I am against all forms of censorship. While I think you have a right to say what you think, I will not support anything you say or write. I also reserve the right to disagree with you, vehemently if necessary. It is one thing to support the right of Charlie Hebdo journalists to print the cartoons they did, and quite another to reprint them as an expression of support. ... Western societies have worked out internal compromises over time in an endeavour to build durable political societies. The scope and nature of these compromises are politically defined. ... The state stepped in to moderate the conflict between ardent Christians and secular Christians. Jews were included in this compact after the Holocaust. Muslims have never been part of this compact. ... Of course, it is possible to include Muslims in the social and political compact in France. But that will take a major political, intellectual and cultural struggle. Centers of power – and people – in France will have to accept that it is possible to be French and Muslim, that it is OK for a pious Muslim woman to wear a ‘hijab’, as it is for a Catholic nun – so long as this act of piety does not banish either from participation in the public sphere. In other words, we are talking of a political struggle for meaningful citizenship. ... That people “need to learn to laugh at themselves” is often a point made by publishers of provocative cartoons. You could place those same words in the mouth of the publishers of the Danish Cartoons or Charlie Hebdo, and it would reflect their views accurately, that the problem with Muslims is that they lack a sense of humor, and that the solution is for Muslims to learn to laugh at themselves. But laughing at oneself is not quite the same as being laughed at, especially as a group. ... The French like to think of themselves as the custodians of the tradition of liberty, equality and fraternity. That is true but it is not the whole truth. The French also need to think of the dark side of their tradition: the colonial tradition, both in Indo-China and Africa. The French need to recognise that the Algerians, the North Africans and the West Africans from the former colonies are in France as immigrants, because the French were in their countries in the first place. These immigrants have run away from the consequences of colonialism. If the solution – France - has turned sour, where do these immigrants run to now? To an imaginary Islamic state? If a second or third generation North African is still considered an immigrant in France, should that not provide us a clue as to the nature of the problem? Where lies the problem, the promise of the Islamist state, or the reality of immigrant lives in contemporary France, or both? ... So long as a knee-jerk response is the order of the day, I am afraid we will concede both intellectual and political leadership to the right. If this trend continues, Islamophobia is likely to grow from an intellectual tendency to a hate movement in France and other sections of Europe.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 09:51:41 +0000
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