Sunday Times 2
The French offensive
French logic is a puzzle. Un casse-tête. At least for the present, it would seem that French reasoning isn’t quite on track. A lapse in sequential thinking must explain the failure to see the obvious, despite warning signs that one thing can and does lead to another, and that continued blindness, real or feigned, could have un résultat catastrophique.
The recent media-related shocks in Paris that sparked outrage and protests around the world will come as no surprise to any fair-minded person who stops to ask why the shock events happened in the first place. It is, surely, a simple matter of cause and effect.
Pakistani Islamists carry placards that read “Muhammad” as they gather during a protest against the printing of satirical sketches of the Prophet Muhammad by French magazine Charlie Hebdo in Lahore on January 27, 2015. AFP
Everyone knows the story. But let’s first outline a theoretical case centered on calculated offensiveness and its natural, inevitable outcome:
You have a job, you say, and that is to send up the world. Your work involves lampoons and cartoons. You poke fun at anything and everything, including religion. You hear protests, but box on regardless. La liberté d’expression – Freedom of Speech – you pursue in the name of entertainment. You aim where you know it hurts most, which is below the belt. Un coup bas. Nothing is sacred to you. When your mockery triggers anger, you ramp up the outrages. The world thinks you’re cool, but not everyone is amused. You see your work as mischievous but essentially harmless. Others say your jibes can be, and are, deeply offensive. And to millions, blasphemously offensive.
Now let’s fit the above abstraction to a real-life scenario.
A French weekly that specialises in humour and satire runs a series of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam, on its covers and inside. Charlie Hebdo, the magazine, receives warnings and threats from sections of France’s five million Muslims and others in the world Muslim community. Appeals for respect for religion come from moderate Muslims, and warnings and threats come from extremists. The French government has advised the magazine to tone down its content. Defiant and self-justifying, the magazine continues to be provocative.
Gunmen recently stormed the Charlie Hebdo office and slaughtered eight members of staff, including editors and illustrators. The world reeled with shock and horror. More anger and violence followed when the magazine, aided by other French publications, put out one million copies of the weekly in tribute to the slain Charlie Hebdo team. That issue also, predictably, had Prophet Muhammad on its cover. That issue will not be Charlie Hebdo’s opus posthumous, although millions of Muslims, moderate to extremist, will surely wish it is.
World leaders and freedom-of-speech champions gathered in strength in Paris and elsewhere to condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo. One world leader, who did not join any protests, had this to say when asked to comment on the Paris events:
“It is true that you must not react violently, but… if [somebody] says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch, it’s normal. You can’t provoke, you can’t insult the faith of others. You can’t make fun of faith. … In freedom of expression there are limits.”
That was Pope Francis, spiritual head of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. He was answering a query put to him during the recent papal tour, on the flight from Katunayake to Manila, the Philippines, after his profoundly well-received four-day visit in Sri Lanka. Pope Francis was replying in the informally conversational manner in which the question was put to him. It was a very human point he was making: mock what is sacred and precious to me, and here’s what you get. Cause and effect.
Debates on Free Speech will never be the same after what happened at 10 Rue Nicolas-Appert, the former Charlie Hebdo Paris office, on January 7, the day of the deadly attack, and what followed.
Charlie Hebdo itself, by the way, is a messy story. It’s a declared irreverent publishing organ that sticks its tongue out at one and all. It calls itself “comic,” and indeed there is something absurd and comic in its own history – its ups and downs, inhouse fallings-out, sudden closures, surprise resurfacings, rebrandings, relocations – you name it. See Charlie Hebdo, Wikipedia.
Now here’s a question that looks like a riddle but isn’t:
What is the difference between Brigitte Bardot and Charlie Hebdo?
Answer: Both are French, but one is penalised for making racially offensive remarks that relate to a world religion, while the other is permitted, even encouraged, to caricature the founder of that same world religion.
As a French citizen, Bardot has voiced concerns about the Muslim presence in France, and she has had to pay for her anti-Muslim stance and her use of free speech. Since 1997, she has appeared in court and been fined substantial sums for “provoking discrimination and racial hatred.” As a passionate animal rights activist, she has been fined on two occasions for speaking out against the ritual mass slaughter of sheep during Muslim festivals (she claims the mode of slaughter causes trauma for the animals). Bardot’s fines have ranged from a token one euro (paid to anti-racism groups) to €3,000, €5,000 and €15,000 (that last fine equal to US$16,000 or SL Rupees 2.232 million).
(You may well ask why Bardot was not allowed her right to free speech: she is a famous senior French citizen- for millions around the world she represents France; she is a cultural icon; and she feels strongly about what she sees as a cultural mismatch, the large Muslim presence in Christian France. There are 41.6 million Roman Catholics in France, out of a population of 65 million.)
If France’s anti-racism laws are there to prevent incitement of hatred and discrimination on racial or religious grounds, the logical question to ask is where were the French authorities when Charlie Hebdo incited hatred and discrimination, with its doodles and oodles of offensive content?
Meanwhile, the French government has pledged one million euros (US$1.129 million or SLR148.8 million) to keep Charlie Hebdo alive and going.
Incroyable, you say?
-Richard S. Prins