Charlie Hebdo, you have got what you deserved. Not only that, but you have got what you wanted.
These teenage graffiti artists knew that this would happen. They wanted it to happen. It has happened. Thus does the adult world collide with adolescent behaviour. Everyone has to learn sometime.
This was not serious theological, philosophical, historical, political, anthropological or sociological engagement with Islam. I am the first to say that that needs to be very highly critical. A chapter, among other parts, of my next book will be like that.
No, this was just abuse, deliberately in order to provoke a reaction from the abused, whom the abusers knew perfectly well were obliged in their own terms to react. And now, the abused have reacted. That is what happens when schoolboys play with matches. They get burnt.
Which ought to teach them that some things are better left to grown-ups. But will it?
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Sorry but I don't think anybody deserve to have their workplace burnt down just because they say something offensive. That is not civilised behaviour as well you know. Maybe the extremists who did this should learn to turn the other cheek?
ReplyDeleteIn other words, they should convert to Christianity. Quite.
ReplyDeleteBut that was not what the Charlie Hebdo lot wanted. They wanted this. Well, now they have got it. I hope that they are glad.
My goodness, I never thought I'd disagree, let alone voice the same.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anon, irrespective of their juvenile behaviour, the response was unjustified and represents a serious threat to freedom of expression.
Tensions are running high at the moment in France and there has also been unjustified attacks on Catholics of late:
France: Catholic Muslim tensions rise as Catholics attacked with stones and websites hacked
And yes I am somewhat nervous at your response so be gentle :)
The response was what they knew that they would get, and it was what they wanted for their own publicity purposes. They should be glad, and I think that they are.
ReplyDeleteCharlie Hebdo is hardly a friend of the Eternal France, Eldest Daughter of Holy Mother Church. On the contrary, just as Geert Wilders's real targets are the Catholic and the conservative Protestant "pillars" of Dutch society, so the real targets of these undergraduate humourists, however old they might have grown in a purely physical sense, is Catholic France.
Charlie Hebdo is hardly a friend of the Eternal France, Eldest Daughter of Holy Mother Church. On the contrary, just as Geert Wilders's real targets are the Catholic and the conservative Protestant "pillars" of Dutch society, so the real targets of these undergraduate humourists, however old they might have grown in a purely physical sense, is Catholic France.
ReplyDeleteOh gosh, OK, I didn't know any of that. I'm especially shocked at the Geert Wilders comment. I thought his enemy was Islam.
Have you blogged about this aspect of Geert Wilders campaign before?
Many times.
ReplyDeleteWilder is the heir to the mantle of Pim Fortuyn, with Dutchness defined in terms of the legalisation of drugs, the lowering of the age of consent to 12, and so on. From the German-speaking Europe of the nineteenth century (and to this day in Austria) to the present Israeli Cabinet, extreme nationalism is routinely an aspect of extreme secular-liberalism, and vice versa. Even the EDL is an example of that, if a particularly inarticulate and unintellectual one. But I blogged quite recently about why Britain has no Far Right intellectuals.
So Wilders's real targets are things like the Dutch monarchy, a recent traget just as the BNP wants to abolish the British one. Things, in other words, like the Orthodox Calvinist "pillar", now as numerous in terms of churchgoers as the Dutch Reformed Church from which it seceded in the nineteenth century and which once outnumbered it by six to one. And things like the Catholic Church.
I blogged quite recently about why Britain has no Far Right intellectuals.
ReplyDeleteYes, I read that post, as I do most.
I find this all quite shocking nontheless.
I have an awful lot to learn....
Haven't we all?
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna be honest here David, and if you've already posted on this then forgive me and point me to your material.
ReplyDeleteThe far-right, the BNP, but more interestingly to me, the EDL, seek to cover themselves in a Christian mantle.
Now today, I posted some interesting stats re the EDL, if I may be so bold:
English Defense League (EDL): 45% profess to be Christians, 7% cite religion as important personal value.
Is there the possibilty that although the EDL present themselves as anti-Islam and protectors of all things 'British' Christian (rather like the BNP); that they are in fact enemies of the same?
Oh, undoubtedly.
ReplyDeleteI am surprised that that 45 per cent figure is not higher, since they use a definition of "Christian" to mean "white, and militantly anti-Muslim".
But that seven per cent figure is about right, and the religion in question would be some sort of purportedly Norse or Anglo-Saxon pagan confection, or else the likes of British-Israelism.
Seven per ecnt of EDL members is, of course, a negligible number of people. Noisy and dangerous. But vanishingly small. After all, how many people do you know who subscribe, either to some sort of purportedly Norse or Anglo-Saxon pagan confection, or else to the likes of British-Israelism?
I wish you'd write something for my blog.
ReplyDeletedavidaslindsay@hotmail.com
ReplyDeleteAlthough, having said that, I am a little zionsist in my leanings.
ReplyDeleteI do worry about the anti-zionist Christian side, which (to me) leans a little on the anti-Semitic side for my liking.
