Charlie's Angels: concerning the heroes, villains, apologists and enablers. . .

Well, there can be no denying: Charlie Hebdo is an obnoxious publication. Its illustrations are ugly, amateurish, juvenile, and just plain mean.

And that is utterly irrelevant.

When there are eleven people dead, the issue is not how offensive the cartoons were. It is so completely, utterly damned unimportant, it is barely worth mentioning. And yet, there are some people who not only think it worth mentioning, but think that that is the major issue.

In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo slaughter, leaping at the heals of free-speech solidarity were the usual lapdogs of the “but brigade” – “killing is bad but. . .”

But what? Why is it so difficult to condemn a religiously based killing without all these conditionals?

My favourite was this little doozey from the Toronto Star.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/01/10/charlie_hebdo_attacks_not_just_about_cartoons.html

How can this be read as anything but a rationalization for the cold-blooded execution of eleven cartoonists? I’m sure they would balk at the suggestion, but why else would they insist that killings are about anything else? You will notice that not once, anywhere, do they suggest the killers were responsible for their own actions.  

It’s not even that alienation and integration et al are unimportant – they’re just incredibly irrelevant to this case. Vast swaths of people all over the western world find themselves alienated from greater society and yet don’t resort to picking up assault rifles and killing people. The article doesn’t do Muslims any favours either: inherent in its argument is a kind of infantalization of the Muslim community, suggesting they can’t control their actions, and will turn into rabid dogs when offended.

By way of refutation, might I point to the case of Mr. Ahmed Merabet, the Paris police officer executed by the gunmen (unmentioned, so far, in any of these articles). Merabet was a Muslim.  It didn’t do him any good: first they shot him in the leg. Then, as he raised his hands in surrender, they shot him in the head. These defenders of the faith hadn't a shred of mercy to spare for one of their own.

Officer Ahmed Merabet

Tell me: who is the enemy of the Muslim community?

I'm sure Mr. Merabet faced prejudice and intolerance. I am sure there were times he felt alienated from broader French society, and I'll bet he was offended by those cartoons. Nevertheless, he gave his life DEFENDING unarmed people.
He made a choice. His killers made a choice

Or, how about Mr. Lassana Bathily, the Muslim deli worker who hid Jewish customers while the gunmen went wild. I’m sure he faced prejudice and intolerance. I’m sure there were times he felt alienated from broader French society. I’m sure he was offended by those cartoons. But when the time came, he made his choice and chose his side: he decided to help people rather than kill them.

 

Lassana Bathily

We have a choice people. We decide how to interact with the world, how to respond to adversity, and how to interact with fellow human beings. We decide whether to pull the trigger or not.

We are also facing a choice right now about what sort of world we will live in. Who’s going to make the rules? Who’s laws will we be subject to? Are we going to face summary execution for drawing things? Will the religious edicts of the least enlightened among us apply to all?

Probably. At least, I’m not convinced anyone will try too hard to stop it. 

If I were murdered one day. . .a tale of cartoons and useful idiots.

Do you know something?  If I were to be murdered one day, I honestly think I’d be less offended by the murder itself than by someone who tried to excuse it.

            Someone standing by my beside, trying to put my murder in a wider social context as I slowly bleed to death, explaining as I fade away, that it really wasn’t about me at all. I think I’d have very little to say to that person at that moment.

            I thought about this several days after I heard of the Charlie Hebdo. massacre. What I thought on the day of the massacre itself was I no longer lived in the world I thought I did. I was living in a world where I could be killed for drawing a picture on a piece of paper. It was not a world I recognized; I didn’t like it. I wanted my old world back, the one where you were allowed to draw things.

             

            What happened in Paris was that four people decided to slaughter eleven other people for drawing some pictures. They felt that human life was less important than some pencil lines on paper, and decided that snuffing out these lives would be the best way to prevent said pencil from reaching said paper. They decided that everyone was going to abide by their superstitions, under pain of death.

            They shot eleven real people for drawing hypothetical people.

            What planet are we living on?

            As I said, it was not the world I recognized, and not the world I wanted, and I would probably have to fight to get the old one back. Not by bombing other countries with F-16s, but simply by not letting some barbarian dictate how to live life. So I was thrilled the next day when the Toronto Star, that most pc of papers, printed one of the offensive cartoons in its editorial. Clearly, they were not going to be intimidated. I thought that maybe the Canadian media and inteligencia had abandoned its policy of appeasement and was going to stand up to these buggers.

            Sadly I was mistaken. The very next day, this article appeared:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/01/10/charlie_hebdo_attacks_not_just_about_cartoons.html

            So apparently the whole thing wasn't about the dead cartoonists after all, but "the ever-shifting religious dynamics and political reality of the global Muslim community". 

            Did they mean the political reality in which people could shot for drawing pictures?

            Heather Malick condemned the cartoons as “racist”, Haroon Siddiqui felt compelled to remind us all of the limits on freespeech, John Cruickshank spoke of “exploiting [free speech] to commit a moral wrong” (by which he meant the cartoons, not the killings), and the useful idiots at Rabble.ca insisted that one remember "that France is at war with many Islamic countries".

          (I suppose a magazine office is now a legitimate military target. . .)

           Equivocations, rationalizations, and praise by faint damnation from the horde of appologists whom Salman Rushdie christened the “but brigade”. “The shootings were awful, BUT. . .” “We have the right to free speech BUT. . .” “There’s no excuse for violence, BUT. . .” BUT BUT BUT!

            But what? If they don’t condone the killings, why are they wasting so much ink telling us that the real evils lie elsewhere? Why go on as if assholery and murder were equivelant wrongs? Why is it so hard to just say it’s wrong to shoot people for religious reasons?

           

            Could it be because on some level, they don’t actually believe that? Perhaps, deep down, they think there are some things you shouldn’t say, things you shouldn’t draw, things you shouldn’t think?

            Why else would they quibble when eleven people are dead? For drawing pictures?

           

            I’m sick it. I’m sick of the prevarication, the wilful blindness, the insinuation that I am subject to someone else’s religious edicts. I’ll draw, say, write, and think what I damn well please.

            Je suis Charlie.