Why I am Ahmed, not Charlie?

[Riaz Haq]

Ahmed Merabet was a French Muslim police officer who died defending the people at Charlie Hebdo who mocked his prophet and his religion.  He was a real hero. He stood for the rule-of-law and against vigilante justice imposed by the terrorists who attacked and killed a dozen people at Charlie Hebdo's office in Paris, France. So I honor him by saying "I am Ahmed" (Je Suis Ahmed).

French Police Officer Ahmed Merabet

As I condemn the terrorist attack and honor Ahmed's memory, I must also say why "I am not Charlie" (Je ne suis pas Charlie).  Here are my reasons:

1. While I  strongly condemn the terror attack and sympathize with the families of those killed at Charlie Hebdo's office, I do not lionize satirists who"punch down" rather than "punch up", to borrow from Daily Beast's Arthur Chu.  The whole idea of satire is to challenge those in positions of power and authority rather than the underdogs like the poor French Muslims who make up 60 to 70 percent of the prison population despite being less than 10 percent of the population overall.

2.  People who defend Charlie Hebdo as an "equal opportunity offender" are just plain wrong.  There was at least one instance where Charlie apologized for a satirical piece and fired  Sine (Maurice Sinet) the cartoonist for an "anti-Semitic" caricature of Ms. Sebaoun-Darty, the Jewish wife of President Nicholas Sarkozy's son Jean Sarkozy.

3. France's commitment to civil liberties is selective. While it is strongly invoked as absolute when Charlie mocks Islam and its prophet, it does not extend to Muslim women's right to choose what they wear. The French law against “religious symbols in public spaces” is specifically enforced to target Muslim women who wear hijab.

Negative stereotyping of Prophet Mohammad has been the preoccupation of generations of Western writers from the time of the Crusades to the present day. Among those who have engaged in highly offensive portrayal of Islam's prophet are Italian poet-philosopher Dante Aligheri (1265-1321), Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (1325-1450) and European "Enlightenment" leader François-Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1778). More recently, there have been attempts by Salman Rushdie (Satanic Verses), Kurt Westergaard (Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoons), Nakoula Basseley Nakoula (Innocence of Muslims)  and Charlie Hebdo to ridicule Muslims' most revered leader.

While I strongly condemn the terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo and the loss of a dozen lives in Paris, let me remind everyone that Europe has a long history of mocking Islam and its prophet. It is well documented in "Muhammad in Europe" by Minou Reeves which covers everything from Dante's Inferno to Voltaire's Mahomet. What has changed now is that the  emergence of the new Internet-based social media has made such anti-Muslim bigotry much more commerce-oriented and accessible to a global audience.

As we fight the menace of global terror perpetrated in the name of religion, we must also address the genuine issues of racism and rising anti-Muslim bigotry in Europe.  This will require thought leaders on both sides to find common ground for a serious and sustained inter-faith and inter-racial dialog to end the threat of violence.

Here's a related video discussion:

http://youtu.be/2TiBpi-jUPw





http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2egwxz_viewpoint-from-overseas-vi...



Viewpoint from Overseas - Violent protest on... by faizanmaqsood1010

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Globalization of Hate Speech

The Prophet I Know

Misaq e Madina Inspired Quaid e Azam MA Jinnah

Growing Intolerance in Pakistan

Exposing Congressman King's Hypocrisy

FBI Entrapping Young Muslims

Fighting Agents of Intolerance in Pakistan

Muslim Scholars Must Fight Hate in Pakistan

South Asian Christians Celebrate Christmas in Fear

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's Vision

Pakistan Must Defeat Agents of Intolerance 

Celebrating Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah's Birthday

[Riaz Haq]

Famous Doonesbury Cartoonist Garry Trudeau on Charlie Hebdo crossing the line "into the realm of hate speech" by its "vulgar drawings" of Prophet Muhammad:

Apparently he crossed some red line that was in place for one minority but not another. By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech, which in France is only illegal if it directly incites violence. Well, voila—the 7 million copies that were published following the killings did exactly that, triggering violent protests across the Muslim world, including one in Niger, in which ten people died. Meanwhile, the French government kept busy rounding up and arresting over 100 Muslims who had foolishly used their freedom of speech to express their support of the attacks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/04/14/doones...

