I planned to eschew publishing any more commentaries until after Election Day on Tuesday, November 3. But, given these latest terrorist attacks, I feel obliged to share this update to “In Republishing Images of the Prophet Muhammad, ‘Charlie Hebdo’ Shows Islamophobic Arrogance, Not Democratic Defiance,” September 2, 2020:
A knife-wielding attacker shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ beheaded a woman and killed two other people at a church in the southern French city of Nice on Thursday. …
Since Paty’s killing, French officials — backed by many ordinary citizens — have re-asserted the right to display the cartoons, and the images have been widely displayed at marches in solidarity with the killed teacher.
That has prompted an outpouring of anger in parts of the Muslim world, including calls to boycott French products, with some governments accusing [French President Emmanuel] Macron of pursuing an anti-Islam agenda.
(France 24, October 29, 2020)
Sadly, Samuel Paty is the middle school teacher who an avenging Muslim beheaded recently (on October 16) for showing his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Police cornered the suspect near the scene of this crime and shot him dead.
I don’t know about you, but I managed to get through all levels of a pretty good education without any teacher ever showing cartoons of Jesus Christ. This, even though I suspect only a few evangelical Christians would’ve taken moral exception.
But, speaking of school, it seems some Frenchmen will never learn. This, especially when their president insists on framing this as an Islamist terrorist attack to stifle freedom of expression. Not to mention the deadly incentive he is providing by awarding that martyred teacher the Légion d’honneur, the nation’s highest civilian and military honor.
Again, everyone in France should know by now that most Muslims consider showing any cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad not just intentionally blasphemous but prohibited by religious law.
By contrast, Charlie Hebdo would not be inciting this kind of outrage if they were publishing cartoons of Muslim political leaders like President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, or even of Muslim religious leaders like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran.
But basic human decency, to say nothing of common sense, clearly calls for drawing a line at cartoons of the prophet nearly 2 billion Muslims worship. This, especially given universal acknowledgement that doing so smacks of wanton desecration.
That explains why this latest avenging Muslim was still chanting “Allahu Akbar” while being arrested. But here are two things “ordinary citizens” in France would do well to bear in mind:
- Christian armies waged two hundred years of crusades against Muslims over claims to holy sites, whereas these Muslims are waging lone-wolf attacks over cartoons that debase their divine prophet. But I do not agree with former Malaysian President Mahathir Mohamad that these Charlie Hebdo cartoons give Muslims “the right to kill millions of French people.” My only point is that Muslims are standing on higher moral ground; and that their outrage is understandable – even if it manifests in isolated and wholly unjustified acts of deadly retribution.
- The French Constitution expressly allows the government to limit any freedom of expression that constitutes an abuse of that freedom. Clearly a national magazine publishing cartoons that are designed to insult all adherents of an Abrahamic faith qualifies as abuse. Still, as I posited in previous commentaries, imagine the outrage if Charlie Hebdo were routinely publishing racist cartoons that Jews or Blacks found as offensive as Muslims find these cartoons.
With that I rest my plea … for just a little sensitivity.
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Charlie Hebdo…