A reader has sent me this contribution in orderto put into perspective recent events, from Iraq to the massacre in Paris:
Setting aside for a moment the activities of the French and British, who created Iraq and Syria in the first place, the West has unleashed almost incalculable levels of violence on countries along the Mediterranean littoral, the Persian Gulf, and to the Himalayas, yet rejects (or fails to comprehend), why there is blowback on Western Europe. Cockburn’s title “From Syria to Paris” addresses that point http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/08/from-syria-to-paris/
A comment by”ee” on Moon of Alabama makes a similar point: to frame the crisis in constitutional terms sidelines a fundamental military reality. The violent confrontations, whether they involve millions of human beings or only a dozen, are about power and the dominant nature of the power applied by the West and its Middle East allies. The West is able to unleash its military capabilities on countries or entities that have virtually no military power at all (Gaza and West Bank.)
Somewhere yesterday I saw that Charlie Hebdo “satirized” Muslims five times more often than other “targets”. This is about the excercise of power. Satire should be about the denigration of the powerful to take it down a peg, not the denigration of an oppressed, insular minority (Muslims within French society) or the denigration of an oppressed people in foreign lands (Muslims in the Middle East attacked by Western powers). Making fun of the weak and the poor only contributes to their marginalization and empowers their oppressors. It is necessarily a right-wing, reactionary activity. (adapted from a post by ee | Jan 8, 2015 on http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-the-chickens-come-home-to-roost/comments/page/2/#comments)
In other words, the Moslem community is being bullied, and we can’t recognise the bullying. Of all disagreeable human faults bullying is one of the worst.
Saddam Hussein may have been a monster, but he was a Moslem monster, “our monster” in Moslem terms. The latest strife between the West and Islam has been caused by the stupid second war against Iraq and subsequent incompetence, and by disproportionate retaliation against every (often pathetic) retaliation by people whose only way of fighting back is to send off home- made rockets, put together in a garage. Many Moslems must feel helpless and bitter against a century of political bullying. Why don’t we stop it? that would be the AicureN answer. Leave them alone, I mean really alone.
I agree with you that the Iraq War was wrong, but Hussein was always evil and we were wrong to ever have supported him. I’m not going to lose any sleep over the fact that we killed him. However, the notion that Moslems are being bullied is nonsense- they are the bullies. In Moslem countries, they is no free speech, no rule of law, no civil rights- you can forget feminism and gay rights also. They are not weak- there are 1.6 billion of them, and they control much of the world’s energy supply. In addition to this, it is worth noting that although most of them are peaceful, Islam is a violent religion, and the jihadists are the ones who are taking the Qu’ran literally and doing what Mohammed did- conquering and terrorising others in the name of Islam. The ‘religion of peace’ deserved every bit of satire that Charlie Hebdo gave it, and more.
I have to say that my wife and I have Moslem friends whose intelligence, education and moderation equal those of anyone we have ever met. It is not possible to tar all Moslems with the Al Queda brush. The majority of Moslems are peaceable, decent people, who find this violence distasteful and dismaying. I don’t personally believe in any of the organised religions, but respect those who do – they have their concerns and needs and are in any case products of their upbringing. We all have to get along together. I just don’t like the people who use religion for power and control.
Of course there are many peaceful and decent Moslems out there, but the fact is that the majority hold views that we Epicureans would find abhorrent, as was found in this bit of research http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/. But even if this wasn’t the case, Charlie Hebdo had every right to criticise Islam the way they did, its called free speech. For some reason, Moslems always seem to get much more offended when their religion is insulted, why is why most of them did not believe in the right to publish those cartoons. The illiberal attitudes of most Moslems is a serious threat to our culture, and we must be less willing to excuse them under the guise of political correctness and Islamophobia.