Jan Rice's Reviews > Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

Free speech is the subject of this book and my review.

The author is Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier), one of the Charlie Hebdo satirists who died in the January 2015 terrorist attacks on the magazine. This little monograph-sized book of his thoughts on freedom of expression was published posthumously. I really bought it for the introduction by Adam Gopnik, though. Gopnik is an author and New Yorker writer who can often articulate difficult positions in defense of liberal democracy to my satisfaction. I read the book in hopes of his being able to do that for free speech, and now I'm not happy. I thought Adam Gopnik would defend free speech for me and make everything clear. But he didn't, so now I have to put on my thinking cap.

In the book, Gopnik explains the lay of the land regarding satire in France, and that part is useful. But as to what's permissible and what's racist in satirical drawings he, and Charb, for that matter, claimed that racism is anti-people, while satire is anti-ideology. They assume a clear demarcation between the two and claim that racism is the problem, not the anti-ideology part. They declare open season on ideologies of any kind.

Charb also wrote against certain terminology, "Islamophobia" for instance, which isn't accurate or sensible according to him. As far as I'm concerned Islamophobia is like "homophobia," which originally meant homosexual panic. People can and do have moral panic and hysterically violent reactions in the face of another ideology, or, more likely, what they've been taught that ideology represents. But never mind--once we have a word we usually lack the power to get rid of it on the basis of its origin or how it's being used. We have to deal with it.

Another word that takes heat from Charb is "blasphemy," not one that's necessarily synonymous with "anti-ideology," but has been used against Charlie Hebdo for some of its cartoons, and for that reason a word to be disarmed in Charb's view. And Gopnik defends those initiatives by Charb to dismantle and disarm certain words. As far as I'm concerned, Gopnik's writing lacks its usual precision. He may have felt that's what had to be done in writing an introduction to the work of the now-dead satirist: defend him and don't speak ill of the dead.

So I went back and read what he'd written before.

Back in 2015, the PEN International awards dinner split the writing community with its Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the murdered Charlie Hebdo satirists, bringing the differences of opinion over free speech front and center. Six writers who were to be table leaders at the gala said Charlie Hebdo was a racist publication featuring anti-Islam material and walked out. They said that Muslims in Europe were a religious minority who were being denigrated by the paper. 200 other writers followed them--still a minority of the membership. (Some Goodreads friends shared the opinion of the abstainers).

Adam Gopnik was one of the writers who stayed. Here is the link to a piece he wrote at the time which itself contains the link to something else he wrote. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-...

He no longer had to defend Charb's criticisms of particular terminology, but I'd say he did continue to make the distinction between being racist and being against an ideology the basis of his argument.

I've been noticing something about myself in this case and another recent case: Things look better when I read them in The New Yorker. I wish I could say it ain't so, but that's how I account for missing what he was saying when he was saying it there. ....On the other hand, I'm not comparing identical texts. The expectation of a more discerning New Yorker audience may draw forth something different from writers.

So I read what Adam Gopnik had written in those two articles. I also read this May 2015 article from Time: http://time.com/3848046/pen-gala-hono... , and this one from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/bo... .

You may be interested in the identities of those who walked out and those that remained. Neil Gaiman was one who stayed. He took the place as table headliner of one of those who left. There was a pithy comment by Salman Rushdie, too.

I am one of those who is in favor of the award, even though I didn't think Charb and Adam Gopnik made their case for it. The walkers-out are wrong. They backed the wrong side. They are confused. The dead people are not the powerful ones. The issue has to do not with anti-ideology vs. anti-people, but with relative power.

It's very confusing to think about these things even if we were all in the same society and if France didn't have its particular history of republicanism. By the way, one of the articles I read or reread in the last few days said voices blaming Charlie Hebdo had been raised in France, too.

Sticking to America and in particular my home state, the Republican Party has been trying to pass what's called a "religious liberty" bill. I want to look at what means since "religious liberty" like free speech is confusional. Certain conservative groups fear their religious liberty is being compromised by being made to act against their religious values, for example, if private Christian-owned companies have to provide insurance coverage for birth control, or if the company is a bakery confronting an order for a wedding cake for a gay marriages. This particular bill had an anti-gay slant. The Republican governor heroically vetoed it in 2016 and saved the state from being boycotted by sports teams, conventions, and industry. Meanwhile parties hoping to resurrect the bill accuse him of having sold out for thirty pieces of silver.

I'm wanting to highlight the confusing nature of this language. Shouldn't Christians be free to practice their values? The answer is that their establishing those values would be at the expense of others. What they are wanting, then, is to turn back the clock to a time in which their values were privileged.

Similarly, those who opposed the Charlie Hebdo award wanted to disallow cartoons that they deemed anti-Muslim. (That's despite the fact it turns out only a small percent of the magazine covers, at least, dealt with Muslim issues.)

The problem with the position that Charlie Hebdo is anti-Muslim (or racist or constitutes picking on the underdog) is the general preaching (or indoctrination or elite opinion) to the effect that anti-Muslim imagery or indeed anti-Muslim speech in general is not to be allowed--an honor system of sorts. In that climate there will then be those who take it upon themselves move against the apparent offenders.

It's as we say of Trump: that he has unleashed hate.

It's as we say of the church re the teaching of contempt against Jews.

Or as has been the case until recently of the toleration of contempt for gays.

When such ideology is supported by powerful entities, there will be those who pick up on it, whether we call them thugs, fanatics, terrorists, violent activists, white supremacists, or sickos. It won't usually be the stable members of society who take violent action, but neither can their actions be separated from the enabling social groups, no matter how they would wish to dissociate themselves.

Hate isn't caused by the victims, imperfect though they may be. What happens is that the victims are portrayed as deserving targets by those who hate them. Just as hateful ideology supports and engenders bad behavior, bad behavior requires bad ideology in its own justification. The powerful judge and condemn the targets using a standard of perfection they don't apply to themselves.

We need the satire, and the journalist and novelists and comedians and playwrights, and the social media and all of us--the relatively powerless--to stand up to the powers-that-be.

November 21, 2017: Opinion column by Mary Sanchez (Kansas City Star)
http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn...