Charlie Hebdo: Some Tough Quandaries: The Fight Against Terrorism, Torture And Democracy
14 January 2015
By Boaventura de Sousa Santos
The heinous nature of the crime against the
journalists and cartoonists from Charlie Hebdo makes
it extremely difficult to offer a cool-headed analysis
of what is entailed in this barbaric act, its context
and precedents, as well as its impact and future
repercussions. Still an analysis is urgently needed,
lest we fan the flames of a fire that one of these
days may well hit our children’s schools, our homes,
our institutions and our consciences. Here are some
thoughts towards that analysis.
THE FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM: TORTURE AND DEMOCRACY
One cannot draw a direct connection between the
Charlie Hebdo tragedy and the fight against terrorism
waged by the US and its allies since September 11,
2001. It is a known fact, however, that the West’s
extreme aggressiveness has caused the death of many
thousands of innocent civilians (mostly Muslims) and
inflicted astounding levels of violence and torture on
young Muslims against whom all suspicions of
wrongdoing are speculative at best, as attested to by
the report recently submitted to the US Congress. It
is also well known that many young Islamic radicals
claim that their radicalisation stems from their anger
at all that unredressed violence.
In view of this, we must stop and consider whether the
best way to bring the spiral of violence to a halt is
to pursue the same policies that have driven it so
far, as has now become all too evident. The French
response to the attack shows that democratic,
constitutional normalcy is now suspended and an
undeclared state of siege is in place; that this type
of criminal should be shot dead rather than
incarcerated and brought to justice, and that such
behaviour in no way seems to contradict Western
values. We have entered a phase of low-intensity civil
war. Who in Europe stands to gain from it? Certainly
not the Podemos party in Spain, nor Greece’s Syriza.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
The freedom to express oneself is a precious
commodity, but it, too, has its limits, and the truth
is that the overwhelming majority of those limits are
imposed by those who advocate limitless freedom
whenever their own freedom is curtailed. The examples
of such limits are legion: in England a demonstrator
can get herself arrested for saying that David Cameron
has blood on his hands; in France Islamic women are
not allowed to wear the hijab; in 2008, cartoonist
Siné (Maurice Sinet) was fired from Charlie Hebdo for
writing an allegedly anti-Semitic article. What this
all means is that limits do exist; it’s just that they
vary for different interest groups. Take Latin
America, for example, where the major media, which are
controlled by oligarchic families and by big capital,
are the first to cry out for unrestrained freedom of
expression so that they can throw abuse at the
progressive governments and silence all the good that
these governments have done to promote the well-being
of the poor.
It seems that Charlie Hebdo knew no limits when it
came to insulting Muslims, although many of its
cartoons were racist propaganda and contributed to
feed the Islamophobic, anti-immigrant wave now
sweeping over France and Europe in general. Besides
many cartoons in which the Prophet is shown in
pornographic poses, one in particular was very much
explored by the far right. It depicted a group of
pregnant Muslim women presented as Boko Haram sex
slaves, their hands resting on their belly bump,
screaming “Hands off our welfare benefits”. At one
stroke, the cartoon stigmatised Islam, women and the
welfare state. As was to be expected, over the years
the largest Muslim community in Europe saw this
editorial line as offensive. On the other hand,
however, its condemnation of this barbaric crime was
immediate. We must therefore reflect on the
contradictions and asymmetries of the lived values
some of us believe to be universal.
TOLERANCE AND ‘WESTERN VALUES’
The context of the crime is dominated by two currents
of opinion, none of which is conducive to building an
inclusive, intercultural Europe. The more radical of
the two is openly Islamophobic and anti-immigrant.
These are the hardliners of the far right all across
Europe and of the right wherever it feels threatened
in upcoming elections (as is the case of Greece’s
Antonis Samara). For this current of thought, the
enemies of European civilization are among ‘us’. They
hate us, they wield our passports, and the situation
cannot be solved unless we get rid of them. The
anti-immigrant overtones are unmistakable. The other
current is that of tolerance. These people are very
different from us, they are a burden, but we have to
“put up with them”, for, if nothing else, they are
useful; we should do it, however, only if they behave
moderately and assimilate our values.
