The murder of French school teacher Samuel Paty by an 18 year old Muslim boy of Russian origin has opened the Pandora’s Box all over. Few days’ later three people were killed in Nice, in France again. There were protests against France in few Muslim majority countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and there was boycott of French goods in many of them.

On one side, the French President identified with the slain teacher and pledged to fight political Islam, on the other Turkey’ President Erdogan made derogatory comment on French President who withdrew its Ambassador from Turkey.  

This all is sequel to the highly condemnable murder of Paty, who in his class was teaching about freedom of expression and was using the Charlie Hebdo cartoons as an example. Just to recall the cases related to murder of cartoonists in Charlie Hebdo (2015) are beginning in the Courts. In this context the cartoons derogatory to Prophet Mohammad were republished by the paper. The cartoons connect terrorism with Islam and the Prophet. This in a way was in the backdrop of 9/11 after which the term ‘Islamic Terrorism’ was coined and popularised by US media. As Charlie Hebdo published those cartoons their office was attacked in which nearly 12 cartoonists were killed. The responsibility of this attack was taken by Al Qaeda. One recalls that Al Qaeda itself was promoted in the beginning in few Madrassas based in Pakistan, where Salafi version of Islam was used to indoctrinate Muslim youth and the syllabus of indoctrination was allegedly prepared in Washington. The US had allegedly pumped 8000 million dollars to indoctrinate the future Al Qaeda recruits. The US also supplied 7000 tons of armaments to this outfit.  

During last few decades as the global scene has been dominated by rise of terrorism particularly in West Asia. It is the outcome of the politics to control oil resources in this region. The extremist’s trends within Muslims have seen a new peaking. With this many countries have introduced Blasphemy laws, and some Muslim countries have made blasphemy punishable by death. These include Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.

In our neighbouring Pakistan the death penalty for blasphemy was introduced after Zia regime intensified the Islamisation of Pakistan. At the same time the popular opinion in many of these countries has been shifting to the extremist versions of Islam. We saw as to how in case of Asia Bibi, she was framed for blasphemy and Punjab (Pakistan) Governor Salman Taseer was done to death as he demonstrated his protest against this law by meeting Asia Bibi. The murderer was treated like a hero by a large section of Muslims!

The historians of Islam tell us that there was no such law of blasphemy in Islam till two centuries after Prophet Mohammad. It came up during Abbasid rule, in the beginning of 9^th Century. It was to strengthen the ruling dynasty’s hold on power. Similarly in comparatively recent times Zia UL Haq, a military ruler also introduced this law to strengthen his own authoritarian rule. The purpose of this was only to legitimize his regime under the garb of an ‘Islamic state’. This was an attempt by the military dictatorship to increase its hold over the society. The concept of apostate (Kafir) runs parallel to it and all non Muslims, and Muslims differing from the ruling sections interpretations are also so labelled and are liable to be killed. In Pakistan the major victims of this law are Muslims like Ahmadiyas and Shias. Of course Christians and Hindus are also on the firing line of this concept and the laws of blasphemy.

In one of the engrossing webinars on the topic on October 25, organised by Muslims For Secular Democracy, Islamic scholar Zeenat Shaukat Ali quoted Koran extensively to say that the holy book does not prescribe violence against those who do not subscribe to the holy book, (To you your religion to me mine). In a refreshing way the webinar’s moderator Javed Anand pointed out, “We are here to condemn in unequivocal terms, no ifs and buts, not only the man responsible for this barbaric act but all those who had any role in the instigation of the crime as also all those who seek to justify it. We are here not just to condemn the slaying of Mr Paty, but also to demand the abolishing of apostasy and banishing blasphemy anywhere and everywhere across the world”.

This in tune with many interpretation of Islam by the likes of Asghar Ali Engineer; one of the outstanding scholars of Islam who points out that Prophet Mohammad was so spiritual that he would never ask for revenge for insults against his own self. Engineer narrates an incident from Prophet’s life, “One old woman used to throw garbage on him whenever he was passing that way. One day at that spot, she was not there to throw the garbage. The Prophet straightaway went to see her and inquired about her well being, she felt ashamed of herself and embraced Islam.”

There is a need to understand as to why the intolerant tendencies in Islam are more dominating in current times. While history is also replete with Muslim rulers who used these concepts to increase their power, in current times there is an added dimension to the phenomenon. In 1953 Mossadegh regime, an elected regime was overthrown in Iran, as he was out to nationalise the oil companies dominated by the US-UK nexus. His regime was overthrown; leading to the coming to power of fundamentalist Ayatullah Khoemini in due course. Later with Russian occupation of Afghanistan, America deliberately started promoting the Islamic groups pursuing intolerant versions of Islam. Training of Mujahidin, Taliban, Al Qaeda was part of the same process.

Finally with the continuous intervention of US in West Asia, attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq etc. brought to fore led to intolerant groups to becoming more dominating leading to acts like the one of murder of Paty. The discussion and debate over rejection of concepts like blasphemy and ‘kill the kafir’, is the need of the hour for a saner World.

* The writer is a human rights defender and a former professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay). 

Other pieces by Dr. Puniyani:

Was Mughal Rule the period of India’s Slavery?

