Yesterday’s shootings at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine are a heart-breaking tragedy. First, and above all, they are a tragedy for those killed and injured, and for their families and friends.Human life is precious. It is not to be taken just in order to make a point.
A photograph shows journalists in the AFP newsroom in Paris holding “Je suis Charlie Hebdo” placards. There are similar placards on the streets of cities around the world.
But I am not Charlie Hebdo.
Charlie Hebdo is a satirical magazine. It sometimes satirises Islam. It also deals satirically with other religions, and with other topics besides religion. I have glanced at Charlie Hebdo once in a while when it has caught the headlines, but I am not a fan, and in any case I don’t read French very fluently. So I am in a poor position to judge the balance between the magazine’s various targets, or the way it would appear to a regular reader.
But I can’t help noticing that the material dealing with Islam repeats motifs that are staples of islamophobia. The edition that provoked a fire-bombing in November 2011 was published under the title Charia Hebdo. What’s amusing about that, unless the mere mention of the word sharia gives you a giggle? On the cover there was a cartoon of a mad-eyed man, apparently meant to be the Prophet Mohammed, saying “100 Whip Lashes If You Don’t Die Of Laughter.” How might people still recovering from French colonial rule in North Africa feel about seeing draconian corporal punishment presented in France as their cultural norm?
The editor-in-chief of that edition of Charlie Hebdo was said to be “Mahomet.” The edition was published in mock celebration of the victory of the Islamic Renaissance Movement (
Previously, in 2007, Charlie Hebdo had re-published the notorious cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that had caused outrage when published by a Danish paper in 2005.
For the moment, let’s set the Prophet Mohammed and the religion of Islam aside and consider the people – Muslims – who are targeted by this sort of material.
I am not especially fastidious about humour that relies on the supposed characteristics of this or that group of people. Gentle or cruel, offbeat or stereotypical, humour can shed a wry light on some of the quirks of daily life. Jokes on the pattern “there was an Englishman, an Irishmen and a Scotsman…” are a well-mined vein and they aren’t always unfunny. But in the 1970s and 1980s, when people of Irish descent were being harassed and interrogated by the police at British ports, and people in Northern Ireland were being interned and tortured, humour of this sort needed a careful touch.
It wasn’t rocket science. Jokes that might bring a smile to the faces of English and Irish people who stood in solidarity with each other were OK. Jokes that were likely to give oxygen to anti-Irish hatred, or reinforce the otherness being imposed on Irish people, were not OK.
Causing offence ought not to be a crime. But quite often, material that is glibly criticised for causing offence is actually doing something much more serious. It is propaganda directed at those who won’t be offended by it, for the purpose of either inciting hatred against others, or dis-empowering them. The rich and powerful are fit subjects for satire. Dis-empowered, they become a little less dangerous to the rest of us. The disadvantaged and the relatively powerless are not fit targets. Dis-empowered, they fall victim to violence, abuse, genocide.
Needless to add, it is much, much harder for satire to make a mark on the powerful than on the powerless. To disguise an attack on people who are already in a tight corner beneath an indiscriminate tirade against others who are far beyond your range is a dirty trick if you understand what you are doing, and a bad misjudgement if you do not.
Those who defend the kind of material published by Charlie Hebdo often pose as dragon-slayers. For them, it seems, Islam is a powerful institution, even in Europe. They make-believe that satirising Islam is like satirising the CBI, or the British Army, or the Royal Family, or the Bilderberg Group. If they are sincere about this, they need to open their eyes.
The front page of today’s Times calls the attack on Charlie Hebdo an “attack on freedom”. For the Guardian it is an “assault on democracy.” For the Daily Mail, it is a “war on freedom.”
It is being sold everywhere as an attack on freedom of expression and journalism. If the attack was either of those things, it was a pinprick. The torture and jailing of Chelsea Manning, the arrest of journalists in Egypt and Turkey, and the long hounding of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are serious attacks on journalism. The attack on Charlie Hebdo was not. It was, of course, a truly serious attack on some people, and was tragic for that reason.
