November 2015 Paris Attacks | SabrangIndia

For freedom’s sake

Wed, 20 Jan 2016 06:55:42 +0000

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)

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Racism, not Anti-Racist ‘Satire’

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 08:21:54 +0000

Charlie Hebdo Cartoon is blind to racist Islamophobia

The latest Charlie Hebdo (CH) cartoon suggests that the refugee baby Aylan Kurdi would grow up to be a bestial man groping women, like the immigrants allegedly involved in sexual assaults recently in Cologne, Germany. Those of us who have criticised the cartoon as racist, are being told that the cartoon actually satirises racism and we’ve failed to appreciate the French tradition of satire. The CH brand of satire is apparently like fine French caviar or wine – and its brilliance apparently eludes those who are yet to acquire the fine art of appreciating it.

Is the CH cartoon referencing Aylan Kurdi racist or a critique of racism?

It is true that satirists have often had the misfortune of being taken seriously, at face value, and accused of exactly what they were satirizing. There were readers of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (where Swift suggested with a straight face that the solution to Irish hunger and poverty could be found by selling Irish babies as delicate food for the privileged) who accused Swift of proposing cannibalism and infanticide.

But there are reasons why, in my opinion, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon is not a case of satire misunderstood by those lacking in a subtle sense of humour.

What makes, say A Modest Proposal – that referenced babies – great satire while the CH cartoon referencing baby Aylan remains fairly banal racism?

Those planners and British opinion-makers whom Swift was satirizing were not – and this is important – proposing the cannibalising of Irish babies; they were merely rationalising inaction on Irish starvation and impoverishment. By making a ‘modest proposal’ of cannibalising Irish babies, Swift was using the tools of exaggeration and parody to make the point that those who had no qualms about starving Irish babies with cruel economic policies, were no better than cannibals. The piece mocked the reasonable, cool tone of ideologues who made ‘proposals’ rationalising poverty and starvation.

My point is that Swift did not just mirror the cruelty and callousness of those he mocked – he wildly exaggerated it, and it is that exaggeration that provides the element of parody, of burlesque, of bitter satire. After all, satire is a persuasive tool – that uses shock value to jolt its readers/viewers into recognizing the absurdity or cruelty of what otherwise seems ‘normal’. I will not try to read the minds of the CH artists and decipher their ‘intent’ – that is beside the point. What I argue is that the CH cartoon simply fails as ‘satire,’ because it is indistinguishable from straightforward racist graffiti.

Racists in Europe (and specifically Germany) are already arguing that Muslim refugees are ‘Rape-fugees’ http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Europe-migrants-Germany-demo/2016/01/09/id/708857/ . They are already depicting Muslim as having pig-heads (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3208356/Anti-Islam-group-severed-pig-heads-Muslim-citizens.html). They are already resentful that baby Aylan should be the iconic image of refugees – while they seek to invoke instead the trope of the Muslim migrant as ‘lascivious’ rapist whose culture is peculiarly violent to women in a way that white European culture is not. How can a cartoon that merely mirrors or performs these forms of racism be a critique of racism? It is – at best – ambiguous and at worst, racist.

The CH cartoon neither uses exaggeration nor inversion. Inversion could have made for a great cartoon satirizing the racist bid to link sexual assault with migrants. Imagine a cartoon that made arguments linking sexual assault with race (as is being done in the wake of the Cologne episode) – but that, while mentioning Cologne, applied the selfsame arguments to profile white Europeans or IMF chiefs as potential sexual offendes, invoking the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.


To take another example, The Hindu carried a piece by Suchi Govindarajan http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/modesty-of-dress-and-indian-culture/article2982283.ece that expressed shock and horror at immodest attire in Indian men, and proposed a dress code for men and boys. Some comments on the piece obviously misunderstood the point entirely, and asked her to stop moral policing. But most understood that she was using the classic tool of inversion to expose the absurdity of moral policing and dress codes imposed on women: that otherwise passes unnoticed as normal, everyday sexism.

