Paris, anyone?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Let's be clear about this. Attacks on religious beliefs may be deemed offensive, but they are not in themselves racist.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Let's be clear about this. Attacks on religious beliefs may be deemed offensive, but they are not in themselves racist.

Indeed - but, let's also be clear that, as RB comments, there are people who profit from exploiting the associations between Faith and Race.

[Pabmusic]

...the satirical attacks on the prophet of Islam made by this magazine may not be intended as racist, but there are two groups that can be easily predicted to view them as racist: Muslims themselves, with disapproval; and the far right, with approval...

Religion is not a race. You can leave a religion; you can't leave a race. We devalue the idea of 'racism' when we include religions.

It seems this was a religious attack, carried out for religious reasons by people who (I suspect) felt they were doing their god's will and perhaps feel proud of what they did. They certainly seem to have thought they were avenging their prophet, because they said so. It was not an attack on 'the West' because of politics, colonial history, the Iraq war, oil, neglect, or whatever. It was punishment meted out in accordance with their religious beliefs. I suspect that many other atrocities have been carried out for similar religious reasons, but it is in our natures to dismiss religious causes - there must be some deeper, real reason - and such a reason is usually found. But this was an attack on a small newspaper, not the French government, Nato, the USA, the UN or whatever. For publishing something they didn't like.

It's a continuation of the Salman Rushdie effect.

[Flosshilde]

Completely agree, but I also agree that the original cartoon couyld be exploited by some as a racist attack, and the shootings exploited by others as support for their racist views.

[aeolium]

Right. Obviously stupidity and tastelessness doesn't deserve to be punished in this way. There's another element to it which came to mind yesterday: the satirical attacks on the prophet of Islam made by this magazine may not be intended as racist, but there are two groups that can be easily predicted to view them as racist: Muslims themselves, with disapproval; and the far right, with approval. Provoking a culturally and economically backward sector of society is one thing which one might think twice about doing, but aligning oneself with the "sense of humour" of neofascists is another.

But opposition to Islam, particularly the theocratic and violent manifestations of Islam present throughout the Middle East and in parts of Africa, ought not to be conflated with racism, any more than opposition to Zionism and Israeli policies in Palestine should be equated with anti-semitism - though they regularly are. This article I think accurately describes the confusion around the term "Islamophobia" which is often used against critics of Islam whether satirical or otherwise. The quotation from Pascal Bruckner is appropriate: “To speak of islamophobia is to maintain the crudest confusion between a religion, a specific system of belief, and the faithful who adhere to it…Must we then speak of anticapitalist, antiliberal, antisocialist, and anti-Marxist racism?”

I think it is entirely legitimate to criticise and indeed to lampoon the grotesquely distorted versions of puritanical Islam which sadly now provide its most visible and most aggressive face, not just in the countries where it is the dominant and state religion like Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia but also in resistance movements like al-Quaeda, Boko Haram, Islamic Jihad and Islamic State. Here we have atavistic legal systems based on sharia law, where the rights of women are trampled on and girls are sold into sex slavery, religious minorites may be persecuted, people may be executed for adultery or homosexuality, and of course there is no intellectual or artistic freedom. Such criticism is increasingly stifled by the ferocity of the retribution which it might attract.

It's true that the West, by its disastrous Middle Eastern interventions over the last 100 years or so and especially the most recent ones, has contributed to the growth of more extreme manifestations of Islam, but it won't do to make the West the sole scapegoat here. The Sunni-Shia clashes in Islamic societies which are now convulsing the Middle East long predated the era of Western intervention. The Islamic State openly acknowledge their commitment to the Wahhabi movement of Sunni Islam, which is not some esoteric extremist version but in fact the form of the official state religion of the most powerful Islamic state and the birthplace of Islam, Saudi Arabia.

I do not wish this to be seen as a blanket condemnation of Islam or the many peace-loving Muslims who reject these extremists. The history of Islam has included periods of great tolerance (often greater than that of its Christian counterparts) as well as of intellectual and artistic excellence. Sadly these nobler traditions within Islam seem now to be superseded by regressive forms of puritanical, intolerant and reactionary ideas, ideas which ought to be challenged.

[Richard Tarleton]

Religion is not a race. You can leave a religion; you can't leave a race. We devalue the idea of 'racism' when we include religions.