But what are “Western values”? After many centuries of
atrocities committed in the name of such values both
within and outside Europe – from colonial violence to
the two world wars – a degree of caution and much
reflection are in order about what those values are
and also about why, depending on the context, now some
of them, now others, tend to take precedence. For
example, no one questions the value of freedom, but
the same cannot be said for equality and fraternity,
the two values underlying the welfare state that
prevailed in democratic Europe after World War II. In
recent years, however, social protection – which used
to ensure high levels of social integration – began to
be questioned by conservative politicians and is now
seen as an unaffordable luxury by the parties of the
so-called “arc of governance”. Isn’t it true that the
social crisis caused by the erosion of social
protection and by growing unemployment, especially
among youth, is like fuel to the flames of radicalism
found among the younger generations, who, in addition
to unemployment, are the victims of ethnic and
religious discrimination?
A CLASH OF FANATICISMS, NOT OF CIVILIZATIONS
What we are facing now is not a clash of
civilizations, because Christian and Islamic
civilization share the same roots to begin with. What
we have before us is a clash of fanaticisms, even if
some of them are just too close to us to be recognized
as such. History shows that many fanaticisms and the
way in which they clashed were related to economic and
political interests, which in any event were never
beneficial to those who suffered most at the hands of
fanatics. This is the case, in Europe and its areas of
influence, of the Crusades and the Inquisition, the
evangelisation of colonial populations, the religious
wars and the conflict in Northern Ireland. Outside
Europe, a religion as peaceable as Buddhism has
legitimised the slaughter of many thousands of members
of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority; in 2003, Hindu
fundamentalists also slaughtered the Muslim
populations of Gujarat, and the likelihood of their
rise to power as a result of President Modi’s recent
victory makes one fear the worst. It is also in the
name of religion that Israel is carrying on with its
unpunished, ethnic cleansing of Palestine and that the
so-called Islamic Emirate is slaughtering Muslim
populations in Syria and in Iraq.
Could it be that the defense of unrestrained
secularism in an intercultural Europe, where many
people do not identify with this particular value, is
itself a form of extremism? Do extremisms oppose one
another? Do they interconnect? What relationships are
there between the jihadists and the Western secret
services? How come the jihadists of the Islamic
Emirate, who are now seen as terrorists, used to be
freedom fighters when they were fighting against
Gaddafi and Assad? How is it that the Islamic Emirate
is funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Turkey,
all of them allies of the West? This being said, the
fact remains that, over the last decade at least, the
overwhelming majority of victims of all fanaticisms
(including Islamic fanaticism) belonged to
non-fanatical Muslim populations.
THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE
The absolute, unconditional revulsion experienced by
Europeans in the face of these deaths should make us
wonder why they do not feel the same kind of revulsion
in the face of a similar, if not much higher, number
of innocent deaths caused by conflicts that, at
bottom, may have something to do with the Charlie
Hebdo tragedy. On that very same day, 37 young people
were killed in a bomb attack in Yemen. Last summer,
the Israeli invasion caused the death of 2,000
Palestinians, including about 1,500 civilians and 500
children. In Mexico, 102 journalists have been
murdered since 2000 for speaking up for freedom of the
press, and in November 2014, 43 young people were
killed in Ayotzinapa, also in Mexico. Surely the
difference in those reactions cannot be based on the
notion that the life of white Europeans, coming from a
Christian culture, is worth more than the lives of
non-Europeans or of Europeans of another colour, whose
culture originates in different religions or in other
regions. Is it because the latter live at a remove
from the Europeans and are less familiar to them?
On the other hand, does the Christian injunction to
love one’s neighbour provide for such distinctions? Is
it because the big media and the political leaders in
the West tend to trivialise the suffering inflicted on
those others, or even to demonise them to the point of
making us think that they had it coming?
* Boaventura de Sousa Santos is a Professor of
Sociology at the School of Economics, University of
Coimbra, Protugal. Sousa Santos has taught in various
universities including Yale, Wisconsin-Madison Law
School and University of Warwick.
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