[Riaz Haq]

Time Op Ed by Kareem Abdul Jabbar on Charleston church shooting::

So why this persistent denying of a lingering racist undercurrent in America? Political gain. By convincing Americans that racism doesn’t exist, politicians are able to divert funds from programs that combat racism and create equal opportunities for everyone to other projects that would most benefit their political power base. We’ve seen this Ministry of Misinformation in action before. In China, the government has removed all mention of the 1989 protest at Tiananmen Square that resulted in the massacre of thousands of people. On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal announced, “Today the system and philosophy of institutionalized racism identified by Dr. King no longer exists.” Donald Rumsfeld is taking another That Never Happened tour, telling us he never thought we could bring democracy to Iraq, despite the endless film of him telling the American people the opposite. They are rewriting history to suit their needs. However, the racism deniers following the Charleston shootings are trying to rewrite history as it’s happening, which is even more insidious.




The result of all this denying is to give tacit approval to continue victimizing certain groups. When those in power argue against fighting for rights for blacks, gays, women, or any other group seeking equal treatment under the law, they are announcing with a wink that these groups somehow don’t deserve those rights. If they don’t deserve equal treatment, then they aren’t equal as people and can be victimized. When presidential candidate Donald Trump refers to Mexican immigrants as mostly drug dealers and rapists, he’s encouraging Americans to victimize them. Nothing says we don’t give a crap about black history more emphatically than flying a Confederate flag, as it does in South Carolina’s capitol, enforced by state law. To claim it’s there to honor the state’s past is like Germany hoisting the swastika above a synagogue to honor its past of making Volkswagens. Whatever Roof’s motivations—be they drug-induced or ideological—he chose to attack a group that to his twisted mind seemed reasonable because they are already a victimized group.

Public perception, not reality, drives political change. In 2014, crime statistics were at a 20-year low, yet most Americans (63%) thought crime was on the rise. Clearly, the increased reporting of violent crimes on TV and the scare-rhetoric of some politicians and news commentators helped mold that perception. Whether intentional or not, that perception drove gun sales up and lowered public support for gun control laws. Profits and political power were made on the back of misperception, not truth. The same misperception occurs regarding Islamic terrorists in the U.S. Since 9/11, an average of nine Muslims have contributed to six terrorism plots a year. The result over those years has been 50 deaths. However, during that same time, according to a study conducted by Professor Arie Perliger at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center, right-wing extremists conducted 337 attacks each year and were responsible for 254 deaths. But if a government agency wants public support for privacy-invading laws or massive funding, the imminent threat of Muslim terrorists is bandied about because they are on the unofficial Go Ahead and Victimize list. And so it continues with the rush to Jedi mind-trick us into not seeing what is clearly in fronts of us: “This is not the racist you’re looking for.”

http://time.com/3929382/charleston-hate-crime-terrorism/?xid=fbshare

[Riaz Haq]

Via @NPR: In #ParisAttack's Wake, France Grapples With What It Means To Be French. #Islamophobia in #France http://n.pr/1j3m8H4

Interview of ex NY Times Paris Correspondent Elaine Sciolino on NPR Fresh Air

If there is a national religion in France it's laïcité, or secularism. ... France is so attached to this republican ideal that over a decade ago, it passed a law forbidding what is called "ostensible signs of religion."

It was basically aimed at Muslims, and it was basically aimed at girls who were wearing headscarves. It caused a complete disruption in the schools. I wrote about it at the time. There were young girls who shaved their heads so that they wouldn't be showing their hair. There was a young girl who started wearing wide bandanas to class, and one of the law-makers said, "We have to have a bandana ban."

