The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is back on the newsstands, and that is a good thing. The massacre that took the lives of the magazine’s journalists is a huge tragedy because no one has to die for what they write — not even for publishing the odious cartoons of Muhammad.
I welcome Charlie Hebdo back not because I admire the magazine’s work — I don’t. What’s important for me is the larger issue of free speech. If the magazine buckles under the threat of violence, we all lose.
But even as I defend the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish, I also assert the right of Muslims to be offended.
When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten first published the cartoons in 2005, I found them vulgar, repugnant and highly offensive, but I acknowledged the right of the newspaper to publish.
It was no different when Charlie Hebdo reproduced them and added more pornographic and gratuitously insulting ones.
To me, they were akin to giving Islam the middle finger. Obviously, many didn’t see it that way, as is their right. But I did.
Free speech certainly includes the right to offend, but it is not guaranteed for only those who say nasty and offensive things. Just as Charlie Hebdo has a right to offend Muslims, so do Muslims have a right to be offended. No one would use free speech to justify slurs against blacks, Jews or any number groups. But if someone did, I doubt anyone would suggest that those affected should not be offended by the slight. Muslims have a right to the same consideration.
Charlie Hebdo’s right to insult my religion doesn’t trump my right to be offended, and to protest loudly and peacefully if I am so inclined. That is a democratic right I will always affirm.
What I don’t have a right to do — and believe no Muslim has a right to do — is to resort to violence in protest. Burning and killing are not the answer. Magazine editor Stéphane Charbonnier and his colleagues did not have to die, no matter how offensive Muslims found their cartoons. The maniacs who killed the Charlie Hebdo journalists did not do Islam any favours; they damaged it.
We all mourn the deaths of the Charlie Hebdo journalists as well as the three police officers and the four people in the supermarket hostage-taking.
In the wake of the killings, Charlie Hebdo has become synonymous with free expression. There were suggestions that all news organizations should have embraced Charlie Hebdo and reprinted the cartoons, including the most offensive ones. Those who refused to do so were called cowards, or worse, undermining free speech. Nothing could be more ludicrous.
The magazine certainly deserved the massive outpouring of sympathy and support it got, but let’s be clear about one thing: Charlie Hebdo is not the universal standard for satire or free expression. The magazine has developed its own unique brand and style, and made a success of it.
But it is not the standard against which satire or free speech is, or should be, measured. Satire didn’t begin with Charlie Hebdo, and not following the magazine’s example is not an act of betrayal or cowardice.
Every news organization has its own standard of what is acceptable to print or show based on the values it represents. And decisions on what to publish or not must remain with editors who are charged with such responsibility. Charlie Hebdo and others like it publish as their values dictate, and other news media are free to do the same.
It is good to see the surviving Charlie Hebdo journalists back on their feet so quickly after such a horrible tragedy. If you’ve seen the damage that is done in societies where free expression is suppressed — as some of us have — you support it, warts and all, anywhere it is threatened. It is why I disagree with the Ottawa Ahmadiyya imam who believes it should be illegal to depict religious figures in a derogatory way. It is a tempting suggestion, but experience has shown that when you start to make laws that curb free expression, you end up in a bad place. It is a slippery slope we must avoid.
Instead, we must continue to uphold free expression, relying on the good judgment of the media to know when and where to draw the line.
Charlie Hebdo is back in business, with a print run of millions of copies, and I imagine a lot of people will buy the magazine. I won’t. That’s how I protest against a magazine that deliberately mocks and denigrates my religion.
Mohammed Adam is an Ottawa Citizen columnist.