Like the wave of disgust against the Islamic State, the outpouring of sympathy for the Charlie Hebdo staff is already being manipulated to produce a consensus likely to favour more repression of Muslims in Europe and, eventually, more aggression by the US, Britain and their allies in the Middle East. That is the real “assault on democracy.”
The main political parties in France, including those on the left, have been systematically hostile to Muslims. There were signs in the last few months of change for the better on the French left. It will truly be a tragedy if that process is scuppered.
I was not Charlie Hebdo the day before yesterday, and I am not Charlie Hebdo today. All those connected with the magazine have my sympathy for their human loss, but I cannot give my support or respect to their work.
Photo: Michel G
This argument would carry weight if the attackers had shouted out that they were avenging the crass, stereotyped images of their people, i.e the Hebdo attack might be seen as a tragedy, rather than an attack on freedom. The killers shouted that they were avenging the prophet. They were avenging, therefore, an insult to their beliefs. My beliefs, as a teacher, are routinely insulted; my ‘people’, women, are often portrayed in stereotypical and demeaning images – would I react with such violence? No. Would I shut down The Daily Mail or The Sun if I could? No. Because as soon as we disallow the right to an opinion – however misguided – we are disallowing our own right to speak. There is a man in Saudia Arabia being flogged for establishing a Liberal website/blog – it was not inflammatory.
This was certainly an attack on freedom, and its insidiousness, the fear it creates, is frightening.
At any length, rather than debating if this was ‘tragedy’ or ‘an attack on freedom’, we have to agree that it is totally unacceptable, it’s happened and how are we going to stop it from happening again. That’s the challenge, and that’s where our energy must be concentrated. We don’t have time to start arguing amongst ourselves about terminology. That, to my mind, is a middle-class luxury.
I did not say that the murders were OK because they were a response to racism, and I do not think they would have been OK if the attackers had used the language of secular anti-racism instead of religious language. However, I believe that the material published by Charlie Hebdo tends to promote attitudes and justify government policies that are deeply damaging and destructive, and are extremely difficult to challenge because they have enormous state and cultural power on their side.
To say that propaganda can have consequences at least serious as those resulting from an act of violence is not to say that it is the same kind of thing as violence, or requires the same kind of response as violence. That’s the view of the US Government when it drone-assassinates supposed al Qaeda propagandists; it’s not my view. Cultural/political aggression requires a cultural/political response. My response to Charlie Hebdo’s cultural aggression is to say “I am not Charlie Hebdo”, to discourage others from producing similar material, and to discourage others from circulating Charlie Hebdo’s islamophobic images.
In the same way, if someone were to commit a crime in retaliation against sexist material, I would not respond by circulating sexist material in “solidarity” with the victims, or by saying “I am the Sun”. I would continue to discourage the creation and publication of such material. I would also continue – without denying the primary claims on justice and compassion by the immediate victims of the crime – to regard sexism as a larger problem than the crime itself.
I do not think that the murders will have a chilling effect on journalism or freedom of expression that comes anywhere close to the chilling effect already produced by anti-terrorism laws and related government policies. If there were indeed to be a slightly increased reticence in publishing material critical of Islam (though I doubt there will be), it would not be anywhere near so damaging to democracy and the just conduct of public affairs as the effect produced by the draconian punishment and pursuit of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
Also, I fear that the murders will be used to justify still greater government restrictions on freedom of expression (an early sign of this is the attempt by former French minister Jeanette Bougrab to hold the PIR partly responsible for the attacks because of its stand against islamophobia).
So I think it is wildly inappropriate to treat the attack as a serious threat to freedom of expression. Our energies in defence of this freedom need to be directed elsewhere, in opposition to government repression.
Dear Richard
This is a very late reply to your original article and your reply to the previous comment. Apologies if it has all gone off the boil a bit.
This whole story has left me in an emotional turmoil. Hezbollah have expressed more solidarity with Charlie than the British Left, proof that the world has surely gone mad. Iran are now desperately trying to put out feelers to the west regarding some kind of alliance against the lunatic takfiris because they fear the rise of their caliphate and what that will mean for all Shias in the region. Their recently resurrected Holocaust cartoon competition is their way of showing solidarity with more freedom to offend, not less – as well as being an obvious sop to those xealots within Iran who would distrust too much embracing of a purely western take on freedom of expression.