It's gotten even worse in recent years, because a few years ago France passed a ban on wearing the full facial coverage by Muslim women in public space, and it was perceived as an anti-Islam move. Where if the French had been more clever they could've just said, "Look, anyone who covers his or her face in public, whether it's with a motorcycle helmet or a ski mask or a facial mask is breaking the law. We have to do this for security reasons; we have to be able to see the faces of people in public space, whether it's a bank or a post office or a governmental building." But Islam has been stigmatized and that is what is so dangerous and troubling.

On anti-Muslim, far right politicians in France

The far right has won in local elections in some small but crucial cities in the south of France. There are some absurd manifestations of some of the things they want to do and have done. For example, some of these mayors have said there are too many kebab shops in France, because kebabs, which are Turkish not even North African Muslim, are not French, so we need to put back our boulangeries and our little French cafes and ban kebab shops from expanding.

Recently there's been a controversy because some of the far right political leaders have called for forcible serving of pork in all public schools. Muslim and Jewish students cannot eat pork. So they're being told, "If you don't want to adhere to our secular republican ideal and what is part of the French cuisine, go to your own private schools."

These attacks were a gift to the far right, wrapped up in a bow before Christmas. This feeds perfectly into the French fear that there's no security on our borders, that immigrants are the enemy, that there aren't enough jobs for "normal" French people so that we have to prevent the other, the alien, the foreigner, from invading our country.

http://www.npr.org/2015/11/16/456194287/journalist-says-paris-attac...

[Riaz Haq]

#US created Islamic extremism:Those blaming #Islam for #ISIS aided Osama bin Laden in ’80s. #ParisAttacks http://www.salon.com/2015/11/17/we_created_islamic_extremism_those_... … via @Salon

History takes no prisoners. It shows, with absolute lucidity, that the Islamic extremism ravaging the world today was borne out of the Western foreign policy of yesteryear.

Gore Vidal famously referred to the USA as the United States of Amnesia. The late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai put it a little more delicately, quipping, “One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.”

In order to understand the rise of militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida; in order to wrap our minds around their heinous, abominable attacks on civilians in the U.S., France, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria, Turkey, Yemen, Afghanistan and many, many more countries, we must rekindle this historical memory.

Where did violent Islamic extremism come from? In the wake of the horrific Paris attacks on Friday, November the 13, this is the question no one is asking — yet it is the most important one of all. If one doesn’t know why a problem emerged, if one cannot find its root, one will never be able to solve and uproot it.

Where did militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida come from? The answer is not as complicated as many make it out to be — but, to understand, we must delve into the history of the Cold War, the historical period lied about in the West perhaps more than any other.

The newspaper noted that bin Laden organized a militia of thousands of foreign fighters from throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and “supported them with weapons and his own construction equipment” in their fight against the USSR in the 1980s. “We beat the Soviet Union,” bin Laden boasted.

The mujahedin, this international Islamic extremist militia organized and headed by bin Laden, is what eventually morphed into both al-Qaida and the Taliban.

“When the history of the Afghan resistance movement is written,” the Independent wrote, “Mr Bin Laden’s own contribution to the mujahedin… may turn out to be a turning point in the recent history of militant fundamentalism.”

Portraying bin Laden in a positive light, less than eight years before he would help mastermind the largest terrorist attack on American soil in decades, the British publication claimed that the “Saudi businessman who recruited mujahedin now uses them for large-scale building projects in Sudan.” In reality, bin Laden was setting the stages for what would be become al-Qaida.

Unheeded warnings
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was blessed with the power of prophecy, but cursed in that no one would ever heed her warnings. Eqbal Ahmad, the late political scientist, historian and expert in the study of terrorism, was a modern-day Cassandra.