Kashi- Mathura: Will temple politics be revived?

Scapegoats and Holy Cows

Freedom of Religion: Indian Scenario

The post Charlie Hebdo Cartoons and Blasphemy Laws in Contemporary Times appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Today, I receive in rapid succession two articles against the Charlie Hebdo editorial (March 30, 2016), one from friends in Africa and another from friends in Asia; both articles attacked Charlie Hebdo as racist, and, from the little I have seen, they both twist facts to fit into their analysis. I do not intend to waste my time responding to these bad-faith articles.

However I took pains to read the translation into English of the Charlie Hebdo editorial. I have not read the original in French but I assume it is the 'official' translation. You can read it too, below:

“How did we end up here?   Par Charlie Hebdo – March 30, 2016

What does it say?
 
In substance, it says what WE, the networkers in the 'Women Living Under Muslim Laws' (WLUML) solidarity network, have been saying for three decades and more, i.e. that there are warning signs of the rise of Muslim fundamentalism; and that if one does not want to end up facing terrorist actions, one should try and control it beforehand, at the level of the early warning signs.

Or, in the words of several Algerian women interviewed by Karima Bennoune in her book on the internal resistance to Muslim fundamentalism ( "Your fatwa does not apply here"), that fighting terrorism should go hand in hand with fighting the ideology that brings about, at a later stage, the terrorist actions, i.e. the ideology of "Islamism". Please note: not "Islam": "Islamism" (A concept I never use, precisely because it may lead to confusion).

Were we "Islamophobic" when we worked on the warning signs? When we listed the restrictions on freedom of thought, of movement, on women's rights, the change in dress codes, etc…(See: 'Warning Signs of Fundamentalisms', 2004, WLUML Publications)
 
Were the (Muslim) women interviewed by Karima Bennoune "Islamophobic" when they denounced the ideology of Islamism?
 
I still hope that you will say that no, we were not "Islamophobic", we were warning our sisters that when these signs first appear in their countries – as they already did in some our our countries -, they should know how it is likely to end… Remember? We worked on the warning signs AFTER  the terrible assault on democrats and feminists in Algeria in the nineties that made 200 000 victims who died horrible deaths, just like the ones who die now at the hands of Daesh or Boko Haram…

This is exactly what Charlie is doing: warning the French people that it is too late to lament about terrorist actions, if one does not  also limit "Islamist" propaganda; Charlie is warning the French people of the consequences of bending to the various limitations that one silently accepts in the name of respect of the Other; Charlie gives the example of the fundamentalist speaker Tariq Ramadan , – and Ramadan is far from being the only one – who is, again and again, invited to speak in universities and other public functions. Let me ask you: why him?
 
 Why not Professor Karima Bennoune? Why not Dr Fatou Sow? Why not our pro-secularism former Great Mufti of Marseilles Soheib Bencheikh who is far more knowledgeable about Islam than Ramadan is? Why not any of us, feminists in Muslim countries and communities who for decades have been standing against the Muslim fundamentalist far-right?

This is the question that is raised by Charlie Hebdo: it points at the French people's own responsibility regarding Muslim fundamentalism rising in France and in Europe. Anything wrong with that?

Charlie Hebdo also points at the example of the increasing use of Saudi-style veiling in Europe, something which has already happened in our countries. We always had some veiled women in our countries, but the warning sign of fundamentalism is when so many women at the same time start adopting the veil at a fast multiplying pace, and when this veil is not even the traditional indigenous one of their fore-mothers but a foreign imported one.

What I find appalling is that what we, women from Muslim background, have said for so long – for decades – is seen, when it is said by Charlie Hebdo, in their own words and in their own national context,  is immediately branded racist. And what is even more dangerous is that the critics are circulated by our friends in Asia and in Africa, even without having looked at the incriminated text.
 
We do not need to ' be Charlie' to understand that, whether or not we like their style, they address a burning question. And that we are all in the same boat, facing the rise of religious fascists that curtail rights, put women 'in their place', assassinate opponents and all those who do not share their interpretation of Islam, including deeply believing Muslims.

Beware of getting rid of the last few honest allies we have on this planet.
 
(The writer, an Algerian sociologist, is the founder and former international coordinator of the international solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws. Editors of SabrangIndia had sent the author a critique of the Charlie Hebdo editorial dated March 30, 2016 to which this is a response)

References:
1. Myopia on Muslim Fundamentalism
2. For freedom’s sake
3. The truth about Charlie: one year after the January 7 attacks
4. Racism, not Anti-Racist ‘Satire’
5. After the Charlie Hebdo’s massacre Support those who fight the religious-right
6. No to Daesh, No to Imperalism 

The post Understand Where They Are Coming From, Charlie Hebdo is Not Racist appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Why the current criticism of Charlie Hebdo is not only factually wrong but also dangerous
 
Kavita Krishnan’s recent article (https://sabrangindia.in/article/racism-not-anti-racist-%E2%80%98satire%E2%80%99) makes a scathing criticism of Charlie Hebdo’s alleged racism. This article and one other was shared widely on social media and Facebook, including by several left-wing writers, politicians and poets. Another such was in the Citizen: http://www.thecitizen.in/NewsDetail.aspx?Id=6499&CHARLIE%2FHEBDO%2FDOES%2FIT%2FAGAIN#comment
 
Why am I referring specifically to the left-wing? Not because I am against their views in general; quite the contrary. If such articles were written by some right-wing authors writing for a right-wing audience, I would not even bother to comment on a single FB posting, as there is little to no point trying to change any views there. (Just as it would not be possible to do so with a “better” cartoon in CH or elsewhere).
 
