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WHY WE ARE NOT ALL CHARLIE HEBDO
The murder of 12 journalists in Paris was a crime not an act of war. It was an act which should be condemned in the same way as we would condemn the killing of anyone who had not threatened their killers with violence. Our response should be sympathy for the family and friends of the dead and to hope that the killers are quickly brought to justice, but not solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. We are not all ‘Charlie Hebdo’ for at least four reasons. The first is the nature of the magazine itself. The second is the way the murders are being used to push us towards accepting the simple binary opposition of a war between us and them. This does nothing to help us to understand what happened in Paris, and serves only to support the right-wing ideology that in spite of huge differences in wealth and our ability to have control over our own lives, we are somehow all one in the face of a common enemy. The third is that it unquestioningly accepts that France and the West are bastions of democracy and personal liberty. Clearly this is not the case in France given, for example, the huge support the Front National enjoys. The fourth is that the reaction to the murders, which identifies them with mainstream Islamic beliefs and seeks to divide us into ‘us and them’, will only help the extremists on both sides. It will not only strengthen the arguments of those within the Muslim community who argue that Muslims are not wanted by Western society and so add to their feelings of alienation which in some cases lead them on to terrorist actions, but it will also lead to an increase in attacks on Muslims by the extremists from within Western society.
The magazine was, of course, the French focal point of several controversies surrounding incendiary depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. Although these earlier controversies were polarising, there was middle ground for both Muslims who either didn’t object or refused to care about what they saw as an attention-seeking publication and various mainstream voices, including a former Charlie Hebdo employee, Olivier Cyran, who denounced the magazine for aggravating an already toxic atmosphere for French Muslims. It is this middle ground which is in danger of being lost, and which we must fight to retain.
Charlie Hebdo is a strange combination – a left wing newspaper that’s become notorious for its racist attacks on Muslims. Charlie ridicules all religions but directs a disproportion of these attacks against Islam. It contains far more Islamophobic content than just the images of the Prophet Muhammad. It has repeated the claim, for example, that Muhammad was a child abuser. The journalists at Charlie Hebdo justify their actions by claiming they are attacking an assertive global religion through the use of satire.
Satire’s strength, however, comes from its capacity to expose the hubris of those who claim to be great and who enjoy power. In contrast, the cartoons in Charlie Hebdo were intended to provoke and humiliate Muslims. who in France and elsewhere, feel victimised and powerless. They were intended to feed Islamophobia. This is clearly seen by the way they nearly always identify Muhammad and the Quoran with the terrorist groups, even though these groups’ actions, and many of their beliefs have nothing to do with orthodox Islam.
Charlie Hebdo is not subversive. It is supporting a rising tide of public opinion in France, which seems to be becoming the majority view. Alongside countless controversies over everything from prayer rooms to halal food, the cycle of media ire directed at Muslims has become near-incessant. As a consequence of its choice to print images that many other publications considered pointlessly offensive, it is eulogised by anti-Muslim hate-mongers who used the controversy they created to assert there is a fundamental clash between “Islam and the west”.
Making fun of those who feel secure in their wealth and position in society is not the same as seeking to further humiliate those who face a daily round of institutional racism and state attacks. Satire can not only speak truth it can also encourage prejudice. So while we would identify with a Muslim cartoonist in Saudi Arabia who mocked e.g. the Islamic pretensions of the ruling elite i.e. those who have power, for drinking alcohol, we should not identify in the same way with those at Charlie Hebdo. They were attacking the weak, which isn’t what satire should be about. Nor is it what people on the left should be doing. Surely the role of the left should generally be to defend the weak against the strong unless there are specific reasons not to.
As we have seen the establishment world wide, if the front line of the Charlie Hebdo march is anything to go by, has rushed to exploit the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo. In spite of denials and the occasional reference to the hostile reaction of most Muslims, the attack has generally been used in an Islamophobic way. I say this because overwhelmingly it is portrayed as an attack on Western values, or our way of life. It is argued that it shows once again that we face a choice, as Alex Massie puts it in the Spectator, ‘between civilisation and barbarism,’ or ‘modernity and a kind of fanaticism we’ve known in our own past’ i.e. between western values and Islam.
This response, however, is seriously flawed. To begin with it assumes that everything in our society is right, that it must be defended at all costs, and that our biggest problems come from enemies outside. Obviously this is untrue. Everything in our society isn’t right. Problems with the health service, the education system, falling real wages etc are far greater problems for most of us than worrying about being attacked by a terrorist. The establishment’s response is, therefore, not a defense of our freedom, but a tool to limit public discussion and debate in order to protect its own position. It precludes class struggle by saying we must all rally to the defense of Western values which they identify with the established order. For this reason alone people on the left should have nothing to do with it.
