We refrained from commenting on the controversy surrounding the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for several reasons. First, before the firebombing it was quite clear that the piece and the accompanying front cover cartoon of Prophet Muhammad saying “100 lashes if you don’t die laughing” while distasteful and stupid to many, was protected and legitimate under free speech.
The cartoon itself however did have elements of Islamophobia, just take a look at it:
You have the cartoonish hook-nosed-goofy-smirking-Ayrab-Mooslim with some weird looking turban on his head.
Charlie Hebdo knew what it was doing, they wished to provoke, they created a buzz and got world-wide media attention for their magazine which had little following outside of France.
A proper response by those offended or upset would have been to peacefully protest, or to satirize the Charlie Hebdo publication, or to do as most have done and simply ignore it.
Alas, some idiot firebombed the Charlie Hebdo offices. Who did it, we don’t know yet, but in the media the presumption is it’s a Muslim. According to reports,
A police official cited a witness saying that someone was seen throwing two firebombs at the building.
Muslims under the spotlight again because of some lone-wolf’s actions have universally condemned the firebombing.
No one has claimed responsibility but let’s assume this “someone” is a pissed off French Muslim for now, that would make it 1 guy out of 5 million French Muslims responding to the magazine with violence. Not really the expected conflagration of riots, embassy burnings, deadly protests, etc. that the Islamophobesphere hoped for.
Let’s be real, the Islamophobes want another Danish Cartoon controversy so they can gloat and further their ideology of excluding Muslims from Western society. That’s what they wished for after Geert Wilders released the movie Fitna, and they failed. It’s what they wished for during the tempest-in-a-teapot South Park controversy, and they failed.
It is also important to once again note the double standards involved. It isn’t as if Islam or Muslims have a monopoly over violence against perceived offenses to sacred subjects. The website What If They Were Muslim makes that much clear! It wasn’t hard to find this story, from France itself about Christians destroying a piece of artwork they found offensive:
April 20, 2011
ANDRES Serrano’s Piss Christ has been destroyed by Christians who broke into a French gallery and slashed the photograph after weeks of protests.
The New York photographer’s controversial work shows a small crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine.
It outraged the US religious right in 1987, when it was first shown. It was vandalised in Melbourne in 1997, and neo-Nazis ransacked a Swedish show by the artist in 2007.
Why wasn’t the above, as serious a story as the firebombing of Charlie Hebdo, treated the same way in the media? Why do we not hear about the incompatibility of Christianity and modernity? Why do we not hear cries for limiting the practice of Christianity in the West? Why do we not hear pundits and intellectuals pontificating about the unique inability of Christianity to take satire and ridicule? Because Christianity is not the “other.”
Lastly, the untold context in which this French saga must be viewed is the souring relations between the French establishment and their Muslim minority. Islam has been “otherized” in France and across Europe, just as it has in the States, but in France it is taken to the next level.
In the past few years, anti-Muslim bigotry has risen to epidemic proportions. The hijab was banned from public schools, the face veil has been banned altogether, and after a surge in popular support for Marine Le Pen’s anti-Muslim nationalist party, Sarkozy and co. instituted an unprecedented “national dialgoue” on Islam.
According to a recent report Islamophobia is rapidly on the increase in France as it is elsewhere in Europe, and just today we have news of another arson attack on a French Mosque by an anti-Muslim group called Lucky Escapes:
Paris – A mosque in eastern France was damaged after unknown attackers set fire to the building using a burning rubbish bin early Thursday, France 3 television reported.
The head of the mosque in Montbeliard, located about 170 kilometres south of Strasbourg, near the German border, discovered the fire when he arrived to open the building for morning prayers, the report said.
One wall was badly damaged. The attack on the mosque is the second in a month, according to France 3.
A group calling itself Les Echappees Belles (The Lucky Escapes) claimed responsibility for the incident in tracts left near the mosque. The group – believed to be a group of women loosely influenced by right-wing extremists, according to France 3 – had claimed responsibility for setting fire to the mosque’s van in October.
