Those who use violence to silence those with who they disagree should never be appeased by the democratically-minded.
Those who use violence to silence those with whom they disagree should never be appeased
While undoubtedly a cliché, the saying that Islamic extremists ‘hate our freedom’ was never as silly as some people liked to pretend. Today we see why. There really are some who refuse to accept the basic premises of a liberal society and who are willing to impose their idea of virtue, however ruinously, upon the rest of us.
To blame Islam or Muslims for the murder of four of the best-known French cartoonists (along with as many as eight other innocents) would be to miss the point. Violent totalitarianism comes in many forms, and simply requires a belief, set out in Arthur Koestler’s dystopian novel Darkness at Noon, that wrong ideas are crimes committed against future generations – which must therefore be punished like other crimes.
Once you accept the idea of the perfect society almost any atrocity becomes theoretically possible in the name of the cause. But as the 20th century ought to have demonstrated, such ideas are not confined to the pious, although they may at times manifest themselves in that way.
In this respect, those who attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris today, killing at least 12 people in the process, will have believed that what they were doing was good and proper. Indeed, in the perpetrators’ minds the barbaric actions were undoubtedly justified because they extinguished the perceived evil perpetrated by blasphemous French satirists. Notwithstanding pure power worship, that is how totalitarianism justifies itself.
And thus it would be a grave mistake to find a ‘root cause’ for today’s attacks in supposedly ‘offensive’ cartoons. Once you start down that road there really is no telling where you could end up. Indeed, if the problem is ‘provocative’ cartoons then it is also the existence of women and the LGBT community – because the killers probably don’t like those things either.
How do you compromise with that?
French President Francois Hollande put it best earlier today when he described France as “a country of liberty”, adding that “because of that we receive threats”. Quite. Or to put it another way, outpourings of totalitarian brutality are one of the prices we must occasionally pay for a free and open society.
We would all prefer the quiet life; no one wants to believe that they have in some way fuelled the actions of the fanatics. But be very uncomfortable with the notion, which we will no doubt hear in the coming days, that the carnage in Paris was in some sense ‘provoked’ by those who draw cartoons for a living. Satire uses mockery as a tool; but those it ‘provokes’ have willfully chosen their response: it is they who have reacted violently and it is with them – and only with them – that responsibility lies.
Remove the right to ridicule and satirise authority – religious authority in this instance – and everything else is detail, including the right of ordinary Muslims to satirise and ridicule their own despotic rulers. Those who use violence to silence those with whom they disagree should never be appeased by the democratically-minded. There are no excuses; today’s tragedy was cold-blooded murder, pure and simple.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
48 Responses to “Charlie Hebdo: No excuses – just murder”
Just Visiting
He is an unpleasant guy.
He twittered:
“Tragically/frustratingly, the #charliehebdo attack wasn’t even only / worst / bloodiest terror attack in the world today”
Matthew Blott
Did he? Yes I get the impression he’s not a very nice guy.
Matthew Blott
I wouldn’t pick on Stephen Fry to be fair as I don’t think he’s the sort of hypocrite I’m talking about. I don’t have a problem with people artists steering clear of mocking Islam if they admit as Grayson Perry does that it’s because they fear “having my[his] throat slit” (Perry’s words).
Just Visiting
> He flatly refused to do miracles
Not so much … the miracle of him in one night visiting Jerusalem and back (huge distance away) in a some miraculous way, but not by literally travelling there and back.
> his modesty
Not sure that is relevant in comparison to the fact that he beheaded prisoners – a pattern seen today in Islamic acts round the world.
He was so modest, that he changed the laws of adoption: so that he could un-adopt his adopted son in order to marry his wife!
To this day in Islam: adoption is very weak, unleak in the West: where adoption is based on the pattern of the New testament: once adopted there is no going back.
Just Visiting
my fault -I wasn’t suggesting Stephen was any more or less hypocritical than your average comedian.
Just recalled that off the top of my head, he’d already been (stupidly) accused in 2013 of being an islamophobe, for merely condemning Muslim violence.