La primera edición de la revista desde el ataque en que 12 personas fueron asesinadas incluía una caricatura de Mahoma en su portada. Myriam Francois-Cerrah presenta una objeción.
Yo nunca he sido realmente una seguidora de Charlie Hebdo – su humor era a menudo demasiado obsceno para mi gusto y estoy de acuerdo con uno de sus antiguos empleados, Olivier Cyran, que en años recientes a menudo se ha movido hacia caricaturas racistas, reforzando un ambiente ya tóxico para los Musulmanes Franceses. Para una revista supuestamente anti-establecimiento, falló en cuestionar, y a menudo reforzó, las crecientes bien documentadas restricciones a las libertades básicas de los Musulmanes. También uso en su imaginario el tipo de estereotipos raciales que fomentan precisamente el tipo de actitudes racistas que pretendían estar desafiando. En algún punto, el llamado de uno a ser anti-racista tiene que verse disminuido si los sujetos del racismo – parte de minorías – te dicen que estas siendo racista. Ignorar su voz se podría decir que es una forma sospechosa de anti-racismo.
Mi clase de sátira es un tipo que golpea hacia arriba, el tipo que llama a los poderosos a responsabilizarse y se burla de la autoridad – hay una gran diferencia entre burlarse de la clase clerical que solía gobernar Francia a través del acceso privilegiado al poder y burlarse de la fe de los descendientes de inmigrantes ampliablemente excluidos del poder y que se encuentran soportando agudos niveles de prejuicio.
La portada de la edición conmemorativa me molesta sólo en un sentido y es los estereotipos raciales utilizados en la representación del profeta Mahoma, una breve referencia a los Árabes y Musulmanes mas ampliamente considerados. Nosotros (menos mal!) no aceptaríamos una imagen de un Judío con la nariz encorvada, así que no es claro para mi por qué imágenes Árabes con narices encorvadas – porque olvídense quien es el profeta Mahoma para los Musulmanes, él es un hombre Árabe que está siendo representado en términos de estereotipos raciales – no es mas perturbador para otros. Una de mis caricaturas favoritas de Charlie Hebdo es una mostrando al profeta Mahoma siendo decapitado por un extremista. Esa imagen captura perfectamente el secuestro de la fe por los radicales y la verdad de que los Musulmanes son las víctimas primarias del terrorismo y el objetivo principal de la violencia de retaliación.
Myriam Francois-Cerrah es una escritora y periodista Británica. Este artículo fue originalmente publicado en published in The Guardian. Nota de Timothy Garton Ash: de acuerdo con la política de “1 clic de distancia” de esta página web, Usted puede hacer clic en el link del texto para ver la caricatura.
reply report Report comment
The first thing to say in response, and it must be said vehemently, again and again, is that Islam is not a race, it is a religion. Small and very dark Indonesians, tall dark Pakistanis, tall olive Arabs and jet black Africans are all Muslims.
And, if you are atheist or agnostic, Islam is just another ideology, a set of ideas constructed by an ideology promoter like Marx or Adam Smith or the proponents of modern ideologies like the theories of multiple universes and the big bang.
Why can we not consider and evaluate ideologies? Would we consider it «racist» to be repelled by the ideology of the Mayans, who promoted the idea that the sun would go out unless it were fed a stream of human sacrifices?
If we have even the slightest commitment to freedom of enquiry and freedom of speech then we accept that it is more than just acceptable to evaluate the ideologies that claim special privileges by calling themselves «faiths», it is absolutely necessary to do so.
Muslims do so. The Sunni Muslims judge the Shia to be heretics and condemn them with bombs in the marketplace. And the Shia do the same towards the Sunni. And this is not something isolated; we read of it every day in the newspapers.
If, after carefully evaluating an ideology, we find it to be aggressive and bullying then we are obliged to say so. We can say this about Marxism and Social Darwinism, and Catholicism, and the Southern Baptists in America and the Jehovah’s Witnesses; so why give Muslims a free pass.?
Why do so many people find Buddhism so appealing? Because they’ve investigated it, however deeply, and they’ve found it to be genuinely a peaceful and non-violent set of practices.
And if we investigate Islam and Mahommed, and we find a deep desire to rule the world, using force as a first resort, then we are obligated to oppose it. To say it is a minority is rubbish. The Ku Klux Klan were always a much smaller minority but we oppose them vigorously.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a tiny minority but everyone laughs at them as bunch of fools, quite rightly.
It is true that not all Muslims take their religion as seriously as Osama bin Laden, but it is the small minority of activists, swimming in the general seas of resentment, that make the running. Just like the Nazis.
Anyway, why do the Arabs in France remain outsiders The Chinese in Australia don’t; they’ve become leaders. The Arabs remain outsiders because they have a medieval religion.
Of course we must condemn this nasty ideology.
reply report Report comment
I am not sure about that which is meant here by ‘condemn’ (disapprove, censure, sentence to a punishment…?), but if it means ‘to allow or encourage critics’, then would’t it be more appropriate and to-the-point to stop focusing on Muhammed and start looking at the real issue? Muhammad was indeed a man from the Middle Age, from Late Antiquity even (for some at least). There is no way for him to be anything else. But when it comes to freedom of speech, the issue is to question the purpose of our critic. By caricaturing Muhammed, do we mean to criticise him as a ‘medieval man’ preaching a ‘medieval religion’ (what did we expect, a man in suit, neatly shaved, preaching twentieth-century peace and love?) or do we want to point out the lack of discernment, self-critic and self-questioning among his followers? The former seems to me barely useful, the latter is much more interesting, yet it requires a lot more investigation than a couple of generalising examples which in the end do exactly prove the point made in Myriam Francois-Cerrah’s article: Muslims are too often confused with Arabs and vice versa («The Arabs remain outsiders because they have a medieval religion.»), they are both considered as a whole, as if it was possible (albeit convenient I must admit) to describe people coming from Morocco to Indonesia (notwithstanding all the Muslim converts) with one single word, and the so-called condemnation is unfortunately more often than not a way to express racism or xenophobia in disguise, not against Islam (everybody agrees that Islam is not a race, there is no need to state the obvious here), but against Arabs. And it seems to me very important to allow the critic of both: Islam AND racism or xenophobia, or more precisely, of xenophobia, everywhere, in any doctrines. For it seems that medieval or antique doctrines are not necessary the main cause of non-integration, indeed, contrary to Arabs, who are easy to spot out and criticise, racist or xenophobic people are following even more archaic doctrines and they are often so well integrated in societies that they remain unnoticed. If we want to be truly efficient in our address to ‘nasty’ issues, we might be more successful in targeting the fear for and rejection of others in ANY ideology, and be an exemple in this regard, by avoiding double-standard and generalisation.