What bothers me, and what has prompted me to comment on Krishnan's FB postings to a point where she almost blocked me (Thanks to her for not doing so and apologies for having been a nuisance), is the fact that many sane and highly politically aware people are criticising a publication (Charlie Hebdo) that is by no means an “enemy”. In fact it is very much on their side; for freedom of expression, of the press, and of opinion.
 
The sad fact that they so strongly criticize CH in front of their own left-leaning audiences is what causes me to write this, as they provide these audiences with a totally incorrect and out-of-context view of this magazine and its intentions. What really puzzles me is the motivation behind trying to prove that CH is sexist and racist. What is to be gained here?

 
Such castigation not only goes against freedom of speech, it ultimately plays into the hands of those who have said all along that CH deserved what they got last year. As it were, these voices have already been seen in FB comments underneath the postings of Krishnan and others. It will be argued that CH is despised (not only) in the West as racist and sexist, plus they insulted the prophet, so it was right to kill them? I refuse to believe that is what Krishnan and others would advocate. But how else is one to understand the allegations?
 
Why is left-wing damnation of CH so problematic and why should it be clarified, and if possible, revised? Because such criticism of CH is in fact not a matter of opinion, but arises from a complete and utter misunderstanding of the cartoons themselves, their socio-cultural context, and the history of such specifically French satire, which is sharp and often extremely direct. To make things worse, a CH cartoon from 1970 (!) was also dug up to show their “sexism“, in another crass misrepresentation of facts, by way of a Facebook posting that has already been shared widely in the same left-wing circles and is being used to further criticize and “expose” the magazine. This however will not be discussed in detail here and now.

I will deliberately leave aside the question whether the recent CH cartoon – which supposedly alleges that Aylan Kurdi would have grown up to be a groper in Germany – is in good taste or not. Whether one approves of the way it uses the picture of a dead child for the purpose of a cartoon is a matter for debate, and it is clearly a matter of personal opinion more than anything else. But as argued above, what is definitely not a matter of opinion is whether this cartoon (and others in CH) may be considered openly “racist“, as Krishnan and others have claimed, based on how a hypothetical adult Aylan Kurdi is shown with the face of a pig running after a woman he wants to grope.
 
The cartoon is simply taken at face value here and the conclusion drawn that it shows the cartoonist's (and Charlie Hebdo's) own statement or conviction that this is what would have inevitably happened, had he not drowned. However, as context and history clearly show this is utterly wrong and therefore the accusations are baseless. Holding on to such accusations nonetheless will be self-defeating as argued above.

Before going into cultural context and quoting an example from the history of CH cartoons, it is important to point out that the allegedly racist cartoon has also been taken out of its editorial context (deliberately?) to score anti-CH points. This is but one of four cartoons in a column, appearing below a headline that reads, “France is not what people say”. The first one refers to a discussion in France on whether or not terrorists with double citizenship should be stripped of their French citizenship. French Justice Minister, Christiane Taubira, who is depicted here, and who has also been the subject of allegedly “racist” CH cartoons (more on that below), opposes this. The other politician says she will have to accept it or step back. The second cartoon is the one being hotly debated. The third one satirizes the fate of cartoonists. It says, “Since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, people no longer draw the same way”, with the man in the cartoon commenting, “We now do self-portraits”. The fourth one refers to protests against the construction of an airport, and says, “All united except in Notre-Dame-des-Landes” (the name of the place). The policeman's shield refers to “Je suis Charlie” and says, “So am I, normally, but not today”.

This context alone might provide ample evidence of the fact that the Aylan Kurdi cartoon can neither be viewed in isolation, nor taken at face value as a straightforward statement against the dead child. Instead, it clearly satirises and thereby criticises those who do hold such views, some of whom may have earlier shared the dead child's photograph out of compassion when it was first published. As an aside, this issue of CH also contains four drawings by the same cartoonist (‘Riss’), which are anti-clerical and anti-theist in nature, equally attacking Christian, Jewish, and Islamic clerics.
 
If this is not enough evidence, one will need to look at earlier cases of such CH cartoons that appear “racist” at first, but turn out to being the exact opposite if seen in the right political and socio-cultural context. I will pick one example, and provide a number of links for a better understanding of CH cartoons, as others have already analysed these in a way far better than I could.
 
It is important to realize first of all that CH cartoons never were, and still are not, meant to cater to the tastes of a streamlined global audience, and its expectations of what “good satire” may or may not be, say, or do. CH has a long history of saying the unsayable and thinking the unthinkable. For CH, whether or not global readers are able to personally relate to it must not become a basis for factually incorrect accusations of “racism”, “sexism” etc.
 
