How France's three dailies for children reported the mass murder at Charlie Hebdo
Thursday is the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo killings. So much vile terrorist activity has followed that the impact of that crime has diminished somewhat. There has even been backlash. One writer at The Observer said the other day that The New Yorker, of all publications, had run - just a few days after the murders - a 'a filthy and stupid libel ... a riotously ignorant article that took Charlie to task for its evident Nazi-standard racism'. It was rather more than that in truth but still suffered - in my view - from occasional inaccuracy and glaringly poor argument. Here is my own broader take*, not for The New Yorker but for The National, on what 2015 brought us and what to learn from it ...
Most Muslims, it is safe to assume, will be relieved to see the back of 2015. In differing ways, they share the suffering inflicted by a string of ISIL attacks that punctuated a wretched year. Some, of course, have been victims, too. But in western nations where Muslims now form sizeable minorities there is also indirect damage as fear, hatred and suspicion are fuelled by each act of unspeakable depravity carried out, however falsely, in Islam’s name.
In the twisted philosophy of ISIL, this is a satisfactory by-product of violence. The more communities can be driven apart, the more the they can present themselves as defenders. The quest for harmony, cherished by non-Muslims who recognise true Islam’s virtues or challenge prejudice, is seen by extremists as a legitimate target.
Those who clamour for stronger denunciation from Muslims of crimes by people who bring nothing to humanity but purport to honour the same religion are missing the point.
In reality, there is a consistent pattern of condemnation from community leaders, Islamic governments, institutions and individuals. But decent, law-abiding Muslims should not feel obliged to distance themselves personally from each atrocity as if it were the work of close relatives. As a Muslim mother told a London radio talk-in after the Paris attacks in November: “We share the same fears, hopes and aspirations as anyone else.”
It was not a religion but individual terrorists, motivated or financed by groups based in Syria, Iraq or Yemen, who committed murders at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters in Paris one year ago tomorrow, slaughtered tourists at Tunisia’s Bardo museum and resort of Sousse, blew up innocents in Turkey and Lebanon, staged mass shootings in the United States, downed a Russian jet in Sinai and turned November 13 into France’s Bloody Friday.
But it is worth remembering the extent to which Muslims also die at the hands of extremists. A Muslim police officer, callously shot dead as he lay wounded in the street, and a copy editor from an Algerian Muslim family were among the Charlie Hebdo victims.
After November’s Paris attacks, the French footballer Lassana Diarra, a Muslim, revealed that a cousin, Asta Diakite, was among the dead. Diarra had been playing in the international game against Germany as terrorists, unable to penetrate the Stade de France, detonated themselves outside. A good reason why many spectators were not killed is that a security guard, Salim Toorabally, a devout Muslim of Mauritian origin, stopped a ticketless bomber entering and did so again after seeing him try at another turnstile.
In a dignified statement, Diarra said: “In this climate of terror, it is important for all of us who are representatives of our country and its diversity to speak and remain united against a horror that has no colour, no religion.”
There are more examples, sufficient to establish the reality of mutual pain and disgust. Quite simply, the murderers did not act on Islam’s behalf.
Fittingly, it was from France that a rotten year closed on two minor heartening notes. Firstly, the expected gains by Marine Le Pen’s far-right, Islamophobic Front National in regional elections failed to materialise, though the party’s unhealthy influence prevails.
Then, in a powerful article for Paris Match magazine, a leading French businessman, Mohed Altrad, a Bedouin tribal leader’s illegitimate son who grew up in the Syria desert outside Raqqa but is now the billionaire head of a global empire, offered inspirational words on rising above sadness and turmoil.
Drawing for his theme on the 18th-century European philosophical movement of the Enlightenment, Mr Altrad, who was named 2015’s World Entrepreneur of the Year, described the Paris attacks as driven not by religion or culture but by “diffuse resentment and aimless hatred that, through diverse circumstances, incarnates itself in fundamentalism”.
“Like it or not, we are all, whatever our origin, children of the Enlightenment,” he wrote. “ We must recognise this simple fact. And it is on this matrix bringing us together that we can live and share the same world on an Enlightenment that is not, as we are led to believe, the defence of reason, but a bet on human goodness and – primarily – generosity.”
* See my work for The National, Abu Dhabi, of which this is an example, at http://www.thenational.ae/authors/colin-randall
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