Rabat – There is no shadow of doubt hat the terrible acts of terrorism of Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7, 2015 are condemnable, by any cultural or religious standards of any human civilization. Violence wrecks the lives of individuals, families and societies and sows fear and hatred for years to come, if not to say for decades.
Terrorism must, definitely, be checked, fought and, most importantly, stifled in the cradle, at its source or sources, by campaigns of sensitization, awareness-raising and most importantly education, bearing in mind that educating children into the love of the other and into brotherhod of humanity has been totally ignored, in a world that has gone global, too fast as the result of the digital revolution.
There are always inherent reasons for violence, for anger, for disappointment and for bitternes. No human being, nevertheless, is born violent, no human being is born angry or revengeful, it is his environment that makes him become so. However, education can play a major role in suppressing the fears, reducing the level of disgruntlement and discontent and replacing disenchantment by love and brotherhood of men.
Extreme poverty, overt injustice, racism, xenophobia, hatred, unemployment are undeniably states of mind that can push an indvidual to become violent and walk either the criminal or terrorist paths. This same individual can also be, easily, recuperated by evil spirits who can brainwash him into becoming the human delivery system of their ideology, wrapped in hate, violence and death.
Culture of marginalization
Many second, third, etc. generation of Muslim kids, all over Europe and, especially, in France, find themselves forsaken and alone, rejected by their countries of origin, because they do not speak the language and do not function properly in the culture, but, at the same time, they are rejected and abhorred by their country of birth and adoption and its selfish society.
In this particular situation, these adolescents, easily influenced, find themselves in need of identity, in need of belonging and in need of some sort of patriarchy. These fragile and unhappy kids are easly recuperated by loving and caring religious patriarchs. This is well illustrated in the excellent film of Nabil Ayyouch entitled “Horses of God,” which takes place in the shantytown of Sidi Moumen in Casablanca, where future terrorists of the May 2003 events, in this city, are recruited and trained to kill and maim.
With the economic crisis in Europe at its height, the fragile Muslim kids, who, are in majority school drop-outs, with no future prospects, are exasperated by their misfortune and further angered by the rise of racism and Islamophobia, fall prey to another form of extremism, Salafism, that preaches hate and death.
The extremism of certain European press
The visual depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are prohibited by the Islamic tadition. It is true that the Quran does not explicitly forbid drawings, but it forbids strongly idols and idolatry, however, the Sunnah, the other important source of the islamic faith, does vigorously. Muslims, whether Sunni or Shi’ite are all averse to visual representations of the Prophet, actually the Shi’ite represent Ali, the Fourth Rashidun Caliph but not the Prophet. This has encouraged, in Sunni Islam, the incredible development of calligraphy into a parallel artistic expression.
However, today things have changed, in many countries of the Muslim world, in spite of the rule banning idols, authorities erect statues of human heroes in public places like in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, etc. or things like bicycles in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, or Shells and dows in Bahrain, Qatar and UAE and are referred to as moujasamat.
In other countries, like Morocco, the statues are a definite no-no, but, on the other hand, paintings have flourished since independence and king Mohammed VI has even inaugurated, recently, a museum of modern art in Rabat, bearing his name.
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Calligraphy tile from Turkey (18th century), containing the names of God, Muhammad, and his first four successors, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali[/caption]
Following the unfortunate events of 9/11, many European press institutions decided to openly strike Islam where its hurts the most i.e. in the person of the Prophet Muhammad, who is considered sacred by 1,5 billion Muslims worlwide.
This well-orchestrated hate campaign was put into effect under the banner of freedom of expression, which is, of course, inscribed in gold in the constiutions of Western countries. The trial implementation of this project was initiated in the northern and, somewhat, remote Scandinavian country Danemark, where, a hitherto, unkown newspaper Jyllands-Posten published in 2006 a set of insulting and venemous cartoons, depicting the Prophet as a terrorist. This was the first frontal attack on Islam, as a faith, since the Crusades. The aim was three fold:
1- Denigrate the most sacred symbol of Islam and by so doing insult indirectly 1,5 billion Muslims and call them terrorists whether they are extremists or not (blanket treatment);
2- Check to what extent the Prophet is loved and respected by Muslims;
3- Check to what extent Islam is strong in the Muslim world; and
4- Check to what extent Muslims would go to defend their faith in the face of encroaching and defacing globalization and any form of scorn.