CH is specifically French not only in its language, but also in the way it makes its statements. Those who claim that good satire should not need an explanation might want to look at political cartoons in their own country and ask themselves whether these would be accessible to global audiences without a solid background knowledge of who is being portrayed how and in what context. This certainly applies to Indian cartoons (anything beyond Modi cartoons will likely not be understood elsewhere), but also to specifically American or British caricature. Obama and Trump will need no explanation, but what about Ted Cruz or Bernie Sanders?

Now to a prime example of how CH cartoons are prone to be misunderstood if taken at face value: This is a cartoon showing the French cabinet minister Christiane Taubira. CH's then editor-in-chief, the late Stéphane Charbonnier, aka ‘Charb’, actually drew her as a monkey. Now, is that not blatantly racist? No. Not at all. A quote from the website ‘Understanding Charlie Hebdo' (now offline, archived version here
https://web.archive.org/web/20150905180008/  http://www.understandingcharliehebdo.com/) explains it as follows:

“The cartoon was published after a National Front politician Facebook-shared a photoshop of Justice Taubira, drawn as a monkey, and then said on French television that she should be ‘in a tree swinging from the branches rather than in government’ [Le Monde] (she was later sentenced to 9 months of prison). The cartoon is styled as a political poster, calling on all far right ‘Marine’ racists to unify, under this racist imagery they have chosen. Ultimately, the cartoon is criticising the far-right's appeal to racism to gain supporters”. (The red/blue logo in the corner is that of the neo-fascist French ‘Front National’, a kind of BJP/RSS/VHP conglomerate…).
 
Now Christiane Taubira not only did not criticize this cartoon, she later went to the CH cartoonists' funerals, and held a eulogy on one occasion, where she made the following statement: “Do taboos exist? Well, yes, according to them, it’s better to avoid drawing and caricaturing the CGT trade union for printers, for daily newspapers. [Laughter.] But otherwise no, no taboos. One can draw anything. Even a prophet. Because in France, in the France of Voltaire and of irreverence, one has the right to make fun of religions. A right. Yes, because a right, that’s what democracy is about. Democracy is the rule of law, according to the philosopher Alain.”
(http://www.steamthing.com/2015/05/christiane-taubiras-elogy-for-the-charlie-hebdo-cartoonisttignous.html)
 
This one example could suffice to show that one must simply not draw conclusions on CH cartoons from what one sees on the surface, much less make these conclusions the basis for accusations and attacks. Sadly, though, that does not seem to be the case. This is what leads Krishnan and others to publish scathing attacks, despite being presented with ample evidence (and personal statements directly from France) that clearly debunk these allegations. In the interest of the audiences they are catering to, and in the interest of the freedom of expression (regardless of personal tastes), I hereby request her and others to seriously reconsider their position, and better yet, publicly retract and correct the accusations and allegations against CH, which already have and will continue to do a lot more harm than good to the same causes they otherwise strongly defend.
 
A few more links for a better understanding of CH cartoons follow:
• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/11/1356945/-On-not-understanding-Charlie-Whymany-smart-people-are-getting-it-wrong
• http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-charlie-hebdo-cartoon-about-aylan-kurdi-and-sexattackers-is-one-of-its-most-powerful-and-a6812346.html
• https://blogs.mediapart.fr/olivier-tonneau/blog/110115/charlie-hebdo-letter-my-britishfriends
• http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/01/15/in-defense-of-charlie-hebdosalan-kurdi-cartoon/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
• http://www.salon.com/2015/01/08/freedom_democracy_and_the_hidden_meanings_of_the_charlie_hebdo_massacre/
 
(The writer is a concerned reader from Germany, a staunch atheist, who spent two years in India, mostly in Delhi between 1985 and 1994)

The post For freedom’s sake appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Related Story: Myopia on Muslim Fundamentalism
 

The post Racism, not Anti-Racist ‘Satire’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Related Story: Racism, not Anti-Racist ‘Satire’

Tahrir square in Europe
Facts
On New Year’s Eve 2015, simultaneous coordinated sexual attacks took place against women in public space in about 10 cities, mostly in Germany, but also in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland. Several hundred women, to this day, filed a case for sexual attack, robbery, and rape. These attacks were perpetrated by young men of migrant descent (be they immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, or other) from North Africa and the Middle East.

Reactions were predictable and unsurprising: there was a distinct misrepresentation of facts and dilution of the extent and spread of incidents across countries in Europe; this was done by governments, the police and even the media, for as long as it was possible to do. Women’s rights were sacrificed for social peace.

There was, what I would term as a preventive hullabaloo  from the Left, which includes a fair number of feminists, in order to defend foreigners, presumed to be ‘Muslim’ from racism. Please note: there was an intended shift of nomenclature. The attacked women described the attackers, on the basis of geographical location of identity, as ‘Arabs’ or ‘ North Africans’, in the pre-emptive discourse this was altered to ‘Muslims.’ There was a clamour for more security measures on the far Right. In Germany, the first indiscriminate pogrom against non-whites took place. In substance there was a denial of the gravity of the attacks on women that took place across Europe with the use of the slogan of ‘racism’ to prevent any soul-searching on the rise of a far right Muslim fundamentalism in Europe.

