Resist the absolutist

It is tempting, in the wake of the shocking mass murder of 10 Charlie Hebdo editors, cartoonists and other staff members in Paris last week, to reduce the event and its meaning to black-and-white certainties. In the face of the extreme violence that the French-born gunmen of Algerian descent carried out in the magazine’s offices (which also led to the death of two policemen and, later and in another location, of four hostages), it is only natural for many of us to try to make sense of it all by reaching for sweeping explanations of violent extremism.

The explanations are as absolutist as they are, as they must be, wrong: an attack by religion on reason; Muslim retaliation against the West; a struggle between fanaticism and openness, between obscurantist cultures and open societies, between theocratic totalitarianism and free speech; even a clash of civilizations. These are reductionist views—they limit the discussion to one factor—and ignore the more complicated reality.

The debate over the deeper meaning of the attack is reflected in the anguish in the world’s opinion pages (including the comment threads of Facebook) over whether the satirical cartoons of Charlie Hebdo were in themselves offensive, racist, deliberately provocative, determinedly anti-Islamic. In this debate, the absolutist positions are also dominant. To quote a New York Times summary of the debate: “Were the victims free-speech martyrs, full stop, or provocateurs whose aggressive mockery of Islam sometimes amounted to xenophobia and racism?”

The arguments, pro or con, are resonant. For instance: Criticism of the cartoons, especially at this time, so soon after the murders of the cartoonists, is tantamount to saying the irreverent magazine’s staff had it coming. Or, free speech is a universal human right, as is the right to offend, or to blaspheme, or just generally mock others. Or, as the acclaimed comics journalist Joe Sacco wrote, in The Guardian: “Though tweaking the noses of Muslims might be as permissible as it is now believed to be dangerous, it has never struck me as anything other than a vapid way to use the pen.” Or, to quote the now-viral post in The Hooded Utilitarian, by a young graphic artist, Jacob Canfield: “[T]he editorial staff of Hebdo consistently aimed to provoke Muslims …. White men punching down is not a recipe for good satire, and needs to be called out.”

A subset of the debate involves the decision to reproduce the magazine’s cartoons, with some free-speech advocates criticizing those publications, such as the Times and The Guardian, which refused to run them.

Canfield’s assertion is a good starting point to discuss the more complicated reality. In France, Muslim immigrants are a marginalized minority; while its staff is not in fact all “white men,” Charlie Hebdo is not itself exactly on the margins of French society. That one of the policemen who died, in responding to the assault on the magazine’s offices, was himself Muslim further complicates the picture. To the spontaneous worldwide “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) campaign, a smaller one has also sprung up, “Je suis Ahmed,” after Ahmed Merabet. That the parents of the Kouachi brothers who carried out the attack were Algerians suggests that France’s own colonial history may be implicated in the violence.

Let us be clear: The attack on Charlie Hebdo is an outrage, a barbaric act that goes against the core tenets of Islam or indeed of any religion, and must be condemned, without equivocation. We join our voice to millions around the world, including those from predominantly Muslim countries, who are shocked by the violence. No matter how offensive or obscene or inflammatory some of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons were, there is no excuse for murdering the cartoonists—or indeed any member of the press.

But we should not indulge the temptation to engage in simplified thinking. As The Economist argued, to regard the “killers as representatives of a religion, and to reduce a complex picture to their preferred caricature, would be to reward their crimes”—that is, to adapt to terrorism by changing our conduct. To equate criticism of some of the cartoons themselves with approval of the cartoonists’ murder is to short-circuit our thinking and divide our world into “us” and “them”—and again change our way of life. Nuance, we should remind ourselves, is a defense against totalizing terror.