All this of course in no way justifies the bombing of Charlie Hebdo. However, it provides much needed perspective on the politics of provocation as well as to the deep double standards not only inherent in the biased Islamophobesphere but also in the uncritical media.
November 10th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Free speech should always be protected, but PEACEFUL protest is important too-by bombing the magazine, they are perpetuating the violent Muslim stereotype
November 10th, 2011 at 4:48 pm
“A proper response by those offended or upset would have been to peacefully protest, or to satirize the Charlie Hebdo publication, or to do as most have done and simply ignore it.”
This point was crucial to make. The Charlie Hebdo mag. has every right to do what it does. And as citizens we have every right to ignore, peacefully protest, or even satirize the Charlie Hebdo publication itself. But then all that satirizing can be overwhelming.
November 10th, 2011 at 4:58 pm
Im not surprised the bombing happend. Muslims are
STRONGLY protective of their beloved prophet and I
Trully believe no matter when or where you will always
Have Muslims defending there religion this way.
November 10th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Free speech can be very good, but when people start to abuse it as in this case, many questions can be raised pertaining to its limits.
The building should not have been bombed, but at the same time the provocative and cruel issue should not have been published.
It is truly essential that Muslims realize that they have to come together to fight this rising Islamophobia. Too often the Muslim community seems divided or they just accept this bigotry.
Things like Islamophobia are never beaten down if they are not stood up to and resisted. Sometimes people tend to think that bullies and hate onagers go away, even if nothing is done to stop the bully.
Well, the fact is bullies do not just go away in this manner.
When the Nazis were stood up to, they were defeated. So was Gaddafi and Mubarak.
So thus, Muslims and others who oppose Islamophobia must take a firm stand against it.
November 10th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
@Ibn Hussein,
I find your comment not only repulsive but paradoxical, by supporting the unbelievably stupid and wrong bombings by “SOMEONE” (we still don’t know if it’s a Muslim) you are essentially not only giving ammunition to the hatemongers but damaging the Prophet you love more than “defending” him. I seriously think Muhammad would have shown such thinking no regard, as he responded to numerous insults with goodness and peace, as the Quran commands. You may recall the woman who used to throw garbage in his path every morning?
Lets get some perspective and move away from such reactionary and dislocated thinking.
November 10th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
@Ibn Hussein
Except that in being violent in defending the Prophet, peace be with him, Muslims are NOT acting according to Sunnah. The Prophet never lashed out at his detractors and his enemies. He never lashed out in anger at ANYONE. He ignored the taunts and slurs and walked away when his Companions tried to defend him.
Muslims who act differently aren’t acting in accordance with Islam.
November 10th, 2011 at 5:30 pm
As a Muslim, I openly laughed at the satire of South Park, and jeered the threats from the select few that people assumed represented the whole of a religion. Whoever firebombed those offices need to be caught and dealt with, just like the Christian Americans who were plotting to kill government officials and release Ricin on Georgia parkways. I don’t blame Christianity for the acts of a minority, please stop doing it to Islam.
November 10th, 2011 at 5:35 pm
Me thinks Ibn Hussein is a troll or a sock (puppet) someone used for a wank…
On a different note- GREAT assessment Garibaldi! If it was a little longer, it could potentially get on lobelog.com or at tomdispatch.com!!! Anyways I foresee more in the future for Loonwatch and her writers, Peace
-Al
November 10th, 2011 at 5:57 pm
Charlie Hedbo himself told the Guardian:
“Let’s be cautious. There’s every reason to believe it’s the work of fundamentalists, but it could just as well be the work of two drunks.”
The loons are not so cautious. All the usual suspects already have screaming headlines on their hate sites, making the usual knee-jerk accusations against Muslims.
November 10th, 2011 at 6:23 pm
Let me preface by saying that I had never even HEARD of Charlie Hedbo magazine or the controversy surrounding it, but I’m not entirely sure this sort of attack can be leveled at our feet in the first place. It wasn’t that long ago that we had Italian anarchist bombing things, and unless we have some Muslim (or self-proclaimed Muslim) claim credit for this, it strikes me as a BIT rash to jump to conclusions here.
