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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.
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But if we are to be Charlie then we must also mention the Jerusalem synagogue massacre and face the fact that other religions are more inherently peaceful since Moses, Buddha and Jesus were not warlords.