Charlie Hebdo’s onslaught on Islam
In September 2012, Charlie Hebdo took over the insulting task of the unknown Danish newspaper and basically made Islam-bashing its cheval de guerre. In January 2013, this satirical magazine announced its intention to publish a comic book on the life of the Prophet. As a reaction to that, in March of the same year, al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula –AQAP- published a hit list of the offenders of the Prophet in which the magazine was included. Unfortunately, the terrorist design of this extremist organization was put to effect on January 7, 2015 by killing the journalists of Charlie Hebdo and by so doing opened the hell gate of the clash of faiths and the increase of the fervor of Islamophobia in the West.
Indeed, during the Paris march of Sunday January 11, 2015 many particiants were seen sporting the battle dress of the Crusaders. Already President Bush, in the aftermath of the unfortunate 9/11 has spoken about the Crusade. Would the Christian West, which is probably not that secular, after all, go on a crusade against the Muslim world?
For some, the Crusade war has started with the methodolical vilification of the Prophet Muhammad by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the West is hiding behind this publication to see to what extent the Muslim world would go in defense of the Prophet. If the reaction is begnin, then the destruction of the faith will be progressively put in effect through massive secularization of the society, if it is otherwise, horses will be held back until further notice, maybe. As such, this satirical publication is, probably, only a small tool in a big design or rather a small cog in a huge machinery of scorn and hate.
Even after the January 7, 2015 massacre, Charlie Hebdo is still pursuing its attacks on Islam by publishing, yet again, a drawing of the prophet in the cover of its post-attack magazine issue saying, in a tearful manner: “Tout est pardonné” (All is forgiven). The question is: who is forgiving what? The Muslims forgiving the magazine for its repetitive insults, or the latter pardoning the Muslim radicals for decimating their leadership, or is it just a pure act of defiance, whereby the publication says to the Muslims, we will continue defiling your conscience come what may.
Probably the biggest achievemnt, to date, of Charlie Hebdo, this tiny and insignificant magazine, that thinks the world of itself, has destroyed, by the stroke of an insultng pen, all the efforts of rapprochement between the West and the Muslim world, undertaken painstaikingly after 9/11, because indeed after the umpteenth publication of the insulting drawings of the Prophet, immediately demonstrations erupted in Pakistan, Algeria, Jordan, Iran, Chechnya and Niger and indignation through the press or communiqués of political parties or NGOs, all over the Muslim world.
Once more, Charlie Hebdo has insulted openly and purposefully 1,5 billion Muslims all over the world, under the cover of the sacro-sanct ideal of freedom of expression, which probably should be renamed freedom of insult, whereby a handful of left wing atheists or else can make fun of the belief of billions of people across the world. Is not preached democracy wonderful, after all? Maybe the handful journalists are civilized and the billions of Muslims are barbarians, who need to be taught true civilization. In this condescending respect, Charlie Hebdo is adopting the time-old colonial and imperialistic values of the France of the past, but in a different way and approach.
Respecting the other in his “otherness”
The unfortunate massacre of Charlie Hebdo has drawn the whole West behind this magazine, as if to say, openly: “go about bashing Islam in the name of democracy,” with no respect, whatsever, of the other in his “otherness.” The message sent here is urging the Muslims to get rid of their belief and way of life and adopt the values of an alien culture, so much for cutural dialogue and peaceful coexistence. Democracy yes, but a democracy that respects the individual in his beliefs and culture, a democracy that is not insulting and demeaning and belittling the other.
Since the loathsome events of 9/11, the West has pursued a three-fold approach towards the Muslims:
The Use of the big stick:
Immediately after these terrible events, revengeful President Bush got a worldwide coalition and attacked Afghanistan and Taliban who, housed the extremist organization of al-Qaeda. But Bush did not think that was enough projection of the might of America in his crusade. In the same vein, he got together another coalition to bash, yet, another Muslim country i.e. Iraq, on the ground that it was going nuclear and as such represents a danger to its neighbors, especially after its attack on the small neighbor Kuwait to rob it as one would rob a bank. The onslaught on Iraq was painful to the whole Islamic world. The use of the American big stick reminded the Muslim world of the episode of the Crusades as well as that of colonization and not to forget, of course, the Spanish Reconquista and the following Inquisition. In the Muslim subconscious, the West symbolizes more and more emasculation, humiliation and belittling. Unfortuately, nothing is done, even today, to establish some sort of egalitarian relationship between the West and Islam, instead of the abhorred patron-client system in place is perduring.
