It’s not a
war prosecuted by all Muslims, not by any stretch. But it is a war, a campaign
against freedoms the West purports to stand for: freedom of thought, freedom of
expression, freedom from arbitrary exercises of force and authority.
According
to news
sources, after three men with assault rifles murdered 12 people and
wounded another 20 at the Charlie Hebdo
offices in Paris today, one yelled “Allahu akbar!” and one yelled “Hey! We
avenged the prophet Muhammad! We killed Charlie Hebdo.”
Apparently,
these murderers were offended by the satirical magazine’s cartoons depicting,
and making fun of Muhammad.
This isn’t
the first instance of this kind of thing.
Charlie Hebdo’s offices were
firebombed in 2011 following the magazine’s cover with a cartoon of Muhammad on
the cover. In Islam, any depiction of Muhammad is forbidden.
Thing is,
France is not governed by Islamic law. The magazine’s editor, Stéphane
Charbonnier, who was killed in the attack, once said he did not live under
Sharia law.
And
neither, thankfully, do I. I am happy to live in a secular, pluralistic
society, one which allows each person to follow whatever religion or philosophy
they wish, and which allows me to express myself as I wish.
But back to
the war on expression and on democracy, freedom of expression and secular
humanism.
In 2005,
the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, or Morning Jutland Post,
published cartoons of Muhammad, setting off a storm of protest that escalated
into violence, attacks on churches and nuns and more than 200 deaths.
Boko Haram
continues to kidnap children in Nigeria in the name of its perverted conception
of Islam. The name of the group apparently translates to “western education is
forbidden.”
The Islamic
State organization, also known as ISIS and ISIL, continues its war in Syria,
Iraq and the Levant with the goal of establishing a caliphate, a religious
state ruled by strict, fundamentalist Islamic law—which includes rejection of
secular law, the embrace of violence to achieve religious goals and death for
anyone who leaves Islam. It’s also known for beheading aid workers and
journalists.
Those are
just a few examples. And the threat against freedom of expression isn’t carried
out only by people who think they’re Muslim. Christians in the US and Canada
have been known to ban Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain, and various school boards have from time to time banned books
that represent same-sex couples or homosexual relationships. China jails members of Falun Gong; Cuba jails dissidents
who dare criticize the government.
Granted, banning
books is not as extreme as the murders of journalists, writers and other artists.
But they are indicative of the threat against a freedom and a right that I, and
many others, believe is fundamental to the society I live in and wish to live
in.
The logical clash
I believe
that the overwhelming majority of Muslims and all people in the world do not
wish to impose their beliefs on other people, but are just trying to live their
lives. Unfortunately, there are always obnoxious assholes in every society who
believe they can tell other people what to do and think.
To me, and
I hope to others, the right to think freely and to express my thoughts freely
is fundamental, sacred and not to be infringed.
However, to
the murderers of Stéphane Charbonnier and the others at Charlie Hebdo, their
religious sensitivities trump freedom of speech and the right to life.
The necessity of freedom
Freedom of
expression is essential in a democracy, because history is replete with
tyrants, religious and otherwise, who repress expression to hide their misdeeds
and shortcomings.
But we can
take a narrower perspective. As a child, I learned how important it was to
tolerate teasing and insults. Reacting to an insult with anger only leads to a worse
opinion of the target of the insult in the eyes of others. The far better
reaction, the one that will be best for the original target of the insult, is
humour and to tease or insult right back. If you can be funny while doing so,
even better.
That’s a
lesson that those who get offended by criticism of their beliefs need to learn.
Where do you stand?
This is a
war, a war between hard-won freedom and the protection of elites—because what
ideas will be repressed, other than those that oppose the powerful?
We who live
in open, democratic and (mostly) free societies, like France, Canada, the US and
other countries, and those who want to live in a free, open society, have to
make a decision: do we support free expression of ideas that we might find
personally offensive? Or do we think that some principles are so delicate that
they must be protected against insult?
In short,
do you agree with Voltaire: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll
defend to the death your right to say it”?
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