freedom to offend

You know my opinion.  The freedom to offend shall always prevail over the freedom from offense.  This topic has been aired here before.  I haven't much to add, but in light of recent events I had to sit down to write again what needs to be written.

If you don't like what someone says, you have two options: Argue your point to convince the other or don't listen.  If you don't like what a book is about, don't read it.  Think a film will offend you?  Don't watch it.  Cartoons mock your prophet?  Have faith that god "is about to gather hypocrites and infidels in Hell together".  (Verily, I've taken this straight from the book itself.)  Violence is never an appropriate response to words, images, song or music.

Violence and Islam have entered a dangerous alliance.  That's the kind of sentence that flows off smoothly after Wednesday's horror.  Islam is an easy target because it's so vast, diverse and decentralized.  It's also an obvious target because some Islamic countries are rigidly illiberal and gangs terrorizing Syria, Nigeria and Libya in its name are all over the news.  To some it even seems a valid target because many of the grimmer atrocities over the last decade or two have been committed by Muslims.

But what makes someone a Muslim?  My tenuous understanding of the underpinnings of Islam don't permit me to answer this question with any sort of confidence, but I think it has something to do with submitting to the word of the Quran and announcing to the world that there is no god but god and Muhammed is his prophet.  Anyone can do that, and more than 1.5 billion have.  Most live peaceful lives, like you and me.  Alarmingly, some have their brains pulped with nihilism.  They fly into parched backwaters of the planet, learn the operation of assault weaponry, and then go mad on defenseless targets.

When two savages did exactly that in Paris the other day, spraying bullets without restraint and then blaming their god, there was no one to contradict them.  In Islam, there is no central authority on questions of faith, no one with the power to excommunicate.  The murderers' words stand.  They are presented everywhere as Islamists.  The only thing this does is conflate, in the public's mind, Islam and senseless violence.

The Paris attack was not about Islam.  It was mindless, deranged, void.  The enormity of the crime is numbing, but past terror attacks have caused the death of even more innocent victims.  What truly shocks me is what the violence was in response to: A bunch of cartoons published in Charlie Hebdo, a niche magazine with a run of 60,000.  Imagine how good the cartoonists must have been, the power they drew from their little pens.  As if this were the dark ages, four of them were killed because their scribblings displeased.

Charlie Hebdo has a history of causing offense.  This is not surprising.  It's  a satirical magazine.  The day it stopped  causing offense, it would lose its raison d'être.  This reason to exist, it is important to point out, was given to the magazine and any publication of similar bent, by the French people.  Their constitution puts the highest value on freedom of speech.  Charlie Hebdo has a constitutional obligation to cause offense.  By killing a dozen cartoonists, journalists and policemen, the nihilists didn't attack the magazine.  They attacked the French constitution and thus the French people.

To express solidarity, many publications have designed covers celebrating the superiority of the pen over barbarity.  The Economist's shows a defiant fist (which looks as if it had been borrowed from Black Power) holding a bloody pencil.  I would like to write something equally poignant, but I am feeble with the pen.  My affirmation will have to suffice: This blog is designed and expected to offend.  Je suis Charlie.