What I WILL say is that Garibaldi is quite perceptive in picking out that many Islamophobes THRIVE on provoking controversy. I’ve long held that that dumb twat Theo van Gough was TRYING to provoke some Muslim crazy to attack him. And, to be fair, it worked. Of course, I doubt he intended (or expected) that he would die in the process, but it certainly helped raise him (and his cause) into public consciousness. Too bad for him that he can’t enjoy that new-found fame (and the money that would have come with it). And I believe that other opportunistic leeches from Pym Fortyun to Terry Jones have been quick to try and jump on the band wagon. These days, having a fatwa on your head (real or claimed) equals big bucks.
This wasn’t the case years ago, with all due exception to Salman Rushdie, spouting anti-Muslim propaganda prior to 9-11 marked you as a kook. It wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t edgy, and it certainly didn’t engender much support outside of certain Evangelical circles (who are, by definition, neither ‘sexy’ nor ‘edgy’). People often get worked up about the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) being depicted on South Park. What they FORGET is that an actual, animated depiction of Muhammad appeared in a 2001 episode of South Park in a religious-themed Super Friends parody, with fire powers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Best_Friends
And guess what? NOBODY cared, not even Muslims who were watching the show. In fact, people seem to forget that Scientologists have done more to try and censor South Park than we Muslims ever did! But, because it’s socially acceptable, even ‘cool,’ to bash Islam, Muslims and pretty much any immigrant from the Middle East or South Asia. Cuz, you know, nothing says standing up for women’s rights than kicking out refugees and denying Muslim women the right to practice their religion, culture and heritage. And if I sound bitter about this it’s because I AM; I’m sick of seeing my fellow Muslims treated like second class citizens simply because we choose to adhere to our religion.
Not to drift off topic, but yes, I DO support freedom of speech. The thing this, it’s pretty selectively applied, especially in Europe but even here in the United States. Perhaps you should read about the United States vs. Extreme Associates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Extreme_Associates). Now whatever you may think of pornographic materials, the US government really set these people up. If it had been anything else, the prosecutors would have been charged with entrapment. They chose to have the product shipped to Pennsylvania specifically because it was viewed as ‘socially conservative,’ and the prosecutor had sympathies with the Christian right. That’s part of the reason they chose to prosecute them for depicting Jesus in a pornographic film…
If a Muslim group were suing for depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in a pornographic movie (and God forbid that should ever actually happen) we would never hear the end of it. Muslims would be blamed for trying to stifle freedom of speech and artistic expression. But when Christianity is depicted in a pornographic movie, in an ostensibly secular country to boot, it suddenly becomes an issue of indecency. That strikes me as an egregious double standard, and it would be hard to prove otherwise.
November 10th, 2011 at 7:08 pm
@ Ibn Hussein :You do need violence from Muslims to protect Mohammad because Allah seems to be a fairy tale or Impotent.
November 10th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
All “free speech” has its limits, there is such a thing in US law as incitement, defamation, the “fighting words” doctrine (look that up in law). Also the ultimate hypocrisy is that many of these European nations that openly allow hatred of and incitement against Muslims, are the same European nations that look up revisionist historians sometimes for raising very small questions (such as was it 5 million deaths instead of 6 million deaths in WWII, etc). Talk about “free speech” hypocrisy in Europe!
November 10th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
I obviously meant lock up, not look up (correction of typo from my above post)
November 10th, 2011 at 10:08 pm
There is no proof that it was a muslim who did the firebomb. It could have been anyone. Whoever did it needs to take a chill pill.
November 10th, 2011 at 10:12 pm
Joe Paterno exit sparks Penn State fans riot
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15682779
Penn State students have gone on the rampage after Joe Paterno, one of the most famous coaches in American sport, was sacked amid a child abuse scandal.
Mr Paterno, 84, has been accused of failing to act over allegations of molestation by a long-serving assistant, Jerry Sandusky.
University President Graham Spanier was also dismissed with immediate effect.
