Yesterday in Paris, someone disagreed with my thinking. In fact, three guys did. Three selfish, evil people decided it was within their right to walk into the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris and shoot 12 people. The three happened to be Muslim, and they happened to be offended by some comic strips that were unflattering to the Prophet Muhammad (more on the comic strip later). Regardless of their grievance, what they did is simply unacceptable. They killed people because they were offended. There's nothing religious or even sane about that.
Past the condemnation of the actions, this story gets very complicated. Very, very complicated. There is a religious element, in the broad sense. There is an element of free speech in this. There is an element of Islam. There is an element of offensive art itself in this. There's a distinctly French angle to this too. I'm going to unpack this by working backwards here.
- France has some ridiculously bad Muslim-Non-Muslim relations going. It always has, this isn't new, and it's something we often overlook, because we view France as a cultured, intellectual place. France is a great country, but bigotry there against Muslim people is awful, and the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims are terrible to begin with. That a shooting like this happened in Paris is not terribly shocking, because relations are that bad to begin with, and comic strips are more than enough gasoline to jump-start that fire. Neither side really escapes blame for the conditions, and they won't get better as a result of this.
- The comic strip itself was offensive. Badly offensive. Badly enough that I don't think it should have ever been produced, let alone printed. I'll get into the free speech element of this later, but while I support your right to produce what you want and laugh at what you want, I see no point in making art that is only meant to offend. It's one of my chief issues with Jon Stewart. It's my chief issue with the whole #JeSuisCharlie movement that sprung out of today's events. I support the right of everyone to live, and the right of everyone to produce their comic strips, but I personally don't find this kind of work funny at all.
- Ok, Islam.... where to begin? I had an online bigot today tell me how Islam is so much worse than the other Western, and for that matter Eastern religious traditions. I've had people point out the stoning of rape victims, child marriages, and other offensive practices attributed to Islam. If we were debating the problems of the Islamic world in this case, they have a compelling case, however we're not. Just as Darren Wilson doesn't represent all cops, and Timothy McVeigh doesn't represent all white people, these three goons do not represent all of Islam, or even most of it, or even a significant part of it. Under a very liberal (small L here) definition of terrorism, you could find between 365-450 terrorist attacks to happen in the world this year, some of them not at all inspired by Islam. Let's go high end though and attribute 400 terrorist attacks to Muslims this year. There are 1-2 billion Muslims on the planet right now. So, ten million is one percent, and ten-thousand is one-tenth of one percent. So this is 4% of one ten-tenth, or in decimal terms, .00004% of the Muslim population (damn, did I get my zeroes right- and yes, I am assuming one person to an attack, which is not right, but it's the best math we have). In other words, we can argue about their beliefs, whether or not they do enough against radicals, whether we agree with their religion or lifestyle, but we can't disagree that Just about every Muslim you meet is non-violent and a decent person, like you are. It's less an Islam issue. People who wish to scapegoat Islam on this are either ignorant or blatantly bigots.
- So, free speech. I don't like the art in question. I'm not a fan of it. With that said, it's your right to produce it, laugh at it, and do what you want with it. Now, I will say that you should not want to do anything with this piece, but frankly you can disagree and do it. We, in the West, believe in that pesky First Amendment right to speech. I get that this is not a global view, but it should be. I don't think we can compromise on this part. "Comedy" manages to insult every other group in the West, and yes, our Islamic brothers and sisters have to realize that's how it is. Some of us don't care, you can pick on Germans, Poles, Slovaks, Brits, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Russians, or any other group you can find in my blood. Some do. Either way, we allow it in the West.
- Finally, the broader religious community fits here. It is often pointed out (I'll share a video that does so at the bottom) how religion often takes part in chilling free speech. The condemnation of "The Satanic Verses" by Christian and Jewish leaders is often cited here, fairly. Religions, incorrectly, want to maintain their right to cry offense to future satire at their expense, so they defend the ridiculous cries of persecution by some. This is something organized religion really should work on. If you're criticizing "The Satanic Verses" and not the fatwa against the author, you're on the wrong side.
Now I want to do something to finish this off to give you a few things to think about. Many of the imbecilic rantings about "PC" being bad today from right-wingers and bigots who want to be able to offend people is that "The Press" is afraid of offending Islam, so they jump on anyone who kind of does. I find the comic strip deeply offensive, and I'm not a Muslim, so I debated this decision hard, but I'm going to post one of them for you here. I'm going to do so in part as a response to the "fear" charges, but also in the interest of the free speech that the gunmen wanted to suppress. Second, I'm going to post a Christopher Hitchens talk on religion and speech that was interesting. Third, I'm going to post a German Newspaper cover for today, which shows a bunch of Charlie Hebdo comics. Why? To put in perspective how these kind of acts fail usually by encouraging the victims more than the attackers.
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