Killing anyone who expresses an opinion is impermissible either by divine shari’a or by human law, and should be denounced in the strongest terms. But this is no license to insult religious believers or attack the dignity of divine messengers and prophets, whether Christian, Muslim, or Jewish in a provocative and impertinent manner
by Abdel Bari Atwan – Al Rai al Youm
January 9, 2015 – “After the 9/11 attacks, the well-established weekly The Economist concluded its main editorial by saying something along the following lines: We attack them, we bombard them, we travel thousands of kilometers to fight them; so we have to expect some of them to come to us and try to respond and seek revenge”.
I recalled this editorial as I anxiously followed the news of the attack by three young men believed to members of an Islamist jihadi current on the French weekly Charlie Hebdo in the heart of the capital Paris. The men fired their Kalashnikov rifles and RPG rocket launcher and killed 12 people, including the weekly’s editor-in-chief, four caricaturists, and two policemen.
To begin with, we need to stress that killing anyone who expresses an opinion is impermissible either by divine shari’a or by human law, and should be denounced in the strongest terms. But this is no license to insult religious believers or attack the dignity of divine messengers and prophets, whether Christian, Muslim, or Jewish in a provocative and impertinent manner.
In this regard, we do not agree with the Anglo-Indian writer Salman Rushdie who, in expressing his solidarity with the weekly, said that ‘religion must be subject to satire’ and asked everyone to stand with satire ‘which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny.’ This is because we believe that all religions must be respected and be treated in the manner they deserve.
Charlie Hebdo violated all red and ultra-red lines in its attacks on Islam via its fierce campaigns against the Prophet Mohammad. These were not confined to republishing the insulting Norwegian caricature in 2006 that angered one-and-a-half-billion Muslims, leading to rowdy protests in which over 200 people were killed. They peaked in 2011 when the weekly published other drawings that were even more insulting and provocative, including one portraying the Prophet naked.
Once again we insist that, by recalling these documented facts, we are not justifying the bloody attack against this magazine or support those who carried it out. We will always stand in the trench of freedom of honest and noble opinion that steers clear of insulting religions insistently and defiantly, as if such insults were acts of heroism. We are advocates of religious brotherhood among religions and believers based on mutual friendship and respect.
The magazine’s publisher and editor-in-chief did not assess the threats they were facing and the warnings that reached them correctly. They went too far in their provocative editorial line in the belief that the French police’s protection would be sufficient to prevent any attack on them. How mistaken they were! What happened confirms that these hard-liners can reach any target they want. Therein lies their real threat to all those who disagree with them or insult their creed, whether Muslim or not.
Those who saw the amateur videotape of the attackers would emerge with the impression that they were very calm, assured, and professional. This suggests that they have received intensive training and fought on real battlefronts.
Up to the moment that this article was written, no one had declared responsibility for the attack. The views of ‘experts’ conflict in this regard. Some say that al-Qa’ida was behind the attack as a way of asserting its presence and stealing the limelight from the Islamic State (IS/ISIS). Others believe that it is not unlikely that the perpetrators are among the thousand French jihadis who have been to Iraq and Syria to fight in IS ranks, then returned to seek revenge against their governments that have joined the war against IS as part of the U.S.-led coalition.
Whether ‘an organization’ is behind this attack or it was an isolated incident carried out by a ‘cell’ that has nothing to do with other organizations – such as the attack carried out by the French Algerian youth Mohammad Marah against a Jewish school in Toulouse in the South of France in 2012 – like other European states, France is under threat and targeted because of its participation in a ferocious war against the jihadis in Mali, and because it has deployed warplanes to Jordan to take part in the strikes that aim to weaken and eliminate IS.
Yes, this bloody offensive operation is likely to strengthen the extreme European right, which is on the rise these days, and that is especially hostile to Muslim emigrants. It is likely to have a negative effect on over ten million Muslims who live in Europe and bear European passports. But the European governments must realize that the overwhelming majority of these Muslims are moderates who are opposed to violence and terrorism in any forms. They must not be punished for the crimes of a tiny minority of extremists. Protecting them as citizens should head these governments’ list of priorities.
On the other hand, the European governments, including France, should cease their military intervention in the Middle East. They must realize that such intervention is, in fact, serving this terrorism, strengthening it and making it easier for its organizations to recruit thousands of frustrated Muslim youths. Moreover, this intervention will not succeed in achieving its aims; it has only given birth to other and more dangerous crises instead.
It may be useful to remind readers of NATO and its warplanes’ intervention in Libya and the resulting situation in that country; and of what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan before that, and more recently in Syria and Yemen. Over one million human beings have fallen victim to these interventions.
The West’s policies in Arab and Islamic countries have created failed states and sectarian and ethnic wars. They have created an environment that embraces the hard-line jihadi Islamist groups. These policies have begun to rebound on the Western states in the form of bloody attacks, and waves of youthful illegal immigrants who are taking to the sea in their thousands. Ten thousand leave Libya alone every month– the country that [former] French president Sarkozy had promised to transform into an oasis of democracy, stability, prosperity, and human rights.
We hope that the bloody assault on the French magazine proves to be an individual attack, and not a prelude to other attacks against innocent people. We also hope that the Western states, their governments, and their media will adopt policies based on justice, equality, and coexistence, and that they will end all incitement against Islam and all military intervention.
We hope that these governments will back just causes, foremost among which is the Palestinian cause. They have all taken part in creating and deepening the suffering of its people for almost seventy years. For this is ‘the mother of all causes'; and an incubator that hatches extremism in the region whether directly or indirectly, even if its importance has waned in some people’s eyes.
“But that is another subject” – Nena News