Let me begin by insisting that there is never an acceptable rationale to murder. I say this as a Buddhist priest and as a simple human assertion. No insult however grievous justifies murder. Not Salman Rushdie’s writings, which prompted the fatwa by the Ayatollah Khomeini which took the life of Hitoshi Igarashi, his Japanese translator who was stabbed to death, the attempted assassination of Rushdie’s Norwegian publisher William Nygaard who was shot three times, but survived. The B. Dalton bookstore chain received 30 threats in less than three hours, two stores in Berkeley, California were bombed, one in New York, and the Riverdale Press, a community newspaper was destroyed by firebombs. Nothing justifies this reaction of thugs and tyrants. Nothing. But let’s dig a bit deeper.
There are communities which prize values other than rationality--on which the premise of Free Speech is based. Christians and Jews, for instance, whose religions are based on faith in miracles and miraculous stories. Before we treat the Muslims as a special sub-species of human beast, let’s imagine what might happen if cartoonists in Georgia, Mississippi or Alabama were to display Jesus as a transsexual, or an author tried to rationalize Jesus’s miraculous birth by asserting that his mother had had a secret and very human affair. I’m not asserting that the response would be as violent, but we can be sure that it would not be ho-hum placid.
While we certainly have the freedom to be offensive to others in honoring our nearly-sacred belief in free-speech, we might stop to ask ourselves if our insistence on it as a universal principle is either wise, or kind. Would we ridicule Catholics because their pontiff wears a dress? Ridicule Hassidic Jews because of their strange unfashionable curls? (Mel Gibson aside) Ridicule the blind or otherwise challenged? Can you imagine what might happen if someone were to open the Virgin Mary Bar and Grille in Dublin or Hitler’s Fat-Back Pork Ribs in predominantly Jewish Williamsburg?
The editors at Charlie Hebdo were completely within their rights as Western European, rational intellectuals to do what they did, just as I am within my rights to poke a stick in a hornet’s nest, however neither is an effective antidote to a perceived problem. Last night on the news, a very rational Muslim cleric said that he had hoped that Charlie Hebdo might publish their new edition with a blank front page, as a gesture of conciliation to the world’s billion and a half Muslim who “regard the Prophet, peace be upon him, as more precious than their own parents.” I thought he made a good call—everyone giving a little to ensure the feelings of others. The cleric was a sophisticated man and not upset by Charlie Hebdo but he understood the reaction that it would cause among many of the Muslim faithful. The brave souls at Charlie Hebdo wanted to demonstrate that they would never be cowed by threat, and bless them for that courage. They wanted to demonstrate their fealty to the principles of free speech and it’s an important value worth defending. What seems to be missing on all sides, is the realization that value systems are not always culturally translatable; that the abstract values of free-speech-at-all-costs makes no sense to a culture which has promoted fidelity, humility and service as its highest values. In such cases isn’t it incumbent on all sides to “just get along?” To allow some slack so that other value-systems can exist without insult or sufferring?
None of these arguments mean anything to the assassins who perpetrated the Charlie Hebdo murders or the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. It is the billion and a half other Muslims on earth who concern me here; those not prompted to violence, but still open to the wounds of insult and slight who might well conclude that Western culture, despite all its benefits, in its refusal to admit their religion to the full dignity and respect afforded others, is not an ally, but an enemy.
There is something more. A writer friend discussing this with me on a long multi-day drive, pointed out that during our youth, anti-Imperialism was a dedicated part of the Leftist agenda. As that has crumbled it has been taken up by the Right, and particularly by the Muslim world. Anti-Imperialism means, primarily, anti-Americanism, because it is our over-large footprint resting on the necks of much of the world; our troops, our oil extraction,our drones, our protection of our empire which is denying security, dignity and prosperity to large portions of the world. For these young people in particular, anti-Imperialism is a large and glamorous cause uniting (and inciting) much of Arab youth, as it incited me in my own youth. Without knowing the larger picture or caring overmuch about their allies, many of these young men and women are eager to participate in overthrowing what they see as an anti-Muslim oppressor and restoring Arab culture to its long-lost global eminence. We trifle with such passions at our peril, and even enlightened reporters like Jeremy Scahill miss the apparent point, by insisting that it is the policies of the New World Order and not its very existence which is the problem. My friend observed:
“Scahill doesn't seem to understand that anti-Americanism is not a pathology. It's normal. Most people in the world are anti-American these days. This is not 1955. We no longer look like the future everybody wants.”
In a world in which the vast majority is denied the dignity of security, shelter, adequate food, medical treatment, dignity and hope, “the American Century” appears as Golgotha. For us to miss this point, is a far more critical error than a rude cartoon. But a rude cartoon might well be regarded as a fuse attached to this particular piece of dynamite.