It has been a horrible, gut-wrenching week for the French as they buried their dead. The French government is pondering their next move in their “war” against extremism and Muslims are wondering if they have a future in the country.
The men who murdered 17 people at Charlie Hebdo’s editorial offices and the kosher supermarket in Paris were killers pure and simple and their goals deserve the strongest condemnation. Still, let’s not call them Islamic extremists, but what they were really: False Muslims, as accurately described by Malek Merabet, the brother of Muslim police officer Ahmed Merabet, who was gunned down by the terrorists. Not only did the dead include Merabet, but also Mustapha Ourrad, a Muslim copy editor at Charlie Hebdo.
The media’s glib labeling of the murderers as “Islamic extremists” ignores the fact that Islam does not teach killing people who blaspheme. The Qur’an is explicit in its response to blasphemers: “Do not sit with them.”
Since these individuals did not follow the holy book, how does that make them religious extremists when religion doesn’t enter the picture? Murder is murder and has no religion.
While I shed no tears for these men, it doesn’t mean that I stand with Charlie Hebdo. The status of Charlie Hebdo has been elevated this past week to courageous crusaders of free speech and provocateurs on a mission to encourage debate on social issues.
But when I see signs that say, “I am Charlie,” I really see “I am a bigot,” “I am a racist,” “I am anti-Semitic,” “I am anti-Catholic,” “I am anti-Muslim” and “I am a hypocrite.”
Like the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) I choose not to sit with them.
Yet Charlie Hebdo has been praised as an equal opportunity hater of all religions and ethnicity, as if that is some kind of nobility. Forgotten by the “I am Charlie” crowd is magazine’s 2008 firing of cartoonist Maurice Sinet, who penned an anti-Semitic article.
In reality, the magazine is an agent to marginalize disenfranchised ethnic and religious minorities. It’s a publication that does its best to keep the poor in slums and out of work.
Many of those poor are second- and third-generation Algerians, like Merabet and Ourrad, whose families immigrated to France following the Algerian Revolution against the French occupation in the late 1950s that left nearly 1 million people dead. Merabet and Ourrad integrated well into French society, but thousands more are mired in poverty. Charlie Hebdo makes it a point to keep them in their place.
While free speech is vital to thriving democratic societies, there is a fine line between satire and hate speech. It takes talented, erudite writers and illustrators to deliver stinging satire to spark debate.
Charlie Hebdo is more juvenile than talented. Readers must ask themselves what purpose does it serve — and to what end — that must we ridicule and mock minorities. How about mocking the powerful, rich and famous? Satire in democratic countries can bring down the powerful a notch or two and lift the spirits of readers. But mocking and ridiculing those folks already economically deprived, facing discrimination and scrapping for every penny to feed their families? Well, that’s just plain hate.