Memories
2011: At the heart of Tunis, a protest by secular feminists against Ben Ali: groups of young fundamentalists (there is evidence of their affiliation) surround the mostly women demonstrators, isolate them, attack them sexually, touch their sex and breasts, hit them violently, despite efforts to rescue them by male supporters who joined the meeting in solidarity. The Police is watching.

2012: Tahrir square, Cairo, the place where anti-government opposition meet: for the first time women in numbers take this opportunity to seize and exercise their citizenship rights. Groups of young men (were they part of the Muslim Brotherhood or manipulated by them?) sexually molest hundreds of women demonstrators (and foreign journalists), press photos show some of them partly undressed, there are attempts to register cases of rape. The police, too, get at women demonstrators, beating them up, forcing ‘virginity tests’ upon them, etc. This policy of sexual terror will go on for months in Cairo, to the point that women’s organizations develop an electronic emergency map of Cairo where attacks on women are registered in real time so that teams of male rescuers can rush to the trouble spot.

Summer 1969 An even older memory from Algiers: at the first Pan-African Cultural Festival: hundreds of women sit on the ground on the Main Post Office square which has been cleared of cars; they attend one of the many free public concerts that take place everyday from 5 pm to 4 am, cultural dates that women follow in masses; most of them wear the traditional white ‘haïk’ typical of the Algiers region and they have brought many children too. At dusk around 8.30 pm, a rallying cry sounds,  ‘En- nsa, l-ed-dar’, ‘women go home’, chanted by hundreds of men who also came to attend the concert. Slowly,  little group by little group, with much regret, the women and children leave the square. Men, triumphant and despising, laugh at them. The Nazis too, so defined women’s place: ‘church, kitchen and cradle’. Seven years after independence, the place assigned in public space to the celebrated revolutionary heroines of the glorious Algerian liberation struggle is now clearly defined. Patriarchy and fundamentalism, culture and religion, fly high together.

How strange that such links are not being made with the present attack, not even by feminists who supported the women of Tahrir Square when they were attacked there?

It seems Europe cannot learn anything from us and that nothing that happens or happened in our countries can be of any relevance to what goes on in Europe. By extension, an underlying racism, never yet so exposed in the radical Left, implicitly admits to an unbridgeable difference between ‘civilized’ and ‘under developed’ people, their behaviors, their cultures, their political situations. Under this essentialised otherness lies a hierarchy too shameful to mention: the radical Left’s blind defence of ‘Muslim’ reactionaries, implicitly condones the belief that, for non-Europeans, a far right response is a normal one to a situation of oppression; clearly, we are not seen as capable of either a revolutionary or a civilised response.

(I will not develop here, in this article, how this belief is exported even by Left elites in Asia and Africa).

Cassandras that no one listens to, that is us. We have been yelling, screaming and howling for three decades now. We have been pointing at the similarities, the dangerous authoritarian, proto-fascist trends, that could have led to a political enlightening. Algerian women especially, who fled fundamentalist terror in the nineties, have pointed relentlessly to similar, regressive steps taken in Algeria from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Within Europe and North America too there have attacks on the legal rights of women of Algerian, Arab, North African descent. There have been demands for a specific ‘Muslim’ law in family matters, sex segregation in hospitals, swimming pools and elsewhere; these have coincided with communalist demands for a non-secular education and syllabus. It is these demands that have been followed by physical, targeted attacks on individuals who do not bend to these demands. These have included girls being stoned and even burnt to death. Secularists have been branded as kofr ( these include journalists, actresses, and Charlie Hebdo). The culmination is indiscriminate attacks on anyone whose behavior does not fit with fundamentalist norms: remember Bataclan, café terraces, and attacks on football match, etc.? These attacks have steadily grown.

In Algeria from the 1970s until the 1990s, the fundamentalist attacks began with the targeted attacks on women’s rights and their very presence in public space. We have had long experience of governments who do not hesitate in trading women’s rights for a form of social contract with fundamentalists.

However, the European Left seems incapable of distancing itself from its own situation where people of migrant descent, among whom there are both ‘Muslims’ and others, do face discrimination. By not facing to the character and strategy of Muslim fundamentalists in societies within and those foreign to Europe, by not denouncing the attack of the Muslim right on women, in Europe and outside, the Left cedes the right to be moral arbiter. The terrain is then left free for the far Right within Europe that has now appropriated all discourse on the issue.

I fear, as many of us fear, more and more, that this denial to face what happened and condemn it for what it was, will or may now lead to indiscriminate ‘popular’ and ‘punitive’ actions. This will satisfy the desire for revenge on both sides. Of the traditional xenophobic extreme right of Europe as also the Muslim fundamentalist right that will feeding into these circumstances, recruit more to its fold within Europe. We have already witnessed the attempts by Mayors elected from French parties of the extreme right, who have begun to legitimise the creation of an armed popular militia to ‘protect’ French citizens. Granted, both the French Left and the Social Democrats have regularly objected to these moves. However, insofar as they refuse to confront Muslim fundamentalism and remain in denial mode, they de facto surrender the ideological terrain to the racist extreme Right.