The Encouragement of moderate Islam:
The omnipresent West encouraged actively the rise of moderate Islam in politics in the Muslim world and, as such, moderate Muslims of the Justice and Development Party –AKP-, which abondoned strict Islamist theory in favor of conservative democracy, arrived to power in Turkey in 2002 and still rules the country today,as a result, of its popularity and especially the economic boom its policies achieved in Turkey.
In Egypt, the Islamic party of Muslim Brothers al-ikhwan al-muslimun arrived democratically to power in 2012 with Morsi as president, one year later the army, at the instigation of, probably, the Americans, overthrew democracy and since al-Sisi, the military general turned civilian president, is still fighting the Ikhwan, crushing democratic aspirations of the Egyptians and trying, at the same time, to build a political coalition to counter moderate Muslim politicians in the Muslim world. A move that is, not only irresponible, but mostly unethical.
In Tunisia, the moderate Islamic party Ennahda, that came back from exile in Britain, after the demise of the dictator Ben Ali, to be elected democratically during the transitional phase, was recently brushed aside in favor of the new party Nidaa Tounes. Maybe because of their exile experience in Britain, they accepted the democratic game wholehearedly, a clever move that sets the stage for democracy in the only Arab Spring country in the region.
In Morocco, the revamping of the constitution in 2011, allowed the moderate Islamic party eponym of the Turkish one: the Justice and Development Party -PJD-, to assume power under the leadership of Benkirane, and is still at the helm, today, in a kind of power-sharing with the king. Unlike their Turkish friends, the Moroccan Islamic party policies are not popular, especially in their drive to reduce gradually subsidies to please the World Bank and disburden excessive public spending.
The Inter-faith and cultural dialogue:
In the aftermath of 9/11, many Western countries launched inter-faith and cultural dialogue with the Muslim world. At the beginning, the initiative was gratifying in every respect and managed to get people from both sides to talk and consider ways to achieve understanding by eliminating bad blood resulting from stereotyping, vilification and misunderstanding, but, soon, this important action lost steam and dwindled to mere empty meetings.
Alongside, the UN created, under its auspices, an organization called “Alliance of Civilizations,” which initially was inspiring but soon became a self-perpetuating institution highly-bureaucratic and inefficient, with no in-field presence and no promising initiatives.
In the Muslim world, however, the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization –ISESCO- has since 1992, under the leadership of its able and charismatic Director General Dr Abdulaziz Altwaijri, a Saudi moderate Muslim intellectual and thinker, been continuously, in many of its programs, working towards establishing a lasting dialogue with the West through in-field activities in educaion, science and culture. In total silence and humilty. This inter-governmental organization part of OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) has been extremely effective and the West can learn a lot from its long experience, undoubtedly.
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ISESCO’s headquarters in Rabat, Morocco[/caption]
The Academic interest in the Muslim world:
Keen on establishing a better understanding of Islam, the Muslims and their culture, the American universities launched semester abroad programs in such countries as : Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, etc. whereby students spend a full semester in one of these countries studying Arabic language, both classical and colloquial, as well as local culture and Islam, while living with local host families.
Obviously the aim of such programs is to train a number of undergraduates to become experts on the Muslim world and either work, later on, for the government or the private sector as advisors on this part of the world. In this position they can certainly further American political and military might and its economic and cultural interests in the area efficiently and in total political correctness.
Do you understand and speak “cultural sensitivity”?
The concept of cultural sensitivity is very high in America, which is a melting pot of many cultures and beliefs, coming from all over the world. To sustain harmoy between the different races and cultures, the Americans, in their daily life, put emphasis in the respect of the other and everything that is dear to him and close to his heart. Thus, they highlight the concept of cultural sensitivity in the overall American culture to the extent that it has become a sacred concept for them in their daily life. In Europe, the concept is inexistent in France, Spain, Italy, UK and Germany, so, to a certain extent, making fun of the other, who is alien, is almost a national sport. In France, derision and mockery is very omnipresent in the culture, to the extent of insult, when it involves other ways of life and beliefs.