Secondly, it suggests we possess a single ‘way of life’ which is in danger. Again this is clearly untrue. We don’t possess a single ‘way of life’, nor do we all have the same beliefs. My beliefs, I hope, are very different from Miliband’s, Cameron’s, and of course Farage’s. I do not have the same way of life as a chief executive of a major company. Despite occasional moments of terror, unlike the people of Syria or Afghanistan, we are not at war and should stop pretending we are under attack. Compared with other causes of unnecessary mortality, relatively few people die in Europe from political violence, Islamist or otherwise. It is also worth remembering that Islamic acts of terror worldwide have killed far more Muslims than westerners.
Again it is clearly absurd to lump all Muslims together. Like us westerners Muslims, many of whom are of course westerners themselves, are not all the same. They do not all have the same beliefs and values, even if they share the same religion, nor do they have a single way of life. Most Muslims have condemned the attacks e.g. many cartoons condemning it, similar to the ones published in the West, have been published in Muslim countries. Even the so-called terrorist organization Hezbollah has. Here the use of the word terrorist to describe both Hezbollah and the people involved in the Paris attack as if they are identical is rediculous and simply shows that it is a label designed to denigrate whoever it is applied to - rather than help people understand what has happened. Haslan Nasrallah, its leader, said, "The behaviour of the takfiri groups that claim to follow Islam have distorted Islam, the Koran and the Muslim nation more than Islam’s enemies ... who insulted the prophet in films... or drew cartoons of the prophet,"
In Islam the only group authorised to declare a member of an Abrahamic religion a kafir ("infidel") is the ulema, people trained in Sharia law, and this is only done once all the prescribed legal precautions have been taken. However, a growing number of splinter Wahhabist/Salafist groups, labeled by some scholars as Salafi-Takfiris, have split from the orthodox method of establishing takfir through the processes of the Sharia law, and have claimed the right to declare apostasy themselves against any Muslim in addition to non-Muslims. We shouldn’t forget the West’s role in promoting these groups when it suited them.
We must now examine in more detail my third reason for saying, ‘We are not all Charlie Hebdo’ which is that French society bears some of the responsibilty for what happened. France does not as Farage said support multi culturalism. In fact it could be argued it does the opposite. It tends to argue that you are only really French if you fully assimilate French culture and sees people who do not do this as a threat to the French way of life. Today this assumption is mainly directed at Muslims. Too many on the left in France, like Charlie Hebdo, have been seduced by the right-wing language of a struggle between two cultures. Even the closest French equivalent of the Socialist Workers Party in France the new Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) although they refused to take part in the march, issued a statement condemning the Charlie Hebdo massacre headlined “Barbaric and reactionary madness”, and in another statement the perpetrators fascists.. It was wrong to do this. This is same language that the ruling classes uses to frame their attacks on Islam and to justify their wars in the Middle East. The NPA statement goes on to accuse the attackers of ‘sowing terror, against freedom of the press in the name of reactionary and obscurantist prejudices”. This effectively endorses the dominant identification with Charlie Hebdo – “Je suis Charlie” a magazine that has gloried in publishing horrible, bullying racist caricatures of Muslims.
Cherif Kouachi and his accomplices were French Algerian Muslim youths, so to understand their disaffection, we must look at what it is like to be a French Algerian Muslim in France. Algeria had been a French colony. Although France followed a policy of assimilation in Algeria, Muslims had no representation in the Algerian National Assembly and wielded limited influence in local government. To obtain citizenship, they were required to renounce their Muslim identity. Since this would constitute apostacy, only about 2,500 Muslims had acquired citizenship by 1930. On the other hand the Jews of Algeria, had been enfranchised by a decree of 1870. This helped to precipitate an Algerian revolt which the French savagely repressed. French colonial policy of divide and rule is obviously a contributary cause of the anti-jewish feeling which is particularly marked in Algeria. Clearly once again we are reminded in this case, that Arab hostility to Jews has far more complex roots than simple anti-semitism. After World War 11 the struggle for Algerian independence, known as the Algerian War, was particularly bloody.
To begin with it is possible, or even likely, that Charlie Kouachi and his accomplices knew some of the history of French colonialism and the Algerian War. Obviouslly I cannot give a detailed account of this history here, so I will describe just one event that took place during the Algerian War, not in Algeria, but in France, which alone shows why French citizens with an Algerian background might feel alienated from the French state. On 17 October 1961 the French police attacked a forbidden demonstration of some 30,000 pro - FLN Algerians. After 37 years of denial, in 1998 the French government acknowledged 40 deaths, although there are estimates of over 200.