How are we to ignore the many steps forward that fundamentalists have made in Europe? The recent brutal challenging of women’s presence in the public space on December 31, 2015 is only one more illustration of this phenomenon. A myopic Eurocentric vision prevents from seeing similarities with what took place, for instance, in North Africa and the Middle East over the decades, when the fundamentalists took over through democratic traditions and cultures.

In Europe, where ‘Muslims’ are seen as victims and oppressed minorities, this is apparently the justification for any aggressive and reactionary behavior from them. The European Left just needs to cross a few national borders to appreciate and understand what the nature of the political program and project of the fundamentalists is. What the fundamentalist worldview is regarding democracy, secularism, believers in other religions and women. What do fundamentalist regimes do when they are in a majority or when they come to power?  The absence of this much needed political analysis is what allows them to further their tentacles in Europe. Thanks also to capitalist and xenophobic oppression in Europe, the rank reactionary worldview of the Muslim fundamentalist extreme right is being white-washed. Is this not a dangerously Eurocentric approach?

In a self-defeating attitude that can only be understood in terms of the ‘theory of priorities’, both the Left and far too many feminists promote the exclusive defence of people of migrant origin (re-invented as ‘Muslims’) pitted against the capitalist western right. This is another deadly error that history will judge harshly. Progressive forces within societies battling fundamentalism are being abandoned to fight their battles alone. The implicit hierarchy of human rights and their priorities, in which categorisation women’s rights rank far behind minority rights, religious rights, and cultural rights enables this hypocrisy to continue.

Since 9.11 (2001) in the USA and the security measures that followed, the analysis of the debate for the Left and even human rights groups has centred around the ‘War against terror.’ Undeniably there have been gross abuses including the curtailment of civil liberties. In the France of 2014-2015, a similar situation now prevails. A state of emergency was imposed after the November attacks and there is legitimate fear that a Patriot Act of sorts could be developed in Europe.

‘Terror’ itself however is being pushed aside, out of the discourse. The reality of terror is made to fade and an illusion or a bogey-man for government’s freedom-killing actions is replaced. It is almost as if there is a ‘War on terror’, but actually no ‘terror’! In this worldview, terror is made to appear like the fantasy of the xenophobic extreme right; what this view ignores is that there were indeed human bombs that exploded in Paris. Yet there is no war in France? There are elaborate debates on what governments should and should not do, the intentions and motives of states are dubbed manipulative and detrimental to liberties.  A cause and a consequence system does now re- emerge, but in a reverse image. The traditional image of pulling the rabbit out of the hat in which it was made to disappear stands on its head: here we dig the hat out of the rabbit…

A worldwide phenomenon – the rise of a new brand of extreme right: i.e. Muslim fundamentalism – is not only being insidiously justified but quite literally ‘disappeared’ behind the critic of the reactions that its own actions engenders. We simply cannot let the phenomenon of extreme right-wing Muslim fundamentalism to be thus conjured away. Denial will not make the phenomenon disappear.

The emerging phenomenon that the world is experiencing is not simply a creature determined by western capitalism. It has emerged from within different regimes and spheres and cultural spaces. One thing is however clear. Over the past 30 years burying one’s head into the sand has not led to any diminishing of the demands of the extreme fundamentalist right, neither in Europe nor anywhere else. Far from that, fundamentalism has surfed on the occultation of its political nature and grown through its cynical exploitation of democratic freedoms and of human rights.

What is at stake here goes far beyond women’s rights; it is a project to establish a theocratic society in which, among many other rights, women’s rights will be severely curtailed. The concerted action on 31.12 (2015) all over Europe, the brute challenging of women’s place in public space(s) plays exactly the same role as the sudden invention of the so-called ‘Islamic veil’: it is a show of force and power, making visible the fundamentalist right.

This show of force may meet with success. This was exactly how the ‘Islamic veil’ was enforced on women: by force. The advice  so far given by some of the German authorities to the attacked women in Cologne attest to a similar ‘adjustment’ and compromise. Reportedly the women who were attacked on New Year’s Eve were told by German authorities:  adjust to the new situation, stay away from men (‘at arms length’), don’t go out on your own, etc… In short, submit or pay the price. If anything happens to you, it will be your fault, you have been warned.

This kind of advice is similar to what used to be said in court(s) not so long ago to women who had been raped. Why were you in ‘such and such’ place? What were you doing out at ‘such a time’?  Why were you wearing ‘such a dress’? Advice that Muslim fundamentalist preachers will definitely not disavow…

That the primary concern after the attacks on women all over Europe, was to protect the perpetrators and not  defend women victims is a slight variation on the usual defence of men’s violence against women. The questions that need to be asked, however, are this: to what extent is it a defense of patriarchy, or a defence of migrants, and of ethnic or religious minorities? The interests of patriarchy (that the Left does not dare defend officially anymore) merge with the noble defence of the ‘oppressed’ (the November 2015 Paris attacks dented the legitimacy of this argument, considerably). They become convenient bedfellows. 

Searching questions need still to be asked on the concerted, simultaneous attacks on women in over a dozen cities in five different countries of Europe. Not to do so is to perpetuate a blind political perversity.

