You do not have to go that far back in human history to have seen people burned at the stake, hung, drawn and quartered and otherwise treated very badly for having ‘blasphemed’ (although my favourite blasphemy scene is still from Monty Python’s Life of Brian where John Cleese plays a rabbi calling for the death of man but who is stoned instead by the rabble!). Insulting God (or gods) was once taken very seriously.
Thankfully, at least in the West, the power of religious institutions has waned and they are no longer in a position to impose their own penalties – or worse, get the state to impose them – against anyone deemed to have committed an act deemed contrary to religious strictures.
As a consequence, we have media like Charlie Hebdo in France which takes satire, parody and, yes, insults, to a new level. No one and no institution is immune from the periodical’s sting, as it seeks to poke fun at those who think too much of themselves. Charlie Hebdo is, in essence, the ultimate ‘leveler’, bringing the high and mighty down to those of use at a lower rung. And it does so with the full protection of French law. It does not advocate hate or violence, and while some of its material may be of questionable ‘taste’ to some, it does not deserve punishment from the state.
Tell that to the jihadis.
Ten years ago, Al Qaeda (AQ)-inspired terrorists killed twelve people at the offices of the irreverent newspaper in retribution for publishing cartoons deemed by the extremists as blasphemous against the Prophet Muhammad. A few years later, another jihadi killed and beheaded a French school teacher, Samuel Paty, after a student said (lied) that he posted obscene pictures of Muhammad. In Denmark, four men were found guilty in 2012 for planning a terrorist attack on the offices of the newspaper Jyllands Posten over similar caricatures. Killing over drawings. Go figure.
Well, Charlie Hebdo has decided to mark the occasion by asking people to send in images mocking God. Some may see the outlet as crazy: why would you invite similar wrath to what you had experienced a decade ago? Haven’t you made your point at a terrible cost to the lives of your employees? And yet, there is something very fundamental about freedom at stake here.
The bottom line is: it is not, and should not be, a crime to insult someone’s belief system. It may be impolite, boorish and, dare I say, un-Canadian, to do so, but in the absence of promoting hate or violence against an individual or group, what I say and the way I choose to express my views must be protected in a free and open society. If anyone dislikes what I am promoting they are equally able to ignore me, turn the channel, ‘unlike’ me on social media, or insult me in return. Tit for tat as it were.
The problem is that far too many people take what they perceive as the vilification of their deity or prophet as justification for murder. The Charlie Hebdo, Samuel Paty and Jyllands Posten attacks were all Islamist in nature and occurred in Western Europe, but other nations (e.g. Pakistan) have been the scene of similar acts against ‘blasphemers’ (the accusations are often based on misinformation). And lest you think I am being ‘Islamophobic’, Hindu extremists have carried out killings in India on similar grounds (often against Muslims they charge with ‘love jihad’: i.e. marrying Hindu women and forcibly converting them to Islam as part of a plan to achieve an Islamic majority in that country).
I therefore salute Charlie Hebdo for their cheekiness even if I do find it a tad puerile and unnecessary (“I may disagree with you have to say but I will defend to the death your right to say it”). What we do NOT need is for Western states to outlaw this form of satire as well as ‘Quran burnings’ as this merely convinces extremists that their form of violence and cowing opposition to their views works in the end. Hello Denmark.
Some would counter this is all crass and unhelpful, and they are probably correct. But so are many other things in life (wearing socks and sandals, riding one’s bike on the sidewalk, most comments on social media these days, Toronto Maple Leafs fans…) and they are not illegal. Do we really want to return to a society where terrorists, the state, or the church/synagogue/mosque/gurdwara/temple is the arbiter of what we can and cannot do?
I didn’t think so.
