Editorial The Guardian 7 January 2015
Jihadi Kalashnikovs murdered journalists in Paris, but their aim was at stifling liberty of expression everywhere. The condemnation must be unequivocal
Events in Paris today were beyond belief, indeed beyond words. The adjectives are simply not there to capture the horror unleashed by weapons of war in a civilian office. But the murder of at least a dozen French citizens, including 10 journalists on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, was beyond belief in another sense too.
Whatever faith-based or other objections there may once have been to the publication’s provocative editorial judgments are now entirely beside the point. “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it,” runs the famous formulation. When men and women have gone to their deaths for nothing more than what they have said, or drawn, there is only one side to be on. The hooded thugs trained their Kalashnikovs on free speech everywhere. If they are allowed to force a loss of nerve, conversation will become inhibited, and liberty of thought itself will falter too.
While much remains to be established about the killers, some uncomfortable truths are plain. Shouts of “Allahu Akbar” were heard, revealing an inspiration that appears to come from some warped version of Islam. Two men were seen immediately and the authorities were soon hunting a third, so this was no act of a deranged individual. The targeting of a weekly editorial conference implies a ruthless concern to maximise the toll, pursued with a chilling preparedness. The heavy weaponry, too, suggests frighteningly organised links.
All this points towards jihadi terrorism, which has been a rare but very real menace in the west throughout this young century. Mostly, as in the Madrid train bombings of 2004 and the Woolwich murder of 2013, barbarism has been justified with reference to western war-making in the Muslim world. More rarely, as in the murder of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh, real-life violence has poured over from something more akin to a culture war. The targeting of Charlie Hebdo, which was followed by the cry “we have avenged the prophet Muhammad”, looks like another such case. The publication has been subject to threats and fury for the best part of a decade, particularly after, in 2006, it reproduced and added extra barbs to Danish cartoons of Muhammad, which had already created a great storm around the world. Such depictions are, of course, blasphemy to most Muslims, but far from relenting, the editors played double or nothing, going on to produce such provocations as a special issue “guest-edited” by the prophet.
To the devout, including very many who are as peace-loving as they are pious, all this was deeply offensive. And, in a way, that was the intention: satire has to shock. Being shocking is going to involve offending someone. If there is a right to free speech, implicit within it there has to be a right to offend. Any society that’s serious about liberty has to defend the free flow of ugly words, even ugly sentiments.
But there is, perhaps, something distinctly French about the form of offensiveness that Charlie Hebdo revelled in. Anti-clericalism has always been a Republican rallying cry, especially on the left, in a way that’s unknown in Britain and the US. Radicals, as the murdered journalists assuredly saw themselves, have always mocked Christian humbug, just as Charlie Hebdo did, and never seen any principled reason to show more deference to other faiths. Such strident secularism goes hand-in-hand with that assertive conception of French citizenship which was on display when the national assembly resolved to ban the full face veil, with only a single deputy voting against.
In the face of outrage, it is especially important that the necessary resolution to defend Republican virtues is not allowed to slide into any kind of backlash against France’s entire Muslim community, the largest in Europe, somehow blaming the peaceful majority for the unforgivable actions of a violent few. The immediate and unalloyed condemnation by the umbrella faith group, the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France, points to the sort of cross-community solidarity that is required.
Different societies may overreact to terrorism in different ways, but all are prone to do so somehow – witness the Senate’s report on American torture for one example, in another context. More significant than any distinction between the societies battling the jihadi threat are the parallels. If there are liberals in London wondering whether the roots of today’s atrocity trace back to France’s unease with multiculturalism, they should reflect that if the same thing happened here – and who is to say it could not? – then there would surely be secularists in Paris speculating on whether the underlying issue was Britain’s moral relativism and faith schools.
Poverty and discrimination at home may create fertile conditions for the spread of extremism, and western misadventures abroad can certainly inflame the risks. In the end, though, the responsibility for the sort of murders seen today lies squarely with the murderers. All those who are appalled by these crimes must use the free speech which the killers sought to silence – and use it to condemn them, without equivocation.