It's a continuation of the Salman Rushdie effect.

Indeed. Salman Rushdie is quoted in an excellent opinion piece by Philip Collins in today's Times -

Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry, becomes a real threat to our freedoms

And it's worth adding, Pabs, that in parts of the Muslim world, leaving your religion is not straightforward - apostasy carries a death sentence.

As for #17 - Ian, does this barbaric episode not, rather, make you wonder whether a particular interpretation of a religion that considers a death sentence appropriate for for publishing a scurrilous cartoon should really enjoy our deference and respect? It appears Charlie Hebdo dishes it out to all religions. We do not hear the Pope nowadays issuing calls to the faithful to kill authors and cartoonists, eyebrows might be raised if he did. Islam is not a special case. It should not be immune to questioning, and mockery. I hope Times rules permit a brief quotation from Collins's piece:

This, to be clear, is a pathology shared by religious thought everywhere. It is not unique to Islam, nor is it even historically most common there. The egregious history of the Christian church shows that when people lay claim to certainty about ultimate questions, sooner or later there is going to be trouble. If the truth has in some way been vouchsafed to you by the divinity then dissent is not reasoned disagreement, it is blasphemy. I am no longer an interlocutor, I am an infidel.

[Richard Barrett]

Islam in France is overwhelmingly practised by members of racial groups which are marginalised and stigmatised by the political establishment in France (especially of course by the right) and which are poor and disadvantaged in relation to the average. While a satire on someone's religion is not in itself racist, the cartoons clearly use racial stereotypes to articulate their satire.

And once more I am not saying that racism of any kind is justification for murder. What we should be looking for is a world in which murders like this don't take place; but also where (for example) Muslim families in Pakistan aren't slaughtered by drones, in other words where every human life is seen as equally valuable.

[ahinton]

Islam in France is overwhelmingly practised by members of racial groups which are marginalised and stigmatised by the political establishment in France (especially of course by the right) and which are poor and disadvantaged in relation to the average. While a satire on someone's religion is not in itself racist, the cartoons clearly use racial stereotypes to articulate their satire.

And once more I am not saying that racism of any kind is justification for murder. What we should be looking for is a world in which murders like this don't take place; but also where (for example) Muslim families in Pakistan aren't slaughtered by drones, in other words where every human life is seen as equally valuable.

We should indeed - not only looking for it but, where possible, actively seking to encourage it.

There are indeed wrongs on both sides - or at the very least wrongs on the murderers' side and crass stupidity and insensitivity on the other. There comes a point at which satire can run the risk of departing from humour and entering the milieu of offensiveness and it is this that seems to me to be at the heart of the Charlie Hebdo problem. Consider the example of intellectual property; with copyrights come copy responsibilties. Likewise, freedom of speech, whilst a fundamental and inalienable human right, does not confer upon citizens an obligation to open their mouths at all times and spout forth the first things that enter their heads without due consideration for others, so freedom of speech not only embraces rights but carries with it responsibilities.

Of course I share in everyone's sympathy for those who have been murdered in Paris in the last couple of days as well as their families and friends; the actions of the murderers concerned are, like the actions of all murderers, indefensible. That said, a little editorial discretion at Charlie Hebdo would not have come amiss, nor would it necessarily have compromised freedom of speech, as some seek to claim. Part of the problem here seems to me to be that, whilst the French and others might be able to appreciate and accept satire for what it is, some Muslims who have not lived in the West for long - and certainly all terrorists and murderers who claim to operate under the cloak of Islam - are far less likely to do so, hence its inflammatory potential in certain circumstances of the kind whose devastating outcome has recently been witnessed in Paris.

The "racist" arguments do indeed surface because Islam is practised in France mainly by "members of racial groups which are marginalised and stigmatised" by the French political establishment, as you say - indeed also by many French citizens and other Europeans living in France; the targeting of Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere by Western forces can only serve to worsen matters and, of course, it does just that by exacerbating alienation, aggressive tendencies and vengefulness, sometimes to the grave disadvantage of citizens living in the West.