For the French, the freedom of expression has, indeed, the taste of freedom of insult, the freedom of being culturally insensitive to the needs of others. The French government defends this right as one of the pillars of its famed laicité (secularism). It seems that in the name of this laicité anybody can treat the beliefs and cultures of others with total mockery and scorn because it is his right to do so and nobody can dispute it, if anyone does, then, he is anti-democratic and maybe a terrorist, in the case of a Muslim.
The publication of yet another cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad by the magazine Charlie Hebdo, is undoubtedly an act of escalation of anger and hatred towards the Muslims worldwide, which led to angry demonstrations in various countries, the most violent of which were in Niger, where 6 churches were burned to the ground, and thanks to this magazine the lives of many innocent Christians are put in jeopardy worldwide, and unfortunately, more such violence will come about in the futre.
The American press, aware of the Islamophobic danger of the drawings of the Prophet, in the issue of Charlie Hebdo following the Paris terrorist attack, refused politely to publish them, not out of fear, but out of cultural sensitivity and the same must be said of the non-participation of any representative of the American government in the official march of January 11, 2015.
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People hold wooden sticks next to a damaged car during a demonstration against French weekly Charlie Hebdo's publication of a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed in Niamey, on January 17, 2015 ©Boureima Hama (AFP)[/caption]
For Charlie Hebdo, the freedom to insult the others in their sacred beliefs is a sacred french republican right. So, because France, in its concept of secularism has given the press this right, to hell with the sensitivity of the rest of the world. It is worth nothing. The chief editor of this outrageous magazine Gerard Biard, has even gone one step further, by calling the right to insult the other, freedom of conscience, but obviously he did not explain what he meant by this new concept, in an interview with the American TV station NBC.
Chaque fois que nous faisons un dessin de Mahomet, chaque fois que nous faisons un dessin de prophètes, chaque fois que nous faisons un dessin de Dieu, nous défendons la liberté de conscience
He goes on to say that God must not be a private personality but a public one, open to criticism
Nous disons que Dieu ne doit pas être une figure politique ou publique. Il doit être une figure privée. Nous défendons la liberté de conscience, Il s’agit certes de la liberté d’expression, mais également de la liberté de conscience». «La religion ne doit pas être un argument politique.
In an article of the right-leaning newspaper, Le Figaro, Edouard de Mareschal, goes on to explain what is meant by freedom of conscience, which he believes was wrongly translated by NBC as freedom of religion. For him freedom of consience, is freedom to believe or not believe in a religion or a system of moral and philosophical values. Freedom of religion is only a tiny part of this set of values:
…la liberté de conscience permet à chacun d’adopter le système de valeurs religieuses, philosophiques ou morales de son choix ; ce qui implique la liberté de croire ou de ne pas croire en Dieu. La liberté religieuse est une composante de la liberté de conscience, qui permet à chacun de choisir et d’exercer librement sa religion.
However, both the editor in chief of Charlie Hebdo and Le Figaro’s journalist do not touch upon the right to respect the belief of the other, which is the crux of the polemic here.
The war of faiths is on
The irresponsible actions of Charlie Hebdo, in the name of “freedom of expression” or “freedom of conscience,” shows quite clearly that the West by wanting to impose its culture, by the means of globalization has, purposefully, ignited another round of the clash of religions.
At the same time, Pegida is gaining ground in Germany, where there is a large Muslim population from Turkey, very much attached to its religion and culture. This will lead to increasing animosity and prepare the ground for terrorism and its correlate Islamophobia, in the future. Pegida is also trying to set up similar Islamophobic movements in other European countries to organize protests and hate campaigns. The Spanish government, has recently outlawed an Islamophobic march instigated by this German institution to take place in Madrid and Valencia, on the grounds that it will lead to unwanted public unrest.
