It is comforting and politically
expedient to claim that “we” are attacked because “they” cannot deal with “our”
freedoms, particularly freedom of speech.
The tragic terrorist attack at the
French satirist magazine Charlie Hebdo
in Paris, killing ten journalists and two policemen, is frightening at many
levels. Although the three terrorists are still at large, and the official
motivation hasn’t been established yet, all indications point to Jihadists,
probably French-born Muslims who returned from the war in Syria (note the
similarities with the terrorist attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels last
year).
The general response has been one that
we have seen too often before, for example after the killing of Dutch filmmaker
Theo van Gogh in 2004 or the terrorist attacks in the US of 2001. Politicians
use the attacks to boast about the perfect democratic and free society that
they preside over and stress that this has nothing to do with Islam, but with
some pathological individuals who use a religion as an excuse for extremist
ideas. Citizens respond in the one medium in which they are still active,
social media, and make grand statements of solidarity, before being distracted
by a video of a waterskiing squirrel or a piano-playing kitten. Both will
declare that we are all whomever the victim of the day is.
Today Facebook and Twitter are full of
statements like “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) and “we are all Charlie”.
Unfortunately, we are not. Or, more precisely, with very few exceptions, we are
not Charlie, and that is a major
problem for liberal democracies around the world. Let me give you three reasons
why most of us are not Charlie and why this is problematic for our democracies.
First, many of the most vocal
‘defenders’ of Charlie Hebdo are very
new and selective fans of the satirist magazine. For instance, it is amazing
how many Islamophobic and far right people are declaring their love for a
magazine that until recently they would criticize as a ‘communist rag’ (after Charlie’s biting satire mocked their own
heroes, from Jesus Christ to Marine Le Pen). These are the heroic defenders of
free speech, like Geert Wilders, who want to ban the Quran because it incites
violence.
Many people are not Charlie exactly
because Charlie Hebdo would criticize
all religions and all politicians, irrespective of their
ethnicity, gender, ideology, etcetera. Consequently, leaders of all religions
and political parties have criticized them. That said, they have only been violently
attacked by extremist Muslims. This is a fact that can and should not be
denied! This is not to say that only Muslim
extremists attack their critics – for example, recently two French members of
the Jewish Defense League were convicted for placing a bomb under
the car of an anti-Zionist journalist. Still, it is an uncomfortable but
undeniable fact that most acts and
threats of political violence in contemporary Europe come from extremist
Muslims. This is not because of
Islam, as 99.9 percent of Muslims are not violent, but this doesn’t mean that
Islam plays no role at all.
Second, many people are not Charlie
because they believe that democratic debates should be “civil” and not upset
people. The problem is that ‘civility’ is a slippery concept, which means very
different things to different people. Similarly, it is impossible to measure
whether people are upset, let alone objectively compare how upset they are.
People can get upset about everything, so why should religious sensitivity have
special protection. Who is to say that Charlie’s
critique of Islam(ism) upsets a very religious Muslim more than l’Equipe’s critique of Paris Saint
German hurts a diehard PSG fan? More...
Cas Mudde is associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of
Georgia (USA).
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