In a speech at the University of Colorado, Boulder in October 1998, Ahmad warned that the U.S. policy in Afghanistan would backfire:

“In Islamic history, jihad as an international violent phenomenon had disappeared in the last 400 years, for all practical purposes. It was revived suddenly with American help in the 1980s. When the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, Zia ul-Haq, the [U.S.-backed] military dictator of Pakistan, which borders on Afghanistan, saw an opportunity and launched a jihad there against godless communism. The U.S. saw a God-sent opportunity to mobilize one billion Muslims against what Reagan called the ‘Evil Empire.’

“Money started pouring in. CIA agents starting going all over the Muslim world recruiting people to fight in the great jihad. Bin Laden was one of the early prize recruits. He was not only an Arab. He was also a Saudi. He was not only a Saudi. He was also a multimillionaire, willing to put his own money into the matter. Bin Laden went around recruiting people for the jihad against communism.

[Riaz Haq]

#US created Islamic extremism:Those blaming #Islam for #ISIS aided Osama bin Laden in ’80s. #ParisAttacks http://www.salon.com/2015/11/17/we_created_islamic_extremism_those_... … via @Salon

History takes no prisoners. It shows, with absolute lucidity, that the Islamic extremism ravaging the world today was borne out of the Western foreign policy of yesteryear.

Gore Vidal famously referred to the USA as the United States of Amnesia. The late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai put it a little more delicately, quipping, “One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.”

In order to understand the rise of militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida; in order to wrap our minds around their heinous, abominable attacks on civilians in the U.S., France, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria, Turkey, Yemen, Afghanistan and many, many more countries, we must rekindle this historical memory.

Where did violent Islamic extremism come from? In the wake of the horrific Paris attacks on Friday, November the 13, this is the question no one is asking — yet it is the most important one of all. If one doesn’t know why a problem emerged, if one cannot find its root, one will never be able to solve and uproot it.

Where did militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida come from? The answer is not as complicated as many make it out to be — but, to understand, we must delve into the history of the Cold War, the historical period lied about in the West perhaps more than any other.

The newspaper noted that bin Laden organized a militia of thousands of foreign fighters from throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and “supported them with weapons and his own construction equipment” in their fight against the USSR in the 1980s. “We beat the Soviet Union,” bin Laden boasted.

The mujahedin, this international Islamic extremist militia organized and headed by bin Laden, is what eventually morphed into both al-Qaida and the Taliban.

“When the history of the Afghan resistance movement is written,” the Independent wrote, “Mr Bin Laden’s own contribution to the mujahedin… may turn out to be a turning point in the recent history of militant fundamentalism.”

Portraying bin Laden in a positive light, less than eight years before he would help mastermind the largest terrorist attack on American soil in decades, the British publication claimed that the “Saudi businessman who recruited mujahedin now uses them for large-scale building projects in Sudan.” In reality, bin Laden was setting the stages for what would be become al-Qaida.

Unheeded warnings
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was blessed with the power of prophecy, but cursed in that no one would ever heed her warnings. Eqbal Ahmad, the late political scientist, historian and expert in the study of terrorism, was a modern-day Cassandra.

In a speech at the University of Colorado, Boulder in October 1998, Ahmad warned that the U.S. policy in Afghanistan would backfire:

“In Islamic history, jihad as an international violent phenomenon had disappeared in the last 400 years, for all practical purposes. It was revived suddenly with American help in the 1980s. When the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, Zia ul-Haq, the [U.S.-backed] military dictator of Pakistan, which borders on Afghanistan, saw an opportunity and launched a jihad there against godless communism. The U.S. saw a God-sent opportunity to mobilize one billion Muslims against what Reagan called the ‘Evil Empire.’

“Money started pouring in. CIA agents starting going all over the Muslim world recruiting people to fight in the great jihad. Bin Laden was one of the early prize recruits. He was not only an Arab. He was also a Saudi. He was not only a Saudi. He was also a multimillionaire, willing to put his own money into the matter. Bin Laden went around recruiting people for the jihad against communism.