Islamophobia is sharply on the rise in France, following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, many mosques were torched and a Moroccan migrant was stabbed to death by a Frenchman 17 times, in front of his wife and his child, while crying hysterically: “I am your god, I am Islam.” This horrible Islamophobic crime, incidently was played down by French media, but reported by the British newspaper The Independent:
A Moroccan man in France was brutally killed after being stabbed 17 times in front of his wife at his own home by a neighbour in what is described as a “horrible Islamophobic attack”. Mohamed El Makouli was confronted by a 28-year-old attacker who forced himself through the front door at around 1:30am on Wednesday, shouting “I am your god, I am your Islam”, the National Observatory Against Islamophobia said yesterday. The father of one, 47, was killed in the quiet village of Beaucet, near Avignon in southern France, while his 31-year-old wife Nadia tried to save him. She suffered wounds to her hands before she fled the scene with their child to call the police.
The reaction of the Islamic world to the Charlie Hebdo hate campaign is going crescendo, after the demonstrations reported here above, a wide campaign is taking place on the net to denounce this virulent unjustified attack on the Muslim faith and its symbols. A Moroccan NGO is announcing the organization of one-million-faithful march on February 1, 2015 in Casablanca, Morocco. In this regard, Morocco World News reports that:
According to the organizers, the rally, which is under the theme “No to mocking the prophet, No to terrorism,” will take place on February 1 at 10:00 am in Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city. The organizers of the event said on their Facebook page that the aim of the march is to confirm that Moroccans denounce terrorism, but at the same time will not accept any mockery of the prophet of Islam.
Other NGOS, in different parts of the Muslim world are calling for the economic boycot of French products and French companies.
Double standards
Many Muslims believe that terrorism is the result of a double standards approach, adopted over decades by the West towards the causes of this part of the world and this is still continuing unabated, today, in the following cases
Palestinian demise:
Israel was created in 1948, on Palestinian land, as a result of the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 made in a correspondence (letter) by the, then, British foreign secretay, Arthur James Balfour to the leader of British Jewry, Lionel Walter Rotschild, expressing British (colonial power in control of the area) active support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
As such, Israel was created and the Palestinians are still denied, today, the right to have their own state and homeland. They are shamefully parked in the largest open-sky prisons in the world, of which they do not have the right to leave unless Israel gives them the permission. When the Palestinians take arms to fight for their undeniable right to have their own homeland, the whole West calls them terrorists, which means that Israel has the right to have its own country and a very strong army (5th strongest army in the world), but not the wretchd Palestinians.
The Israeli army has the right, anytime, to pound and kill the Palestinians in the open prison of Gaza, at will, with all imaginable lethal weapons possible killing hundreds of people, including the children and the aged. This is called self-defense, but, on the other hand, the Palestinian resistance is considered as acts of terrorism and not freedom fighting.
In ths particular case, linguistic definitions of terms are changed frequently to accommodate the West and Israel, with no problem of conscience, whatsoever.
Volatile concept use:
The Finish Minister of foreign affairs Erkki Tuomioja was bothered by the linguistic volatility of certain terms used in the West. He says that if he mocks the blacks he will be called a racist, if he derides women he will be taxed as a chauvinist, if he vilifies the Jews he will be viewed and denounced as an anti-semitic but if he attacks Islam it is seen as freedom of expression, or as Charlie Hebdo views it: freedom of conscience.
Would Pegida and Charlie Hebdo mock the Blacks or the Shoah (Holocaust) in their publications, protests or any other acts? They never did and they will never do, for fear to be attacked by the world Jewry as anti-semitic and dragged to the tribunals and made to pay huge fines and even, for that matter, go to jail. But their fear is not that they are scared of the pssibility of being slammed by the United States and listed as anti-semitic entities.
Given this, however, they can mock Islam, at will, because Muslims, in their belief, are all terrorists and barbarians and certainly are not part of the Judeo-Christian established tradition of their venerable West.
Final word
The question to be asked, however, is: Why does the West treat Islam in this fashion? Is it because of the fear of its swift propagation worldwide or because of hatred resulting from the Crusades and the Ottoman past, or else?
Anyway, now the season of Islam-bashing is officially open and all wrongdoings to the Muslims in the West will be excused and understood. So much for inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue.
The West seems to say openly, we want your money, but we cannot stand you and stand your faith and your Prophet.
Of course, nobody can deny that there are a lot of voices of reason and wisdom in the Western world, one just hopes that these voices of peace and coexistence will prevail over the present persistent call for hatred and Islamophobia. Let us, all, pray for that from the depths of our heart. Amen.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy
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