Scores of police and state troopers, some in riot gear, tried to clear the streets, and some officers used pepper spray to disperse demonstrators.
Witnesses say rocks and bottles were thrown, a lamp-post was knocked over and a news van overturned.
About 100 students gathered at Mr Paterno’s house in a show of support
November 11th, 2011 at 9:57 am
rule 14 of the internet: never argue with a troll, that means they win. A suggestion to deal with Cartoon.
November 11th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
“Alas, some idiot firebombed the Charlie Hebdo offices. Who did it, we don’t know yet, but in the media the presumption is it’s a Muslim.”
It’s at least as likely to have been a false flag attack. The media can be safely predicted to “presume” it was a muslim, and anyone seeking to promote that notion would be just as likely a suspect. Happens all the time ~ community college teachers painting swastikas on their own cars (one in California was prosecuted for that), British intelligence agents dressing up like Arabs and planting car bombs in Iraq (except one such team got caught), and so on.
November 12th, 2011 at 4:32 am
Pfft… I don’t believe the bombing. It’s mostly something done for insurance scam reasons and publicity by the editor in charge of the news paper.
November 14th, 2011 at 12:19 am
this looks like a good “what if they were muslim” http://news.yahoo.com/suspect-arrested-german-terror-probe-180125575.html
November 14th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
It was wrong to bomb the building, but I think the author made good points about the double-standards about Muslims in French society. It’s easy to condemn a “lone-wolf” terrorist and say that they should have played by the rules, but it’s more difficult when one actually lives in such a society where he/she is looked upon with derision and scorn simply for being different. There is a great clip of a French television host I show to people, when the issue of French Muslims comes up. In it the host tells a French Muslim that it is the epitome of liberty and freedom to ridicule Islam and Muhammad, and that French non-Muslims should not try to be sensitive to Muslims’ beliefs, but instead Muslims should get used to being ridiculed by their neighbors because that is freedom means.
Then another clip of the same host is played, where he condemns a French Arab actor for playing a Jewish character who says, “Isra-Heil” in one of his movies. He asks the actor to apologize for making fun of Jews, and that it is in bad taste, etc. The French Arab actor says that it is part of his job to play roles in movies, and that in France there is freedom of speech. The host angrily denounces that and says that freedom of speech has its limits, and that you shouldn’t say certain things even if you “can.” The clip returns to the interview with the French Muslim, and the host is back to saying that it is the pinnacle of democracy and freedom to bash Islam, and that people should not hold back. Total and complete hypocrisy….
These are the rules of the “conversation” about Islam in French society and most of Western society. The rules are that non-Muslims get to offend, brutalize and harm Muslims, and Muslims are not allowed to complain about it, otherwise they will be condemned for trying to “bring Sharia law” into said country.
Skip to the 4-minute mark to get to the part with the television host.
November 15th, 2011 at 7:07 am
Isa writes: It’s easy to condemn a “lone-wolf” terrorist and say that they should have played by the rules, but it’s more difficult when one actually lives in such a society where he/she is looked upon with derision and scorn simply for being different.
It’s true that people can be driven insane by the society around them. But “criminally insane” is not a defense against charges involving or leading to bloodshed. When justice demands that such people be spared from execution, and imprisoned instead, vengeance should not be a factor in determining the character of that imprisonment.
A jury tried the case of Mohammed Moussaoui, the alleged “20th hijacker” who was actually ~ according to his own testimony and the testimony of his commander (in CIA custody) ~ scheduled for a “follow-on” attack that never was carried out. The jury determined that he should not be executed, and he is now in federal prison for the rest of his life. It is not likely that he will recover from a life that drove him insane, as the jury was shown beyond a reasonable doubt, but the jury concluded that justice required that he have an opportunity to recover ~ in captivity, where he could do no harm should he relapse into his madness.
But it is a mistake to think that the muslims of France, or anywhere else, are “looked upon with derision and scorn simply for being different.” Muslims are no more “different” than Protestants are from Catholics, or Americans are from Europeans.