[Riaz Haq]

‘Boycott French products’ launched over #Macron’s anti-#Islam comments. #boycottfranceproducts #CharlieHebdo #MacronGoneMad https://aje.io/l9gyr via @AJEnglish

Several Arab trade associations have announced the boycott of French products, protesting the recent comments made by President Emmanuel Macron on Islam.

Earlier this month, Macron pledged to fight “Islamist separatism”, which he said was threatening to take control in some Muslim communities around France.

He also described Islam as a religion “in crisis” worldwide and said the government would present a bill in December to strengthen a 1905 law that officially separated church and state in France.

His comments, in addition to his backing of satirical outlets publishing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, has led to a social media campaign calling for the boycott of French products from supermarkets in Arab countries and Turkey.


Hashtags such as the #BoycottFrenchProducts in English and the Arabic #ExceptGodsMessenger trended across countries including Kuwait, Qatar, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

In Kuwait, the chairman and members of the board of directors of the Al-Naeem Cooperative Society decided to boycott all French products and to remove them from supermarket shelves.

The Dahiyat al-Thuhr association took the same step, saying: “Based on the position of French President Emmanuel Macron and his support for the offensive cartoons against our beloved prophet, we decided to remove all French products from the market and branches until further notice.”


In Qatar, the Wajbah Dairy company announced a boycott of French products and pledged to provide alternatives, according to their Twitter account.

Al Meera Consumer Goods Company, a Qatari joint stock company, announced on Twitter: “We have immediately withdrawn French products from our shelves until further notice.”


“We affirm that as a national company, we work according to a vision consistent with our true religion, our established customs and traditions, and in a way that serves our country and our faith and meets the aspirations of our customers.”

Qatar University also joined the campaign. Its administration has postponed a French Cultural Week event indefinitely, citing the “deliberate abuse of Islam and its symbols”


In a statement on Twitter, the university said any prejudice against Islamic belief, sanctities and symbols is “totally unacceptable, as these offences harm universal human values ​​and the highest moral principles that contemporary societies highly regard”.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) described Macron’s statements as “irresponsible”, and said they are aimed at spreading a culture of hatred among peoples.

“At a time when efforts must be directed towards promoting culture, tolerance and dialogue between cultures and religions, such rejected statements and calls for publishing insulting images of the Prophet (Muhammad) – may blessings and peace be upon him – are published,” said the council’s secretary-general, Nayef al-Hajraf.

Al-Hajraf called on world leaders, thinkers and opinion leaders to reject hate speech and contempt of religions and their symbols, and to respect the feelings of Muslims, instead of falling captive to Islamophobia.

In a statement, Kuwait’s foreign ministry warned against the support of abuses and discriminatory policies that link Islam to terrorism, saying it “represents a falsification of reality, insults the teachings of Islam, and offends the feelings of Muslims around the world”.

On Friday, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned what it said was France’s continued attack against Muslims by insulting religious symbols.

The secretariat of the Jeddah-based organisation said in a statement it is surprised at the official political rhetoric issued by some French officials that offend French-Islamic relations and fuels feelings of hatred for political party gains.

[Riaz Haq]

Will #American Ideas Tear #France Apart? Some of Its Leaders Think So! Willful #French blind spots in an increasingly diverse nation that still recoils at the mention of race, has yet to come to terms with its colonial past. #racism #Islamophobia https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-ameri...

France has long laid claim to a national identity, based on a common culture, fundamental rights and core values like equality and liberty, rejecting diversity and multiculturalism. The French often see the United States as a fractious society at war with itself.

But far from being American, many of the leading thinkers behind theories on gender, race, post-colonialism and queer theory came from France — as well as the rest of Europe, South America, Africa and India, said Anne Garréta, a French writer who teaches literature at universities in France and at Duke.

“It’s an entire global world of ideas that circulates,’’ she said. “It just happens that campuses that are the most cosmopolitan and most globalized at this point in history are the American ones.’’

The French state does not compile racial statistics, which is illegal, describing it as part of its commitment to universalism and treating all citizens equally under the law. To many scholars on race, however, the reluctance is part of a long history of denying racism in France and the country’s slave-trading and colonial past.



