Showing posts with label Charlie Hebdo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charlie Hebdo. Show all posts
Monday, January 12, 2015
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Last week I wrote a piece with my thoughts about the Paris Shooting, right after it had happened. The piece was, to be fair, a very nuanced piece. I didn't jump on the "#JeSuisCharlie" bandwagon, and I'm kind of glad I didn't, because everyone else did. I totally understand why too. I even agree with them, for the most part.
The entire point behind the #JeSuisCharlie movement is not about some form of policy outcome, or some nuanced political position. Far from. The people in the streets are standing against the killing of people who just went to work that day and did their jobs. They are standing against extremists. They are standing against attacks on the freedom of speech. They are standing against divisions in society that cause violence. All of these are great things to stand against. In fact, I stand with them on each count. You cannot stand by and say it's okay for extremists to kill comic-strip artists for their work. Whether the work is decent and of good faith or not, what happened in France is beyond the pale of how we live in not just the "Western" world, but in the civilized world too. Every time you are offended, you can't react violently. You can't kill people for insulting your religion. You can't kill your wife for having an affair. You can't kill your neighbor for violating your property rights. You can't kill, period. You also can't try to silence someone else's free speech rights, even if their speech is derogatory and negative. We can't have that. So I'm with the people who marched in Paris. All three million of them, or whatever.
I'm also glad President Obama and his senior Administration officials had better things to do yesterday. I say so in part because the whole "world leaders joining the people" meme was false. Yes, it's a photo-op:
Think about some of the leaders who were in that line, particularly French President Hollande and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Does anyone in their right mind think they have the same response to this tragedy in mind that President Obama does? Is it in either of their interests to pursue the nuance of this issue? I don't mean to pick on either of them, but that they are the most simple examples of other people, there for the symbolic appeal, who will not have incentive to see this issue the same way as the President. I'm glad we have a President finally who isn't diving into bed with anyone who will take a picture with him. I'm glad we're getting some nuance here, in act if not word. I'm glad we're getting a focus on results over images. This is a much different reaction than we would have received from President Bush or Vice-President Cheney. This is a watershed moment because black and white views of the world and the press pushing for symbolic stories to cover isn't what's driving Administrative action. That's a good thing.
You see, this story really isn't so simple. The murderers in this case are as much French as they are Muslim, like most of us a product of the many influences on their lives. While these guys rant about Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, the reality is that they live in France, and when you rant about Abu Ghraib in a nation that wouldn't send troops into Iraq in the first place, I think you're either insane or confused, or in this case both. The confusion is clear in these guys, at least after listening to their interviews with French television. French race relations, French religious relations, the influence of incarceration, and internal terrorism politics all played a role in creating these monsters. Many of these conditions are either non-existent, or much different in America. I'll remind you that more Muslims in France faced retaliatory actions after this horrible attack than people were killed in the actual attack. I'll also remind you that, per capita and in intensity, we had less retaliation against American Muslims after 9/11. Some of this is simply beyond the image-based American mind's ability to put together.
The world leaders there had different reasons for going, and we should respect that as a nation. Some of them though are going to use this as an opportunity to paint a broad-brush, black-and-white image of good and bad here moving forward. We're going to hear about how "Muslims need to apologize," or "Muslims need to reign in extremists." Which Muslims, the Sunni or the Shi'ites, al-Qaeda or ISIS, the states or the religious leaders? What about the Muslims who are calling out extremists, Muslims as far apart as Hezbollah's leader and the Council on American-Islamic Relations leader? Yes, Islam has a problem with extremists, let's not try to push that out of view. Let's not pretend that's an Islamic thing alone though either, or that Islam is the same everywhere on this issue.
Even the very crazy-actors involved in this are confusing. Two of them are clearly affiliated to al-Qaeda in Yemen, while another claimed allegiance to ISIS. The fourth one, the woman that got away, went to Syria apparently. I mean, going to Syria literally means she could be a part of either side of the terroristic divide, or she could be working with the Syrian Regime. Who are these people, what was their point, who was pulling their strings, and how do we keep them from striking again. These are serious questions that need to be answered for future policy's sake, and none of that is achieved at a march.
The Charlie Hebdo shooting is simply not as simple of an incident as some want to make it seem. Sure, the actual terrorist acts are simple. Sure, the cops doing their job and killing the terrorists is simple. After that? The reasons behind the attacks, the motivations, who provided the help and how, and all kinds of other questions remain unanswered. Most of the important answers about what happened and what should be done moving forward lie in the shades of grey, not the black and white reasoning you're mostly going to hear.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
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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