The CH cartoon neither uses exaggeration nor inversion. Inversion could have made for a great cartoon satirising the racist bid to link sexual assault with migrants. Imagine a cartoon that made arguments linking sexual assault with race (as is being done in the wake of the Cologne episode) – but that, while mentioning Cologne, applied the selfsame arguments to profile white Europeans or IMF chiefs as potential sexual offendes, invoking the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. Such a cartoon would truly make an anti-racist point. But the CH cartoon does no such thing. Its performance of racism has nothing whatsoever to indicate that it is not straightforward. Its apologists are claiming the tongue is hidden in the CH cheek – but it is difficult to credit this because effective satire finds ways to reveal a hint of the hidden tongue, while the CH cartoon does not.

Interestingly, many of those defending the CH cartoon as ‘satire’ are also accusing Left feminists of ‘silence’ on the Cologne sexual assault episode – implying that the failure to link the violence with immigrants and their culture amounts to condoning or denying the violence. The fact is that Left feminists in Germany, far from being silent, have argued against the attempts to link the sexual violence at Cologne with the supposed ‘culture’ of immigrants. Silke Stöckle and Marion Wegscheider argue http://rs21.org.uk/2016/01/08/sexism-is-not-an-imported-product/ , for instance, that:

“Sexual violence against women in Germany is in general a large and indeed a long-existing problem: women are commonly and frequently sexually harassed at large festivals, at the Oktoberfest in Munich or during the Carnival in Cologne and other cities. According to a new study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, one in seven women in Germany experiences sexual violence. One in four women – irrespective of education level or socio-economic status – is exposed to domestic violence. The perpetrators are almost always men, among whom no significant distinction according to religion, background, educational level or social status exists…. sexual assaults on women are all too often not taken seriously, and are at first marginalised – as in Cologne, where victims have had the pleasure of being schooled by local politicians about “rules of behaviour for mass gatherings”, as though the victims, in the face of their determined assaulters, had the possibility to negotiate their way out of harm…. Rather than connecting the events in Cologne and Hamburg to the everyday sexist violence faced by women in Germany, politicians and the media establishment have, from the moment the events occurred, focused above all on the background of the alleged perpetrators, and on questions of public security. Where sexual molestation is acknowledged as a structural manifestation at all, it is only ever in relation to the “culture” in the supposed countries of origin of the perpetrators. In this way, the debate about the attacks has been instrumentalised from the get-go and, in line with a classic racist line of argument, Muslims or refugees have been stereotyped en masse…. As far as the broader German left goes, there must be absolute clarity that women’s oppression in Germany is structurally determined and that in the struggle for women’s rights, we can in no way allow ourselves to be divided by racism – we must confront both sexism and racism with equal determination.”

In Europe, as in India, it is common for the right-wing to portray Muslim men as sexual predators. The Hindutva right in India, for instance, raises the bogey of ‘love jehad’ – accusing Muslim men of seducing/raping/converting Hindu women. In reality, Hindu women in consensual relationships with Muslim men are beaten and brutalized to coerce them to accuse their Muslim partners of rape, as has been revealed in a recent sting investigation http://www.cobrapost.com/index.php/news-detail?nid=9151&cid=23.

The CH cartoon appears tone deaf to the Islamophobic chorus in Europe, the US, India, indeed the world. It has nothing to distinguish it from crude racist or communal graffiti – of the kind quite commonly used in racist and communal propaganda material in Europe, and certainly in India. It will only get nods of affirmation from Europe’s racists (and India’s communalists), not discomfort. It empowers racists in the current climate – not anti racists. And that is where its claim to being anti-racist satire fails.

(The writer is Secretary, All India Progressive Women’s Association, AIPWA)

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Myopia on Muslim Fundamentalism

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 07:47:03 +0000

Underplaying the simultaneous attacks on women across five countries in Europe protects the dangers of Muslim fundamentalism

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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