French date with terror

Vishal Sharma
The terror attack on French satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdot, has only reinforced the existing stereotypes. There was the usual fare of a fight between the freedom of expression and those who don’t treat it as an absolute ideal. The upshot was also on the predictable lines. Free speech was silenced and at an extremely high human cost. These days, this is a familiar sight. The only difference is in the sophistication; subtlety or the uniqueness of the setting where such instances are played out. Rest everything is obnoxiously same-whether it is Mumbai, Peshawar or Paris.
The trouble with the growing impatience with the right to speak freely is that the former has shifted the frame of the debate towards silencing the perceived detractors through killings. Its idea of expression is circumscribed by what is good or right as seen through or defined by the import dished out by a few clerics. A few clerics style themselves as the savior of the religion and become moral arbiters. They create, define and frame the debates around religion, and if you are part of their discourse you are good; otherwise an infidel. The killers of the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdot were also similarly in the thrall of such like clerics, much like others elsewhere from Syria to Baghdad to Afghanistan to Kenya. In all of these disparate regions, the narrative of fidelity propounded by a loony fringe is being sold as the only path to salvation. This is the salvation the killers of the Charlie cartoonists came looking at the doors of the Charlie Hebdot.
Nothing in this world is absolute. Then, why is there the urge to seek absolute privileges, rights etc? The relativity of entitlements and rights is challenged, but not that of duties and obligations. This selective applicability of the nature’s gospel is inexplicable. But this explains why the protagonists of the free speech have ever fallen to the temptation of enlarging the sphere of brazenness of their freespeak. In this misplaced zeal, they have increasingly begun to show scant respect for the ideals and the sentiments of those who are at their receiving ends. For instance, if the idea of the Charlie Hebdot protagonists was to bring to the fore the frailities and innanities of the ways of life of those being targeted then they should have lampooned their ways of life through another medium. How could choosing their religion as a medium to convey the message made the whole exercise any more effective? It’s here the intent is suspect while the idea may have been noble. It should be nobody’s cause to communicate the bad in a particular community by choosing their prophets, deities and gods to purvey the message. Nothing can be more outrageous. The divine nowhere has ordained an insidious ways of life for its followers. The famed and now dead cartoonists of Charlie Hebdot sadly did not understand this subtle nuance. Or if they did, then their doings were obviously driven by the desire for a glory of a perverse kind.
The protagonists of the free speech at Charlie Hebdot did not transgress once. After having made the point, if there was one, they studiedly upped the ante by carrying the controversial cartoons over and over again in the magazine. With this, their irreverence began to border on the abuse. This is when, quite frankly, they had it. In a no holds barred liberal culture of the French, the Charlie Hebdot ‘s irreverence may have been feted as a high point of liberality. But in the practicality and accepted calling of a magazine which requires the magazine to so much as only convey the message of reform and goodness and pure and simple news, they seemed to have touched the nadir not only of their craft but also of the very basic morality. In many ways, the attack at Charlie Hebdot was of its own making.
That said, the ideals of the civilized world should still be different from those of the medieval, where neither the medium nor the expression weighed as much. The medieval world gave primacy to a select few who held sway over the vast mass and interpreted for them. The rule of law was a far off outpost in the back of beyond; it seldom had any mainstream value. The response to the Charlie Hebdot’s mocking irreverence smacked of this medievalness. Those who sidled towards the door of the Charlie Hebdot’s office with the blazing guns and took out those who had drawn offensive cartoons did a great disservice to the cause of those who had felt offended and desired to counteract through debates and writings. The mocking irreverence of these cartoonists should not have been subdued with guns, no matter what its level. It should have been only defeated by the rational debates.
Kouachi borthers, who pulled the trigger on the French cartoonists, are epitome of the highly entrenched ideological radicalization. This is a cause for worry. The other worry is that it is fast morphing into others vs muslims battle; a throwback to the crusades of the past. For some reasons, Europe has always been a final frontier for these jehadis. But with the Parisian terror attacks, these radical elements have left nothing much to imagination now.  This then begs the question which the French are asking of themselves today, and perhaps the Europeans at large will do so tomorrow; where does this go from here?
For French, it, at some level, also reflects the failings of the French society in mainstreaming the immigrants in their society. French have traditionally been a staunchly secular society and banned the religious symbols like turbans, hijab etc. in the public places. While they may have perfectly legitimate reasons to institute a religious apartheid in a truly secular French society, but it is also undeniable that French have showed no tact and finesse in dealing with the profound sensitivities attached to the religious feelings in some immigrant communities. The immediate trigger for the Paris attacks may have been the blasphemous cartoons, but the scale and the level of attack was definitely a product of French’s exclusionary tendencies.
Will French now consider to relook their legal, social and moral fabric? Well, when they have around 8 million French muslims, they will have to. They don’t have any choice. A large chunk of population can’t forever be kept at the fringe. Beyond the immediate question of French course correcting is the larger question of accommodation for Islam in the European society. Will French show the way towards reconciliation as they did with the million march in Paris and lead the way for the wider Europeans? Only time will tell.

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