----------
Mass protests in France against police violence, inspired by the killing of George Floyd, challenged the official dismissal of race and systemic racism. A #MeToo generation of feminists confronted both male power and older feminists. A widespread crackdown following a series of Islamist attacks raised questions about France’s model of secularism and the integration of immigrants from its former colonies.

------------

The publication this month of a book critical of racial studies by two veteran social scientists, Stéphane Beaud and Gérard Noiriel, fueled criticism from younger scholars — and has received extensive news coverage. Mr. Noiriel has said that race had become a “bulldozer’’ crushing other subjects, adding, in an email, that its academic research in France was questionable because race is not recognized by the government and merely “subjective data.’’


Some saw the reach of American identity politics and social science theories. Some center-right lawmakers pressed for a parliamentary investigation into “ideological excesses’’ at universities and singled out “guilty’’ scholars on Twitter.

Mr. Macron — who had shown little interest in these matters in the past but has been courting the right ahead of elections next year — jumped in last June, when he blamed universities for encouraging the “ethnicization of the social question’’ — amounting to “breaking the republic in two.’’

“I was pleasantly astonished,’’ said Nathalie Heinich, a sociologist who last month helped create an organization against “decolonialism and identity politics.’’ Made up of established figures, many retired, the group has issued warnings about American-inspired social theories in major publications like Le Point and Le Figaro.

For Ms. Heinich, last year’s developments came on top of activism that brought foreign disputes over cultural appropriation and blackface to French universities. At the Sorbonne, activists prevented the staging of a play by Aeschylus to protest the wearing of masks and dark makeup by white actors; elsewhere, some well-known speakers were disinvited following student pressure.

“It was a series of incidents that was extremely traumatic to our community and that all fell under what is called cancel culture,’’ Ms. Heinich said.

[Riaz Haq]

No, We Don’t Have the “Right to Be Islamophobic”


After a speaker at France Insoumise’s summer school invoked the “right to be Islamophobic,” the French left is again at war over secularism. But the real problem is a failure to take sides with the victims of racism — and defend Muslims against attempts to stigmatize them.

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/09/france-insoumise-islamophobia-racism...


For political parties in France, it’s traditional to hold an université d’été — what English speakers might call a summer school. These are public activist meetups, devoted to lectures, debates, and rallying members together after the return from the holidays. For La France Insoumise (LFI) — the main organization of the anti-austerity left in France, whose leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, scored 19.6 percent at the 2017 presidential election — the 2019 université d’été thus ought to have represented an opportunity to regroup after the bad result in May’s European contest, where its 6.3 percent result fell far beneath expectations.

With Mélenchon himself away, touring Latin America, this was also an opportunity for LFI to show that it can get on with things even without the presence of its presidential candidate. Yet things didn’t play out as planned. And at fault was a recurring problem of the French left — Islamophobia.

The controversy came thanks to a talk by Henri Peña-Ruiz on laïcité — France’s brand of state secularism. The philosophy professor’s statement that “one has the right to be Islamophobic” had a truly explosive effect, sparking sharp criticisms against Peña-Ruiz and the fact that he had been allowed to speak at the France Insoumise event without there being anyone to debate — and challenge — him.

Peña-Ruiz is, after all, hardly an unknown quantity. He comes from the Left Party, of which Mélenchon is himself a member, and which is the largest party within LFI, though he called for a vote for the Communist Party (PCF) in the European election. Among Left Party circles, which occupy a central role in LFI’s organization, he is considered a “specialist” on laïcité.

These latter replied to the controversy by claiming that Peña-Ruiz’s words had been taken out of context and insisting that he had been targeted by a malicious campaign of invective against LFI. Yet at the same time, they rejected the very word “Islamophobia,” as if such a thing could not exist. Once again, the French left is displaying its inability to take sides on this issue — and to clearly stand up for the victims of racism.