[richardfinegold]

I must admit that I am really surprised at the support given to the magazine "Charlie Hebdo" as it's vindictive and provocative attitude towards Islam surely meant that the attacks shouldn't have been a surprise. No one in their right mind can condone the attack yet I am surprised how few people have commented about the incongruities within the nation where the protection freedom of speech (no matter how offensive against a religion) seems to be more valuable than the risible attitude towards it's Muslim community who account for 1/6th of it's population. I haven't heard anyone comment that the so-called humour mocking the Prophet was pretty crass and far from sophisticated. I think we are kidding ourselves if we believe that this magazine is as sophisticated as "Private Eye." French humour is still rooted in the 1970's and there is no case to be had to argue that this magazine was defending freedom of speech.

I think the West needs to be more tolerant of other cultures and wake up to the fact that there are those who consider Enlightenment as an anathema which is sometimes offensive to their religious convictions. Given that France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, the stupidity of publishing these cartoons can no more be defended than the shootings themselves.

France is my favourite foreign country yet it's attitude to race is akin to where the UK was around the early 1980's. They seem to favour freedom of expression as long as it is mirrors Western and Enlightenment values so that Burkhas are banned even though they have no bearing on the lives of the secular population. Further more, as was reiterated in the BBC article about the French author Houllebecq where mention was made of the fact that French Muslims have been abandoned by the political system as they are hated by the Right (far more right wing than in the UK) and the Left who despise their perception of Islam's lack of tolerance. Basically, Muslims in France are not represented by the political system - only adding to issues regarding income, unemployment , prison population, etc, etc.

France is a paradox. It wears it's passion for liberty like a badge whilst interfering with the elections in countries like Algeria where they effectively help depose of a democratically elected Islamic government in the 1990's.

That's right, Ian, blame the victim. Those cartoonists obviously deserved their fate, and being slaughtered is clearly an appropriate response for someone poking fun at religious beliefs. And that fact that the satire wasn't , in your exalted opinion, even a funny send up of Islam makes the whole thing doubly justifiable.

[ardcarp]

If I mention the comedy show Mark Steel's In Town on Radio 4 you may think I'm going off topic. But today...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pjfbj

...he was in Derry/Londonderry making amusing but quite outrageous comment about Catholics, Protestants, the IRA, the Orange Order (even mocking their accents) in front of a MIXED audience, and they were all laughing their socks off. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. My point is that a mature society needs to be able to laugh at and with its differences.

[Pabmusic]

...And it's worth adding, Pabs, that in parts of the Muslim world, leaving your religion is not straightforward - apostasy carries a death sentence...

Too true, Richard. I was meaning, though, that 'race' is inbuilt, whereas 'religion' is cultural.

Race is a truly difficult minefield, since there's not even much justification for biological races (ie: sub-species) among humans, and therefore much that we tend to think of as 'racial' is actually cultural. A sub-species (old term: race) comprises all individuals who share common traits that separate them from the other species members, whilst never amounting to an independent species themselves (in other words, they can still mate successfully with all members of the species). For instance, the grey wolf and all domestic dogs are members of exactly the same species: Canis lupus, because they can and do interbreed successfully. They are divided into two sub-species: C. lupus vulgaris (wolf) and C. lupus familiaris (Fido).

There's nothing quite so clear among humans. Differences in DNA are small (half a percent or so among all humans) and there is often more variety to be found within a 'race' than there is between 'races'.

All this implies that physical appearance, exclusive social groupings and xenophobia (by which I mean fear of 'outside' groups, and is a corollary of exclusivity) play a great role. To the extent that a religion might help to define a group, it can hardly be unconnected. My objection is to the tendency to treat Islam as a race per se, so that criticism of the dogma becomes intermingled with criticism of those who practise it.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

meanwhile in Nigeria the psychopaths are doing severe and substantial harm

[Pabmusic]

meanwhile in Nigeria the psychopaths are doing severe and substantial harm

I came across this article from the (usually accommodationalist) New Yorker after I wrote no. 33 above:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/blame-for-charlie-hebdo-murders

I think this sentence is apt: "That regularly kills so many Nigerians, especially young ones, that hardly anyone pays attention".

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

thanks for the reference an interesting piece Pabmusic

i find myself surprised that i agree with the comments made by ex President Sarkozy when he said on Thursday that it is not political, not about the Republic, not about democracy ... it is a war on civilisation itself

[Beef Oven!]

i find myself surprised that i agree with the comments made by ex President Sarkozy when he said on Thursday that it is not political, not about the Republic, not about democracy ... it is a war on civilisation itself