(The writer is an Algerian sociologist, is the founder and former international coordinator of the international solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws. She is also the founder of Secularism is a Women’s Issue , SIAWI; The article was written on January 5 and updated on January 12, 2016)

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This article was first published on www.opendemocracy.net

A man reads the latest edition of French weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo with the title “One year on, the assassin still on the run” in a cafe in Nice, France, on Jan. 6. Photo by Eric Gaillard/Reuters

The Charlie Hebdo attack one year ago was part of a long tradition of fundamentalist assaults on artists.  Understanding this tragic event is critical to defeating Islamist terror today.

Two French Islamist gunmen of Algerian descent entered a newspaper office in Paris a year ago today and gunned down a generation of Europe’s greatest political cartoonists- – many from an anarchist, anti-racist tradition – along with their co-workers and those protecting them, who also included people of Algerian descent.  In case anyone is confused about the politics of this – it was a far right attack on the left. 

At first the world reacted with justified horror and a solidarity which is not always forthcoming for the frequently anonymous victims of Islamist slaughter, and which was not often experienced by the Charlie Hebdo staff in previous years when they endured threats and firebombs. However, the backlash began quickly.  The truth about Charlie was that many were shockingly equivocal in their reaction to these events. 

There was the “I am not Charlie” campaign, promoted by Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The meaning of that was clear enough.  Those whose ideology helped pave the way for such killings were publicly admitting their lack of solidarity with the victims. There were outright vilification campaigns suggesting that the cartoonists (or perhaps French people generally) were racists, “Islamophobic” or otherwise had it coming.  In California – which by year’s end became the site of another Islamist bloodbath – a number of people expressed such views to me, thinking that because I have a Muslim name I would agree.  Not long after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I spoke at a U.S. university event on freedom of expression along with a self-appointed young American spokesperson for “the Muslim community” from the Council on American Islamic Relations – whom I must say I never elected to speak for me.  She reviled the January 7 victims to the point where I felt compelled to ask if she understood that they were actually dead.  She did not know as I did that just before their murders, the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were in a heated discussion about terrible socio-economic conditions in the Paris suburbs where much of the Muslim population lives – an injustice which mattered a great deal to them.

Another response was the more sophisticated “I am Ahmed” campaign named for the stalwart French policeman Ahmed Merabet also of Algerian descent who was killed by the Kouachi brothers as they fled the newspaper’s offices. Sadly, this was sometimes meant as a rebuttal rather than an amplification of “Je suis Charlie,” when in fact people like the murderous Kouachis have been killing Ahmeds around the world for years.  Very few have been paying attention to that body count.  When they depicted their version of the Prophet Mohamed crying over terrorism, the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists had the courage to take on those carrying out that slaughter while others looked away or were silent. 

That is committed anti-racism and solidarity, even if it comes in the shape of a merciless, sometimes disturbing French satirical tradition not always well understood elsewhere – like Mad Magazine with politics.

On this anniversary, we must remember that those who killed Charlie also killed Ahmed and that saying “I am Charlie” is also a way of saying “I am Ahmed,” and vice versa. Indeed, opposing the Kouachis of the world is essential to saving those countless people of Muslim heritage and their fellow citizens in the Global South who have been dying in the tens of thousands at the hands of Muslim fundamentalist killers in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya and beyond. Ahmed is a synonym for Charlie, not an antonym. That was why so many people of North African descent stood with the January 7 victims.

" The idiots killed me", cartoon by Dilem. Credit: @DilemAli.

For example, Ali Dilem, one of Algeria’s best political cartoonists joined the Charlie Hebdo team in February out of solidarity.  His bold cartoons have lampooned political figures and fundamentalist terrorists for years, earning him jail sentences and countless fatwas. On January 7, 2015, Dilem’s cartoon bore the heading: “God is Humour” (in French: “Dieu est humour,”a play on words derived from “Dieu est amour” – “God is Love”).  Another of Dilem’s cartoons after the January 7 attacks shows a dying figure writing in his own blood on a wall: “the idiots killed me”

l trying to escape the “Islamic State” offensive, and in front of the small club where 89 mainly young people lost their lives at the hands of another group of young Islamist assassins of North African descent.  I found my visit doubly poignant because I went with Samia Benkherroubi a former Algerian TV presenter whose own producer, the legendary Aziz Smati, had been shot in 1994 by the Armed Islamic Group, the forerunners of “Islamic State,” and is today a paraplegic, but continues his work from his wheelchair. Smati’s crime, like Charlie’s, was creativity.  He produced Algeria’s groundbreaking youth music TV show, Bled Music, showing the first Rai music videos on TV, which were also controversial at the time. 

Outside the bullet-riddled Bataclan, Samia and I laid flowers and mourned together, lamenting that the fundamentalists we have been battling for years are still so much stronger than their civil society opponents.  She had written to me after the November 13 attacks to say how deeply saddened she was to see the fundamentalist violence she fled in 1990s Algeria reproducing itself elsewhere.  What was especially mystifying to her, was the way in which some on the left tried to use the history of French colonialism as the excuse (or so-called “explanation”) for these attacks. The same thing happened after January 7. Samia wrote that “looking for explanations in colonial history is an injury to all victims of blind terrorism.” It also entirely overlooks that Algeria itself lost as many as 200,000 – including many veterans of the liberation struggle – to extremist terrorism in the 1990s, a fact often conveniently forgotten.

