Yesterday at the breakfast table, I reacted strongly to
something I read. I feel sorry for Greg as he probably would have preferred to
enjoy his coffee, his bagel, and his journal, rather than listening to me hold forth. However,
this is what happened.
I am appalled by the murders at Charlie Hebdo. I am also very sad that several
people, including, so far, a maintenance person, two policemen and a visitor,
who had nothing to do with drawing the cartoons, have also been killed.
But what also caught my attention yesterday was a headline in the Huffington Post. It was purportedly a
comment by one of the cartoonists murdered in Paris. He had said, “Muhammad
isn’t sacred to me.”
I thought, well other people do hold him sacred. And I
wondered to what extent we should respect what other people hold sacred and not
subject it to a vicious ridicule. Religious or not, we all hold certain things
as sacred to us. It is difficult for most of us to have our beliefs (and ourselves) not only
challenged but mocked. Where does using hard-hitting satire about social
situations and beliefs end and nastiness for the sake of nastiness begin?
Then I thought, most people for whom Muhammad is sacred are
not murderously fanatical and hate-filled followers of groups such as ISIS or
el Qaeda. As a Christian, I am not fanatical or hate-filled (at least I hope
not) nor are most Muslims or, for that
matter, most human beings. I expect most people of whatever belief persuasion
(religious, humanist, atheist, agnostic, secularist, skeptic, or whatever) just
want to get on with our lives and live together in a civilized way.
So I ask myself, what is the point of publishing cartoons
like some of the ones pictured in the article at this blog:
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2015/01/in-the-wake-of-charlie-hebdo-free-speech-does-not-mean-freedom-from-criticism/
Admittedly, I need to know more about French culture
before jumping to conclusions about the use of humour there, but one cartoon in
particular in the above article especially bothered me. It references the young schoolgirls
kidnapped and raped by members of the Boko Haram — now shown as very pregnant — and according to the cartoon, wanting
to be welfare frauds. What is the point of that? Why draw that? I am not asking
these questions rhetorically. I really want to know. What purpose does it
serve?
I wondered if it would have been more acceptable to say I don't hold with certain followers of a religion than to go after the religion's head himself. As a Christian, I wondered how I would feel if someone said, "Jesus isn't sacred to me" and then drew images I found very nasty. I did a quick Internet search to see if there were such images. I didn't find any although I must admit my search was only cursory.
I suppose too it is not only the disrespect for religious
images which can cause anger. It is the disrespect for other people’s feelings
about what they hold sacred (and these can be secular things like flags, the
culture of hockey, the family, the self-reliant ego). What if I were to see a
demeaning and horrible image of one of my own relatives
or friends?
What should my reaction be? As upsetting as those images
would be, I would have to step back from my anger and refrain from striking back
violently in either word or action. Murdering people who say nasty unfeeling
things is not the answer to cruel words. So, no, the cartoonists did not
deserve to be murdered. But they deserved to be criticized.
The worst of it is that, as a result their self-proclaimed
heroic stance in favour of free speech, not only did they get killed, but
innocent bystanders were killed as well, not to mention several children left
fatherless. Should they have considered that outcome, or is free speech so important
as to trump all other considerations. To what extent should people expose
others to danger in the defense of their own beliefs? A question their assassins obviously need to
ponder as well.
Where does the boundary between social satire and hate speech
lie? It is a difficult question to pose and to answer. And I am not able to
answer these questions, but just to ask them. What behaviours as a civilized
society do we require in order to be civilized? Is self-censorship always
wrong?
And if we are going to defend the right of free speech for
the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, will we also defend the right of all groups to say whatever they like? I am thinking
now of Westboro Baptist church and its adherents, whose homophobia and
incitements to violence are vile misrepresentations of what I believe as a
Christian. If their church were fire-bombed and their followers killed, should
there be a similar out-pouring in favour of their right of free speech?
Why do we so often we feel must treat others callously, in
thought, word and then, unfortunately, in deed. What does it accomplish in the
way of promoting harmonious, civilized and yes, loving, human relations?
This raises a yet more ominous question: what about people
who don’t care about civil behaviour at all?
So no, I am not suggesting that the journalists at Charlie Hebdo brought their fate upon
themselves. Their murderers chose to kill when they could have taken other paths to communicate their displeasure and disagreement. But I am decrying the brutal world we live in.
