Consider this: In 2009, Charlie Hebdo fired one if its writers for penning a line that someone said was anti-Semitic about the son of then-president Sarkozy: “He just declared his willingness to convert to Judaism before marrying his Jewish girlfriend, the heiress to the Darty Corporation (a company specializing in electrical retailing). That boy is making himself a nice path!” That writer was further charged with a hate crime. Ultimately he won a judgment against the magazine for wrongful termination. I could not find any information about the resolution of his hate crime charge.
How is it that one Charlie Hebdo employee can draw cartoons offensive to Muslims and be defended to the death for his right to do so, but a writer for the same publication is terminated and charged with a hate crime for a seemingly innocuous blurb? And please note: being charged with a hate crime goes far beyond a mere employment termination. It involves the country's justice system, and that unfortunate writer now has a black mark on his record.
Radical Islam, like radical Christians and radical Jews are an offshoot of those fundamentally good, loving, peaceful religions. Cartoons and speech intended for radical sects, but which wind up including the mainstream religion, reinforce our stereotypes of that religion/ethnicity, hindering us from gaining proper perspective on that people or group. Worse: it puts in our mind that every peace-loving, gentle person of a certain faith is as dangerous and worthless as his/her radical counterpart.
If we hope to ever gain peace and understanding, we have to abandon those stereotypes and reject them when they are foisted on us. Freedom of speech notwithstanding, we have to exercise restraint over demeaning thoughts/ideas of those we know little about. Just like a person in our parlor who says “That is hurtful, please don't”, we have to consider this act of those extremists as saying: “That offends us, please don't.”
Again: in no way am I condoning the violence that took 14 lives over the weekend, nor am I saying we should be overly charitable to organizations whose modus operandi is terror or subjugation. What I'm saying is: our individual, cultural, social and religious freedoms/rights end where the next individuals' begins. Stepping over that line can be a deadly proposition, as recently demonstrated.
This message is not just for Westerners whose selective endorsement of freedoms has incited those terrible actions and opened this discussion. It is also for those radicals who insist theirs is the only religion, the only way to live and the only school of thought.
But then, who will heed the words of this lone blogger?
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