that enrages patriarcal
men-dominated puritan islamists. Freedom is not only freedom of
speech or political freedom. It is also freedom of manners and
habits. Freedom is the natural enemy of all totalitarianisms, be they
based on economical, racial or religious motives. Hence it is easy to
see why the victims of terrorism are almost always pacifist
proponents of freedom, almost never racists or exponents of
authoritarianism. And each assassination was followed by a
post-mortem trial of the victim with some people finding that “he/she
had it coming” and that he/she has never been a saint during his
life. See MLK or Gandhi. Fortunately peace has no use for saints,
otherwise there never would be any hope of peace on earth ! This
need for saints or icons is a disguised excuse for NOT taking one's
part in the difficult task of achieving peace. We are all different,
we all need each other precisely BECAUSE we are different and that is
the message of “Je suis Charlie” : we need your difference to
join us in unity to show that the terrorists's aim to divide us has
failed. The author of the article wrongly assumed that the “Je suis
Charlie” hashtag was a knee-jerk reaction or even worse : a fashion
trend or a pose. He may have been right in an infinitesimal minority
of cases. One comment even qualified the “I am Charlie” hashtag
of being an expression of “mass hysteria” ! If a call for
peaceful and silent demonstration is a sign of mass hysteria, what
name would he/she have used to describe the burning of churches and
killing of innocent people that followed in some of the poorest
muslim countries in Africa ? Yes, the hashtag was an emotional
response. But that does not mean that it was not the correct
response. Because the alternative : staying at home and praying for
peace out of sight would have been a very grand victory for the
killers !
Besides,
this view of humanity as a bunch of inconsiderate and inconsequential
followers of trends is too pessimistic. It aims at suggesting that
only a minority of the people (among them the author and his readers)
is able to act or react responsibly and therefore undermines the
concept of democracy. It is true that we are manipulated by the
media. But it is also true that we know it.
Is
terrorism simply a retaliation against Western Imperialism ?
Some
comments acknowledge the fact that the supposed “offense to Islam”
is only a pretext to cover the real aim of the terrorists : divide
and weaken the open society of the West. But they believe that the
war is only led as a retaliation against the many more deaths in
muslim populations due to “collateral damage” (an horrible
notion) inflicted by western bombings or against the pilfering of
middle eastern resources by american companies. They assume that if
we westerners had left them alone, there would have been no germ for
war. This is in my view really naive wishful thinking. The arab
historian Ibn Khaldoun already noted in is “Muqaddima” (1378)
that the History of the world is nothing but the tale of successive
empires being born, growing to dominance and decaying. When one
empire is dead another budding empire immediately grabs its ruins :
History, like Aristoteles's Nature abhors the void. When the Turkish
empire was dying at the end of 19th century, the European
colonialist powers grabed the Middle East. When after World War II
they were forced to leave the area, americans and russians stepped
in. Now islamists cannot wait their turn in order to reestablish the
glorious arabic empire of the middle ages and, for the islamic
brotherhood at least, conquer the whole planet to Islam. There is
nothing wrong with this aim : christians were on the verge of being
successful with the same at the end of 19th century. But
“Times are a changin” and nations must learn to live together on
an increasingly reduced lebensraum of a planet.
The
islamists also claim to fight for moral values against a decadent
western society. Unfortunately they do that by reverting to archaic
bigotry, unable to appreciate that the islamic empire of the middle
age was ultimately destroyed because it was incapable to evolve
beyond the litteral interpretation of the Quran. The islamists
contend that the superior technological power of the West did not
arise from moral superiority, but what they overlook is that it is
science that gave birth to this technological power and science is
the opposite of dogmatism. It all began when people like Copernic
doubted the received wisdom. And science does not replace received
wisdom with another received wisdom : Galileo, contrary to the
legend, did not prove that it was the earth that turned around the
sun as opposed to the sun turning around the earth. What he proved
300 years before Einstein is that all movement is relative to the
observer : when he/she is on earth, it is the sun that moves. But if
he/she is on the sun, then it is the earth that moves. The goal of
terrorists and all totalitarians is to return to pre-galilean times,
a time when the church could send heretics, witches and homosexuals
to the stake. Is it wise to help them with our buts ?
The aim of
free speech versus the aim of dialogue
Freedom
of print is a relatively recent acquisition in human history.
“Areopagitica or “for the liberty of unlicensed printing””
was written in 1644, when the german 30 years's war was still raging.