I am a huge supporter of Julian Assange and of Edward Snowden. As a leftist I admire Assange the most – he is a humane man, a social libertarian, but not an economic one like Snowden. I am no supporter of the surveillance state, of the terrorism act, or of many of the policies of the west. Assange, in marked distinction from Greenwald, for instance , is a very rounded and nuanced thinker and has a better understanding of the larger picture. i think you’ll find that he fully supported Hebdo and that while he supports Cage Prisoner on many issues, he is not a fan of their political creed. His questioning of Begg and Qreshi on stoning for adultery under Sharia law a while back was very telling and his distaste for their reply was evident. It is not only possible, but actually vital to be able to oppose injustice wherever we see it, not just in one area, .and Assange does this. Interestingly, the one criticism he did allow himself of Hebdo, was triggered in response to Max Hastings’ ridiculous claim that he had facilitated the cartoonists deaths by compromising security. Assange hit back with the suggestion that the jewish pro cenorship lobby (Hastings is well known for his uncritical support for Israel and for this lobby) that led to withdrawal of antisemitic cartoons left them vulnerable to being percieved as biased and therefore a justifiable target. So Assange, the most able opponent of the surveillance state, wanted Hebdo to publish more offensive cartoons, not less of them.
Your comment about injuring the sensibilities of those trying to recover from post colonial trauma staggered me. You show a real lack of knowledge of both North African and modern french society in this, as well as in your contention that Hebdo had no right to lampoon islamism around the time of the Tunisian elections. The Maghreb is not Pakistan. French colonialism saw the french left forge a powerful bond with the left in North Africa to overthrow it. There is much more of a partnership of equals in France between french of european and those of muslim heritage because of this. The battle in North Africa between violent islamists and non islamist civilians was,as you know, particularly vicious, and has scarred the psyche of many muslims much more recently than western colonialism. Who’s post colonial outlook should we support in France – the islamist one or the secularist one? There is a real ideological war going on between muslims themselves in france. Charbonnier’s partner, an Algerian, was on the secular side, and Charbonnier saw it as a moral imperative to take sides with fellow secularists. Notably, this side is not the one threatening those who offend them with summary execution.
I recently reread Salam Pax the Baghdad Bloggers book with the preface by Samuel P Huntingdon. Mohamed Abdulenamun humbles me with his blog – and with this preface.
‘The West won the world, not by the superiority of it’s ideas or values or religion but rather by it’s superiority in applying organzed violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-westerners never do.’
All westerners should know this quote. The blogger and muslim who chose this quote is an ardent secularist.
I do not have a superiority complex and I do not see muslims as a homogenous mass. I do not see secularism as the sole preserve of the west either . Muslims all over the world are fighting a very difficult literal and ideological battle against right wing religious extremists. Many here seem prepared to pull up the ideological drawbridge and do not condemn their murderers enough out of a kind of misplaced and really quite arrogant cultural relativism. Those who had refuge from execution for blasphemy in the west, post Salman Rushdie, found that not only were they now under threat of death, but that many of those who they expected to be their staunchest supporters, deserted them. This failure does not only affect muslim intellectuals who wish to question or ridicule islam, it has serious implications for ordinary muslims too. It has left a vacuum for the facists of our own right to flourish in. Charlie were multitaskers in a way that the left here have forgotten how to be. They stood up to the right wing facists of Le Pen and they stood up to the clerical facists of islam. The Algerian lefitst academic Karima Bennoune, and countless others supported Hebdo fully, as do the majority of muslims in France. Charlie fought the good fight. To characterise their deaths as a ‘pinprick’ of an assault on freedom of expression in comparison with the draconian measures taken by states in the west is insulting to every single muslim in the world today who cannot express doubts about their religion for tear of death and puts the safety of Moazzem Begg above that of people like Raif Badawi. We should be able to protect the rights of both of them to freedom of expression without fear of contradiction. I have to agree with Kenan Malik’s take on how we have truly fallen into moral incoherence.