Official documentation and eyewitnesses within the Paris police department suggest that the massacre was directed by Maurice Papon - the head of the Paris police. Police records show that Papon called for officers in one station to be 'subversive' in quelling the demonstrations, and assured them protection from prosecution if they participated. Many demonstrators died when they were violently herded by police into the River Seine, with some thrown from bridges after being beaten unconscious. Other demonstrators were killed within the courtyard of the Paris police headquarters after being arrested and delivered there in police buses. Officers who participated in the courtyard killings took the precaution of removing identification numbers from their uniforms, while senior officers ignored pleas by other policemen, who were shocked by the brutality they were witnessing. Silence about the events within the police headquarters was further enforced by threats of reprisals from participating officers. The fact that this could happen in France gives an insight into just how bloody French colonialism was in Algeria. Yet in 2005 the French Government passed a law which imposed on high school (lycee) teachers the requirement to teach the “positive role” of colonialism. It took a year of protests to force it to retreat. Nabila Ramdani in last Fridays Guardian wrote. Half a century on, the violence has subsided but there is still a strong sense of resentment among alienated communities living in housing estates on the outskirts of the capital.
Even if France’s history of bloody imperialism was unknown to the murderers they would have had many other reasons in contemporary France to feel so alienated that they were prepared to carry out this act of extreme violence. Since the beginning of this century France has introduced increasing restrictions on religious freedom, which have been denounced by Amnesty International and other bodies monitoring human rights. These include the ban on headscarves in schools and face veils in public spaces. The law, introduced in 2010 makes it illegal for anyone to cover their face in a public place. While it also covers balaclavas and hoods, the ban has been criticised as targeting Muslim women. The case was tested at the European court of human rights (ECHR). It was brought by an unnamed 24-year-old French citizen of Pakistani origin, who wears both the burqa, covering her entire head and body, and the niqab, leaving only her eyes uncovered. The unnamed complainant, was described as a "perfect French citizen with an university education …who speaks of her republic with passion". Her lawyer Tony Muman told the ECHR: "She's a patriot" adding that she had suffered "absolutely no pressure" from her family or relatives to cover herself. While she was prepared to uncover her face for identity checks, she insisted on the right to wear the full-face veil, Muman said. Again this shows that we should not make generalisations about the values and beliefs of Muslims.
The European judges decided otherwise, declaring that the preservation of a certain idea of "living together" was the "legitimate aim" of the French authorities. These, of course, are the same people who defend Charlie Hebno, however offensive, in terms of the right to express oneself. Clearly this shows a great deal of hypocracy. They are saying people can only live together if they sacrifice their right to express themselves in any way that doesn’t fit the established norm.
The effects of discriminatory practices in France are not limited to Muslim women. A large proportion of France's ethnic minorities are segregated in public housing complexes in the suburban communities (banlieues) that surround French cities. The banlieues are geographically isolated and ethnically distinct from surrounding communities. Many of the public housing complexes in the banlieues are neglected and physically deteriorating. Poverty, substandard schools, low levels of educational attainment, crime and unemployment are common features in these neighborhoods. Young banlieusards (banlieue residents) are stereotyped as gang members, criminals and potential terrorists. They are otherized as "immigrants" even though many of them are second and third generation citizens who were born in France. Banlieusards are routinely targeted by police who abuse and harass them using identity checks as a pretext. These discriminatory practices treat the young men as second-class citizens and impinge on their rights to freedom of movement and privacy. Police brutality provoked large-scale riots in 1983, the 1990s and 2005.
Furthermore if freedom is an absolute value in France why are sociologist Said Bouamama and rapper Saidou on trial over a book they produced in 2010 called “Fuck France: the duty to be insolent”. And in France, demonstrations in support of the Palestinians were banned last year. In September 2012 the state banned protests against Charlie Hebdo printing cartoons denigrating Islam.
All this has not gone unnoticed by extremists in these communities who use these issues to proclaim France is a land of inequity where Muslims can never truly be at home. They have even used these events in propaganda videos to argue for Muslim emigration to Isis- We know that France has one of the highest numbers of foreign fighters recruited, which not only suggests some of this rhetoric is resonating, but also that the journalists at Charlie Hebdo, the French establishment and all the other people ratcheting up Islamaphobia bear some responsibilty for the acts which they condemn.
Just as their actions encourage so called Islamic extremism they will also encourage a backlash against Muslims. This has already began. 54 Islamophobic incidents were reported in France, not counting Paris, within six days of the attack according to the French Muslim Council. These ranged from threats or insults to pigs heads left at mosques and graffitti saying “death to Arabs”. 21 were attacks, some using weapons including a bomb. 15 mosques and prayer sites were targeted in the first two nights. One of these was later set on fire. This reaction is not confined to France. In Germany the Islamophobic Pegida movement have organised large demonstrations, and in Britain, Muslim properties heve been attacked, for example, in Birmingham. It is our task to counter this reaction and say as loudly as possible, “We are not all Charlie Beddo, but we are with the thousands of school and college students who refused to take part in the minute’s silence of the ‘I am Charlie campaign’.
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