What are 370 years in the human species more than 3 millions years of
evolution ? It seems to be a glorious conquest of idealism but was
implemented mainly as a tool to put an end to unceasing and suicidal
wars of religion. Prior to it one was either a true believer or an
heretic, that is in the service of the devil. After it one could
“agree to desagree”. The final result of it is a “status quo
ante”, both participants keeping their ground and agreing to not to
kill each other on motive of opinion alone. In the debate among
readers of “Why I am not Charlie” many stuck to this view, as if
one's opinion is a piece of personal belonging that one is proud of
and that no other individual is allowed to temper with. However, in
my view, opinion is a being with a life of its own, being born,
growing up and eventually mingling with others or decaying. The aim
of free speech is static, the aim of dialogue is dynamic. The final
result of dialogue should be that both of the participants have
reached a better level of understanding of each other.
Accordingly,
in order to engage in dialogue I often ask the other person to “allow
the possibility of doubt”, especially in this case about the
supposed “offensive intent” of CH. But some readers are too
uptight and interpret my pleading as a kind of overbearing and
challenge my own readiness to doubt. If the question were only a
matter of taste I would not mind the view that CH cartoons are
“trash” or “filth”. Modern art is sometimes right that. But
if someone judge them as immoral in essence, the inescapable
consequence is that he/she must also see the four million french
people who participed in the silent march as either overlooking that
fact or even worse, condoning or endorsing or promoting “trash”
or “filth” as a mean of expression. It is that consequence that
gives me real pain. How can the other person not see that if this
picture of us had even a shred of validity, me and the french people
could not care less about what her opinion is ? It hurts me that some
of the readers made analogies to “pornography” or even
“pedophily” !
I
understand and even approve of someone who says that he/she would
never draw a caricature that could “offend” an other person's
feelings. But many would do it unconsciously. As a traveller I know
for instance that tourists unvoluntarily offend the locals by using
their left hand to touch food in the middle East or by stroking
children's head in South East Asia. I take care to put off my shoes
before entering a mosque or to put off my hat before entering a
church, but to keep it on when entering a synagogue. Now, if I show
respect to a religion when visiting its temple or country this does
not mean that I should abide by its laws when I am at home and in my
country ! And furthermore under threat of death ! America is the
country of “political correctness” and in such a land “only the
mute talking to the deaf will never offend anybody” as one
commentator wittily wrote. Remember that in the history of religions
the founders always “offended” their fellow denizens. Jesus
offended the high priests and roman authorities, Gandhi offended the
hindu nationalist who killed him because he deemed him a traitor
willing to sell his country to the muslims.
The
notion of “offense” is then depending on the level of maturity of
the person supposed “offended” and to believe that a particular
minority would be “offended” is simply patronizing that minority
and assuming that the individuals it is made of cannot react
intelligently and must necessarily brood over violent behaviours.
Now,
lest some readers should still conceive Islam as such a backward
religion and CH as a stark anti-islamist paper, here is a picture of
the “Institut du Monde Arabe” in Paris. This museum is dedicated
to the arab and islamic world's studies and its staff is formed by
scholars originating from all over this world. The sponsors are the
governments of all those countries plus the french ministry of
culture. The theme of the last exhibition I visited four months ago
was “Hadj”, the muslim pilgrimage to Meccah that every faithful
is supposed to accomplish once in his life. Can you seriously believe
that this institution will endorse “blaspheme” or “offence” ?
Is
“I am Charlie” a proof of the egocentrism of the West ?
At
the exact time of the silent march in honour of the 19 deads of the
killing Boko Haram killed over 2000 villagers in Nigeria. Before that
there had been innumerable attacks and victims in Africa or Asia.
Some virtuous souls were quick to denounce the apparent indifference
of the media for what happened in those countries. But they forgot
the planetarian mobilization (up to the White House) to ask for the
release of the 200 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram at the beginning of
last year. To what avail ? Does anyone today care to know what the
actual fate of these girls is ? The law of the public media is that
one piece of “breaking news” chase the preceding. As I said at
the beginning of this blog : peace, to be achieved, needs constancy,
even obstination. But you cannot have millions marching for peace
everyday, everywhere. I don't have enough tears for mourning millions
of victims. The meaning of “Je suis Charlie” is that all the
victims all over the world are equally in our hearts, without the
impossible task of reciting millions of names, when one of them is
enough.
How
many of the readers will remember that the origin of Boko Haram was a
campaign of vaccination in northern Nigeria ? Paranoid muslims
claimed that the West was trying to inoculate AIDS to the population
in order to get rid of it and began to kill doctors and nurses,
before attacking christians. THAT was “mass hysteria”. And that
is the level of understanding religion that is common to all islamist
terrorists. Ground zero.