For one thing, muslims work at the menial low-paying jobs that others would not, were it not for the fact that those are the only jobs left after corporations move their operations to place like Taiwan or India. People in Europe and America are looking for work far below their earning capacities, and muslims (and others) have already taken those job. This is just one “secular” factor contributing to discord between “different” peoples, there are others.
But there is a more determinant factor, and that is that Islam threatens the illegitimate “privilege” of the real rulers of Western societies, those who control the wealth of their countries. The so-called “ruling classes” have been virtually stealing the fruits of others’ labor since before the time of the pharoahs, by the ways in which societies have been organized economically. This has been the case with both “capitalist” and “socialist” societies, throughout history.
When the Children of Israel were constituted as a nation and given an economic order that fostered the material ambitions of all of the people, they were attacked with an aim of complete annihilation to remove from the world any vestige of universal liberty as the Children of Israel enjoyed. When this failed, corruption set in from within ~ and during the time of Solomon, it took over. Jewish tribal capitalism that prevented the development of destitute poverty (which unbridled capitalim automatically does) was turned into predatory capitalism as the wealty neglected the problem of poverty inevitably produced by a rising economy.
The same happened when Jesus came, revoking the “privilege” that the Temple authorities had given themselves, to exploit and despoil the people of the fruits of their labors. With the help of the Temple authorities, Rome managed to annihilate the faithful of Jesus and substitute a plutocratic tyranny for the macroeconomic administration of the capital economy that lifted the fortunes of all of the people.
Then when Islam was established 1400 years ago, with a “capitalist” economic order that rectified that “capitalist” dynamic that pushed all wealth to the top of the economic pyramid, leaving “the poor” behind, it was quickly corrupted to retain wealth in Arab hands against the non-Arab populations that embraced Islam to share in producing and acquiring the material benefits of a realistically libertarian economy. Plutocratic tyranny ensued, and persists to this day in the terminally-collapsed millennial muslim world.
And now, muslims escaping the economic tyranny, seeking their fortunes in the nations of their former colonial masters, are combing through the discards and rubble of collapsing economies to build an egalitarian society with properly administered capital economies, while the oligarchic plutocracy is helpless to re-institute the old predatory economic order except with a new economic colonialism that moves the material resources of third-world countries to their bank accounts by reducing the costs of labor and selling “imported” consumer goods in rapidly-diminishing markets. It’s time for them to “take the money and run” unless they can eliminate the muslim threat to their economic “privilege.”
This is the “divide and conquer” agenda behind the increase in demonization of the muslims. Muslims in Europe are being “looked upon with derision and scorn simply for being” ~ not for being “different,” but for being materially libertarian with the social architecture to replace predatory capitalism with cooperative free enterprise that benefits everyone.
The French, the British, the Germans, the Dutch, and so on, cannot afford to have you learn what made the Arab muslim empire the economic powerhouse of its day, and the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt ~ administered by Jewish and Christian businessmen ~ the economic powerhouse of its day, and Muslim Spain the economic, cultural, educational and scientific powerhouse of its day.
Islam is the religion of the “devil” that’s replacing economic tyranny ~ and every other form of coercive dominion of the rulers of the nations who sit behind the thrones ~ with real liberty.
November 16th, 2011 at 4:12 am
Isa:
I will tell you what I tell my fellow Black Americans, living down to expectations means the other fellow wins.
November 16th, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Loonwatch is so dumb. Muslims becoming violent over cartoons not the act of a lone wolf.
We watched Muslims engage in a saturnalia of violence for A MONTH after Qawadari told Muslims they should rage. To this day, we have Muslims trying to kill Kurt Westergaard, and Lars Vilks.
Muslims are not like Jews, or Christians. They are different, and they tell us this all the time. This Loonwatch piece is another example of that sad fact.
Muslims (including Loonwatch) will not defend free speech, something that is absolutely essential to a democracy. But, Muslims don’t care.
You had better get your heads together on this because it is destroying you in the public eye.
November 16th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
@baloney
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/09/world/religious-war-ignites-anew-in-france.html r