Placing The Blame For The #CharlieHebdo Massacre Where It Belongs

By George Packer, The New Yorker

The murders today in Paris are not a result of France’s failure to assimilate two generations of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. They’re not about French military action against the Islamic State in the Middle East, or the American invasion of Iraq before that. They’re not part of some general wave of nihilistic violence in the economically depressed, socially atomized, morally hollow West—the Paris version of Newtown or Oslo. Least of all should they be “understood” as reactions to disrespect for religion on the part of irresponsible cartoonists. 

They are only the latest blows delivered by an ideology that has sought to achieve power through terror for decades. It’s the same ideology that sent Salman Rushdie into hiding for a decade under a death sentence for writing a novel, then killed his Japanese translator and tried to kill his Italian translator and Norwegian publisher. The ideology that murdered three thousand people in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. The one that butchered Theo van Gogh in the streets of Amsterdam, in 2004, for making a film. The one that has brought mass rape and slaughter to the cities and deserts of Syria and Iraq. That massacred a hundred and thirty-two children and thirteen adults in a school in Peshawar last month. That regularly kills so many Nigerians, especially young ones, that hardly anyone pays attention. 

Because the ideology is the product of a major world religion, a lot of painstaking pretzel logic goes into trying to explain what the violence does, or doesn’t, have to do with Islam. Some well-meaning people tiptoe around the Islamic connection, claiming that the carnage has nothing to do with faith, or that Islam is a religion of peace, or that, at most, the violence represents a “distortion” of a great religion. (After suicide bombings in Baghdad, I grew used to hearing Iraqis say, “No Muslim would do this.”) Others want to lay the blame entirely on the theological content of Islam, as if other religions are more inherently peaceful—a notion belied by history as well as scripture. 

A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents. Islam today includes a substantial minority of believers who countenance, if they don’t actually carry out, a degree of violence in the application of their convictions that is currently unique. Charlie Hebdo had been nondenominational in its satire, sticking its finger into the sensitivities of Jews and Christians, too—but only Muslims responded with threats and acts of terrorism. For some believers, the violence serves a will to absolute power in the name of God, which is a form of totalitarianism called Islamism—politics as religion, religion as politics. “Allahu Akbar!” the killers shouted in the street outside Charlie Hebdo. They, at any rate, know what they’re about. 

These thoughts don’t offer a guide to mitigating the astonishing surge in Islamist killing around the world. Rage and condemnation don’t do the job, nor is it helpful to alienate the millions of Muslims who dislike what’s being done in the name of their religion. Many of them immediately condemned the attack on Charlie Hebdo, in tones of anguish particular to those whose deepest beliefs have been tainted. The answer always has to be careful, thoughtful, and tailored to particular circumstances. In France, it will need to include a renewed debate about how the republic can prevent more of its young Muslim citizens from giving up their minds to a murderous ideology—how more of them might come to consider Mustapha Ourrad, a Charlie Hebdo copy editor of Algerian descent who was among the victims, a hero. In other places, the responses have to be different, with higher levels of counter-violence. 

But the murders in Paris were so specific and so brazen as to make their meaning quite clear. The cartoonists died for an idea. The killers are soldiers in a war against freedom of thought and speech, against tolerance, pluralism, and the right to offend—against everything decent in a democratic society. So we must all try to be Charlie, not just today but every day.

SoRo:

No one – and I mean NO ONE – has a right not to be offended. 

Not Muslims. 

Not Christians. 

Not Jews. 

Not men.

Not women.

Not 'other'.

Not Feminists (especially with their latest ‘outrage’: ‘Manspreading’). 

Not homosexuals.

Not heterosexuals. 

Not transgenders.

Not whites. 

Not blacks. 

Not Hispanics. 

Not Asian-Americans.

Not Native Americans.

Not illegal immigrants (a Federal definition, by the way).

Not legal immigrants.

Not Natural Born Americans.

Not pajama boys, who get upset by the ‘microagression’ of being made fun of for the way they pronounces Cool Whip. 

All may be offended from time to time, but none has the right to demand others to stop offending them by giving up their rights to speech, expression, etc. 

In today's 'Who Wants To Be A Victim?!?' world, Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, gays, transgenders, illegal immigrants, ‘rape victims’ (like Jackie and Lena Dunham), pajama boys, etc, are NEVER responsible for their actions. White people, the West, the police, the Man, the ‘system’, America, the military, 'illegal borders', etc, are the real culprits.

Political correctness, 'hate speech' laws, speech codes, no platforming, etc, are cudgels used by one side to beat the other into submission. They are also the barbiturates that the West is using to commit suicide.

http://tinyurl.com/ovrnjmk