I don't grant a blank cheque to Israel, but do feel that Christians have some historical responsibility for the same.
I accept the State of Israel as a fact of life. My primary concern is for the ancient indigenous Christian communities there, and with and within that for general Christian access to the Holy Places.
ReplyDeleteWhere do the BNP say that they're anti-Monarchy?
ReplyDeleteMosley's lot "venerated" the Crown so I'd have thought Griffin and co would too!
My primary concern is for the ancient indigenous Christian communities there
ReplyDeleteAnd me.
This country retains a monarchy, and that monarchy commands the very intense loyalty of the lower middle class that is any Fascist movement's base, as it is certainly the BNP's and the EDL's; that party, at least, therefore has to keep quiet about its policy of abolition. But that policy is there.
ReplyDeleteFascists do not like monarchies, and in fact the BNP wishes to abolish Britain's. But they draw equally on the absolutism of the bourgeois republic created paradigmatically in France, and on the princely absolutism developed out of pre-Revolutionary sources, especially Jean Bodin, in reaction against the Revolution and its many imitations.
It combines and focuses them both in a Leader figure who is neither a prince, nor drawn from and answerable to republican institutions (in the broader sense of a res publica) such as a strong Parliament. He characteristically bypasses such institutions by means of the referendum. And he performs the ceremonial functions that would have been performed by the abolished monarchy or local nobility, squirarchy or whatever.
Had there still been all those kings, princes, grand dukes and the rest doing their stuff in their apparently funny uniforms across German-speaking Europe or the Italian Peninsula, then there would have been no gap for Hitler or Mussolini to fill. There is no such gap in Britain.
What is more, the present Royal Family is both part-black, through Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and her Lusotropical ancestors, and, via the part-Moorish Elizabeth of York, descended from Muhammad. There is no doubt about either of those facts, and the latter is very well-known in the Islamic world.
"The civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" were "not to be prejudiced", according to the Balfour Declaration. But they have been, and they are being.
ReplyDeleteThe Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and for that matter the East Bank, are all one or more other stories. But when it comes to Israel proper, why did we not do for those "existing non-Jewish communities" what we later did for the East African Asians? Is it still too late to do that, not with a view to flying them over here, but in order to create that possibility while making it clear that, while they remained where they were, then they enjoyed the full undertaking that we gave to them?
An undertaking given when they legally owned most of the land, rather than when their villages appeared on no official map, therefore enjoyed no amenities, and could look forward, either to being demolished by the State as such, or at the very least to having their places of worship and de facto community centres (churches as well as mosques) burnt down by the strongest supporters of the Government, if not by actual agents of the parties of government. We promised them that nothing like that would happen. We owe them. We owe them a hell of a lot.
If the Arab labouring class ever were to be evacuated to Britain or anywhere else, then the Israeli economy would simply collapse, as the South African one did when the black working class just stopped working. Let that possibility exist on a permanent basis. And if we are finally to make good Balfour's promise to defend "the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine", then are we also finally to make good his promise to defend "the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country", now and increasingly no less "prejudiced", and that for the same reason?
Meanwhile, very extensive devolution to the very local level, Jewish or Arab, religious or secular, Muslim or Christian, et cetera. Three parliamentary chambers, each about one third the size of the present one, namely one for the Haredim, one for the Arabs, and one for everyone else. All legislation to require the approval of all three chambers.
Each chamber to elect a Co-President, all three of whom would have to approve all legislation and senior appointments. Each chamber to be guaranteed a Minister in each department and at least a quarter of Cabinet posts. Yiddish to be recognised, as the quid pro quo for recognising all those villages in the Galilee and the Negev.
The alliance necessary to pull this off would take an awful lot of effort. But two peoples facing nothing less than denaturalisation could very well be prepared to make that amount of effort. The other lot should have had more children, or bothered to move there from places like London and New York. But they didn't.
Oh my goodness David, I'm reading and re-reading and just rubbing my hands through my hair at the moment.
ReplyDeleteUgh, there's so much I don't know.
This reminds of the young woman who came up with "Draw Muhammad Day" and then had to go into hiding after she received death threats. Was it worth all the trouble to make some snarky drawings? Did she even think about how her stunt would impact herself or her family?
ReplyDeleteI don't condone the threats of course, but there are respectful and intelligent ways to discuss the issues at hand rather than simply waving the red flag in front of the bull, so to speak.
I can find absolutely nothing in the BNP manifesto that suggests they aspire to abolish the monarchy.
ReplyDeleteWhat is your evidence for this?
Even they are savvy enough to keep it out of their manifesto. But it is there in numerous articles, policy papers and so on, being the inescapable logic of their position generally. Like New Labour, in its day. And Thatcherism before that.
ReplyDeletedid they get what they deserved today David?
ReplyDeleteNo.
DeleteTell Kamm that I am touched that he keeps such a dossier of my effusions.
http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/theyll-always-have-paris.html
ReplyDelete