“I speak only one language, and it is not my own” (Jacques Derrida)
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To begin with, I condemn unequivocally the killing of French cartoonists, journalists and editors of France's very antireligious Charlie Hebdo. I mourn their loss and my condolences go to their families and to a grieving French nation. Absolutely nothing can justify anymore the killing of innocent civilians along purely religious lines. I agree with the Pope's characterization of the event as stemming from a "deviant form of religion".
I am as horrified at this as I was at the attempted assassination of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan and the shooting of a Canadian Forces member at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. The only real response to religious differences is rational debate and discussion, founded on deep and reverential respect for all religious beliefs and traditions.
However, it's very disheartening to me to see a country that's known for some of the most enlightened contemporary philosophic thought blindly follow a sort of tribal instinct to revile foreign ideas and peoples. I am certainly not about to throw my support behind proponents of a pure unbridled freedom of expression that cares not a whit about the rightness of indiscriminately lampooning and caricaturing religious ideas or figures in the most obscenely graphic images imaginable or, perhaps more importantly, about the consequences of this media assault on ethno-cultural sensibilities everywhere.
Any tenet of free speech must be premised on a mutual understanding of and respect for the right of any belief system to be protected from what can only be seen as unceasing assaults (whether in verbal or artistic forms) on religious faith-traditions and their sacred images and icons. Not to do so is to condone a hate speech rhetoric that has no place in a growing globalized world community There must be limits to what freedom of speech activists, using media resources and their vast market outreach, can say and show.
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| Holy Koran |
The Catholic will find himself these days being subjected to similar barrages of anti-Catholic rants and not a few obscene media representations of religious iconography dear to them. They are as offensive to Christians as the anti-Islam editorials and cartoons at Charlie Hebdo are to Muslims. I do not see here a difference.. The most egregious form of this similar sort of purposely offensive caricature came recently in an April 15th, 2014 Jon Stewart Comedy Central skit in which Stewart made an obscene mockery of the holy manger scene. The Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights and Catholics everywhere have condemned Stewart for this (as I do, too): the crass stupidity and ignorance of a celebrity figure who commands a wide television audience is not to be believed.
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| Holy Family |
If Je suis Charlie is a rallying-cry for freedom of speech without responsible limits and if its goal is to defend pornographic depictions of the sacred prophet of Islam and the sacred holy manger of Catholicism, I do not support it and never will. I support free speech as intelligent and respectful discourse always. Beliefs, customs and practices by which hundreds of millions govern their lives and which are bearers of a sanctity in their own right ought to be accorded better treatment.
5 comments:
Conrad:
Icon-bashing is a hallmark of Western style democratic life.
We lampoon and skewer our political, cultural, and (yes) religious figures, because the spirit of freedom as expressed through a free press, is what makes our societies work.
If we begin by setting out prohibitions and sacred inviolable cows, who are immune from criticism and humor, we lose a precious right.
In fascist societies, the media is controlled, and only the message that power wants broadcast, gets heard.
I will defend anyone's right to free speech, whatever the consequences. If you insist on special interest treatment, in a free country, you open the door to secrecy and cover-ups.
If Muslims can't take it, they should remain within the borders of nations they run (as authoritarian theocracies). They don't get to change the free speech rules for their own convenience (or selfish pride).
Islam needs to stay in the Middle East. It will never work in democracies. We'll be seeing this played out over the coming decades. It won't be pretty.
Tolerance is not endorsement.
perfectly said, Conrad. It was good to read a sensible, level-headed, rational and understanding take on this. Thank you for writing and posting -- I've shared it on Facebook & Twitter.
Curtis,
as you might expect, I don't like the implied characterization of Muslims here as meddlesome religious busybodies who should stay home. It's a sentiment that just won't reckon with the realities of 'globalization' and the porous borders it entails, and sadly resorts to demonization of the 'other'. If France opened it borders to 10 million Muslims it can at least treat them as civilly as it treats its own citizens.
But I'm concerned not just with demographics and racial bigotry. It's the silly 'je suis Charlie' sloganeering and the equally preposterous social media image of artists martyred for the cause of free speech that I find offensive. Publications like 'Hebdo' that delight in obscene depictions of religious figures and practices clearly go too far and purposely provoke not just Muslims but Catholics and Jews as well. It's a case of bullying that went just too far.
I'll speak from a Catholic's perspective and say, quite bluntly, that if Jon Stewart had taunted me about my Catholicity and waved his 'Holy Family' obscenity under my nose, I can't say I might have controlled myself sufficiently.
I'll even say that 'art' of the Charlie Hebdo variety might also work as an unconscious vindication of the worst xenophobic tendencies in people still gripped by tribal fears of the "savage at our borders" type. I accuse of barbaric intolerance a nation known for the publication of the most progressive ideas in intellectual history. Derrida and Foucault must be spinning in their graves!
Thanks, Andreas
there was a time in my life when I thought radical freedom of speech of the 'Charlie Hebdo' variety meant an open mind. Now I see, after perhaps a bit of acquired wisdom. that radical free speech is rather the same as an open sewer.
Conrad:
I see contradictions in your thought here.
On the one hand, you exhibit a certain degree of hypersensitivity to offense (to your religion), while promoting a vision of extreme tolerance.
I would rather we fought our "battles of faith" in print than on the battlefield, with guns and tanks and bombs.
Words and images are powerful, but they can't hurt you unless you let them. People only have as much power over us as we grant them.
How should we show our indignation and resistance, except through our words, our acts, our bodies?
The problem I see is intolerance coming from religious extremism, both in the Muslim world, and in the Christian one.
I don't see the French people as having "invited" Islam into their body politic. It just came, with or without "permission."
But France has a history of democratic freedom, which is now being sorely tested.
As a faith, Islam verges on theocracy. In its origin countries, that's how it functions. There is a natural tendency among Muslims to reassemble their cultural traditions in whatever setting they find themselves.
During the colonial period, christian missionaries went around the world trying to proselytize "heathens" to worship the "right" god. That campaign has been largely abandoned. Because we now understand that imposing a belief upon people with their own traditions and culture doesn't always work very well, and may cause more distress than it does order and prosperity.
Is it distressing to see the media frenzy over the defense of free speech by the French people, and around the world? What reaction would be preferable, to a sympathetic outpouring of support for the principle of free speech?
For my own part, I don't derive much excitement or pleasure from looking at political or satiric cartoons anymore. The brand of irony they employ usually doesn't find its mark.
Would I be more or less likely to be offended by an attack or smear of Christian than than of Islamic targets? I don't much care.
I am not religious myself, and don't believe in the kind of exaggerated reverence typical of deeply convicted religionists. I don't go out of my way to offend religions, but my belief in democratic freedoms takes precedence over any duty I may feel to respect religious inviolability.
Muslims need to take a stand against violence and violent thinking in their ranks. There's a clear relationship between the extreme forms of Islamic worship, and the violence that is occurring around the world, in its name.
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