Today we express solidarity and sympathy with the remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo and the families and friends of their 12 colleagues brutally murdered yesterday. It was an appalling attack on the freedom of speech, including the right to criticise, to satirise and to lampoon which we believe are essential features of democracy.
Furthermore, in defending the right to criticise, to satirise and to lampoon, we recognise that the exercise of this right will sometimes offend. Some of those who are condemning yesterday’s murders as an act of terrorism, including the White House, previously criticised Charlie Hebdo in doing just that by publishing images some of which were indeed obscene (such as this which we recommend you do not look at if you are likely to be offended) after it had been firebombed for similar actions the previous year. In a democracy, the right of free speech is accompanied by a requirement of tolerance. You don’t have to read or listen to views you disagree with or find offensive. That applies to views both promoting and criticising aspects of religious or political belief.
Nevertheless, many Muslims in France and elsewhere have been offended by what Charlie Hebdo. That is why we are encouraged today by the involvement of French Muslims in some of the “Nous sommes Charlie” solidarity vigils which have taken place across France, and by the condemnations of the violence such as that by the French Muslim Council and that by Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grande Mosque in Paris,who said:
This attack is against all our values. We are absolutely horrified and stupified by this crime. We are entering an extremely dangerous situation in Paris when violence is becoming a part of daily life.”
Charlie Hebdo may have been offensive at times, but it practices what it cals “equal opportunity offence”. It is not, I think, in any way ” a racist publication” as Richard Seymour believes. As the past covers below illustrate, it is willing to lampoon Catholicism, Judaism as well as Islam.
But that does not mean we are not concerned about the backlash against this dreadful attack and how it will be used to inflame the Islamophobia that permeates France like so much of Europe. Marine Le Pen said yesterday that”this attack must liberate our speech in the face of Islamic fundamentalism“. It goes without saying that the freedom of speech we defend does not include the freedom to inflame racial hatred. And yet even on the Left in France, the secularism in which we find much to applaud (if only we didn’t suffer from the obstacle to multiculturalism that faith schools impose, for example) is also too often the justification for measures and actions which fan the flames of racism and islamophobia.
On new years eve, François Hollande urged France to stand firm against “terrorism, communitarianism and fundamentalism“. But this anti-communitarianism is a requirement for individuals to “integrate” in a society which is blinded by its extreme secularism to severe economic ineqalities based on race, and to racial segregation of housing. Measures to ban religious symbols justified in the same of secularism are in reality an attack on the hijab and on French Muslims who constitute 6% of the population, the largest proportion in western Europe.
If the French left wants to wage a campaign in defence of liberty in France, it could do with re-examining the case for multi-culturalism.