The same night that Samia and I paid our respects at the Bataclan, we visited the plaque by the Seine to the victims of the massacre of October 17, 1961 when several hundred Algerian nationalists were slain and thrown into the river by police during a peaceful protest.

We vowed by that memorial not to let their brave memory be misused to justify fundamentalist atrocities, even while keeping their memory alive like those of other victims.  For me, this is very personal. My Algerian grandfather Lakhdar Bennoune died defeating French colonialism.  His death is part of an historic injustice which still demands real accounting – but is no justification whatsoever for the lamentable Kouachis who would have said he was not a true martyr because he died fighting for a republic rather than an “Islamic State”.

All of this complexity seems to have been lost on the authors and signatories of the petition against the granting of the PEN Freedom of Expression Courage award to the Charlie Hebdo staff signed by a group of mainly Western intellectuals in the name of anti-racism.  They wanted to make clear that they were not Charlie.  They claimed solidarity with Ahmed.  They presumed to know what the Ahmeds of the world think (and that they think alike) while overlooking the contemporary politics of the Muslim majority regions of the world.  They regretted the killing, but clearly didn’t understand it. 

The petition’s authors presumed a) that French Muslims were mostly devout, and b) that this meant they could not stomach satirical drawings – two huge and highly inaccurate presumptions. This was a recurring theme after January 7 – that all Muslims and all people of Muslim heritage were offended by the publication of cartoons (whether they liked the cartoons or not). It is not at all clear how assuming that 1.5 billion people have no sense of humor (and no politics) is anything other than patronizing.

Meanwhile, the campaign to support the presentation of the PEN award to Charlie Hebdo was led by Salman Rushdie, who is of Muslim heritage, and whose name is derived from a great 12th century Andalusian Muslim philosopher  Ibn Rushd who likely would not have been terribly troubled by provocative cartoons, and whose own books on philosophy and theology were burned by Muslim fundamentalists while his Christian followers were slain by the Inquisition. 

There was the “I am not Charlie” campaign, promoted by Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The meaning of that was clear enough.  Those whose ideology helped pave the way for such killings were publicly admitting their lack of solidarity with the victims.

So, we must remember that January 7, 2015 was one in a long line of far right attacks on creativity, and part of a history of fundamentalist assaults against artists and intellectuals who have defied them.  And, sadly, it was only one of the first armed Islamist salvos of 2015 which will be remembered as the year of endless, expanding jihad. Charlies and Ahmeds, Ceciles and Samiras died in many regions of the world at the hands of those seeking a free ticket to paradise.

In 2015, Muslim fundamentalists would go on to target Pakistani arts promoters, Iraqi women lawyers and teachers and most of the country’s minorities, Syrian archaeologists, a Kosher grocery store in France, an event about freedom of expression in Denmark, Afghan airports, Tunisia’s national museum, countless Shiite mosques everywhere, minarets, a Beirut shopping district, a Sousse beach, Nigerian markets, a Kenyan University, and a Russian airplane carrying families home from vacation.  Grave crimes, crimes against humanity, war crimes, even genocide, in some cases.  Afterwards we were all assaulted verbally both by some on the left who tried to excuse the perpetrators or minimize their crimes in defiance of the facts, and some on the right who sought to lump all Muslims in with those perpetrators notwithstanding how many Muslims have died at their hands and how many have opposed them.

With all of this bloodletting and intolerance, why is it important to remember the Charlie Hebdo attack and its victims?  Algerians I have interviewed about the country’s “dark decade” of 1990s fundamentalist violence have often told me about the debates regarding the motives behind fundamentalist killings. In the beginning, people tried to explain away the targeting – “oh, he was a policeman, he we was an atheist, she was a communist,” until the terrorists began killing Every(wo)man and it seemed inexplicable.  Grassroots solidarity with less popular or controversial victims was crucial but sometimes harder to come by, something which their assassins knew only too well.  A muted response to what happened to the cops and the communists only emboldened the so-called Warriors of God to attack others. 

So, a year later, remembering the Charlie Hebdo attack, and paying tribute to its victims, are critical aspects of the ongoing struggle against Muslim fundamentalist terrorism.  Likewise, remembering that many Muslims and people of Muslim heritage have spoken up in defence of Charlie Hebdo and against fundamentalist violence (and have died in that violence) is a key way of fighting the racism and discrimination against Muslims which also burgeoned in 2015.  The truth about Charlie is that in the year since the attacks we have often forgotten all of these things.

So today, in memory of Charb, Cabu, Wolinksi, Tignous, Bernard Maris, Honoré, Elsa Cayat, Mustapha Ourad, Frédéric Boisseau, Michel Renaud, and the police officers Franck Brinsolaro and Ahmed Merabet who were killed exactly a year ago, and all those who died at the hands of Islamist terrorists in 2015, I say simply, “I am still Charlie.”  It is a battle cry in the ongoing campaign against fundamentalist violence and the ideas that motivate it, which is one of the defining human rights struggles of 2016.  That is perhaps the most important truth about Charlie.

(The writer, an academic of repute also won the 2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her book, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism)
 

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