Hebdo: A Racist Publication

“Je suis Charlie”, for those who don’t know, is a slogan adopted by people across the world as a symbol of solidarity with the victims of a vicious terrorist attack on the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo. The magazine has been criticized for its controversial cartoons about religion, with Islam in particular. The magazine has published numerous depictions of Muhammad, and other prophets, considered by many to be an offensive gesture to Muslims, whether the caricatures were clothed or unclothed. 

Other symbols of solidarity have appeared: pens held in the air to demonstrate the triumph of free expression over closed-minded religious sensitivity, and another slogan, “Not Afraid,” has become fairly common.

This phrase is deeply ironic to me. As soon as I heard the news, I felt a familiar tinge of fear, a fear that would quickly be justified. Dozens of attacks on French Muslims have occurred in the less than a week since the attacks on the magazine. This may be surprising to the predominantly American population at Exeter, which is reasonable, given that we live in America, but this is not a deviation in any trend. Attacks on Muslims and on Islamic institutions have nearly tripled in the past few years and, according to a 2013 survey, merely 26 percent of respondents find Islam even compatible with French society, compared to 75 percent with Judaism and 89 percent with Christianity.

Charlie Hebdo espoused a culture founded on hate and violence towards Muslims, and for years, chose to use their right to free speech to ignore the importance of responsible speech and the violence they helped to perpetuate.

The free speech that is being touted so aggressively to vilify Muslims in France is not the same free speech offered to those who wish to wear in public a hijab, niqab or burqa, traditional Muslim veil coverings for women or for those who wished to protest in favor of Palestine. This one-sided restriction of expression is being used yet again as a weapon to further the ignorant and pervasive narrative of Islam as a violent cult, obsessed with the suppression of human rights.

Condemn the terrorists who killed a dozen people. Condemn the monsters who lived by a book that preached the importance of mercy and of a human life and then murdered 12 men and women, with families and lives and importance. Condemn the hypocrites who had been taught for years that a human body was a gift from Allah, and that it was a sin to refuse or desecrate such a blessing from God, but then think themselves so important and wise as to decide whose lives were theirs to steal. I implore you to vilify those who claim to fight for their Muslim brothers and sisters, and then shot Ahmed Merabet in the head.

Do not dare claim that this happened in a vacuum, or call the victims of these awful attacks martyrs for human rights. Do not praise the institution that sees the violence it has suffered and that innocent Muslims have suffered and decides to publish an obscene cover of the most holy Prophet in Islam, peace and blessings be upon him.

Consider what saying “Je suis Charlie” does. Though it may show some terrorists that the west will not succumb to their mindless violence, it also shows racists that their paranoia and xenophobia are justified and that we, the west—the moral, the intelligent—are Charlie and that they are the other: foreign devils here to subjugate us, to murder us.

It tells them that it’s okay to not know that it’s actually Muslims who are the most common victims of terrorist attacks. It tells them that Islam is incompatible with France, with the west. It tells them that it doesn’t matter whose sibling, whose parent, whose teacher or whose college it is; they are a Muslim and they are a danger. It tells them that, following in Charlie’s footsteps, they should incite violence.

I will never be Charlie, and I beg and pray that no one else will be.

Je ne serais jamais Charlie.

I will never be Charlie. ♥