The rise of fundamentalism has turned into a grim threat to not only the residents of Paris, but societies across the West Asia, Africa and the Far East. Edward Said had suggested that the best way of eradicating terrorism was to get rid of its causes. The religious and social contexts largely differ, yet the premises are more or less similar.
We need to seriously consider our perception of the forces of terrorism in a global context. Apparently, the underlying motive of terrorism is power struggle: whether it is the Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Isis or the Wahabis in Saudi Arabia, each branch of Jihadists fights to assert its supremacy. We would like to believe that it is all about their love of Islam but the subtext is to scramble for maximum control over the geo-political and social landscape.
The Charlie Hebdo attack has provoked a worldwide outcry accompanied by a need to go to the roots of such barbarism. This could be the final ‘clash of civilisation’. We are indeed faced by an enormous challenge to find a balance between categorical condemnation of violence and the democratic principles of the fundamental right to free expression.
The reaction of horror and revulsion is justified. Protest is a valid right in a free society but it cannot be used in a gratuitously violent manner. As Noam Chomsky argued in a recent exchange I had with him: “The reaction should be completely independent of what one thinks about Charlie Hebdo and what it produces. Rather, they should express defence of the right of free expression whatever one thinks of the contents, even if they are regarded as hateful and depraved.” I, on the contrary, am against puerile humour that is intentionally offensive, though I will allow full space without any speech codes for the intellectually creative that are mindful of both civility and meaningful satire. Racist lampooning has to be castigated.
Elaborating on the similarity between the brutal terrorist attack in Paris or the U.S. ‘missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters’ that ‘knocked Radio Television Serbia off the air’, Chomsky drew my attention to the NATO and the American forces using the argument that the aim was to knock out the state machinery of President Slobodan Milosevic, and therefore, the Television station was a reasonable target.
It is difficult here to perceive which of the two stands for ‘barbarism’ or ‘civilisation’. Far more serious acts of violence — like the appalling battering of Fallujah by American forces in 2004 — began with the occupation of Fallujah General Hospital. The military officers considered it a hub of propaganda owing to ‘its stream of reports of civilian casualties’ that apparently discredited the U.S. forces in public view. Is this not considered hypocrisy and a rhetoric of lies when ‘their acts which are horrendous’ are pitched against ‘ours which are virtuous and easily dismissed from living memory’?
The second major issue to be considered is the rise of the home-grown jihadists in France, a country that has been extremely lackadaisical about immigration regulations that regularly facilitated the influx of the young and old from North Africa. Unfortunately, a sizable portion of these immigrants have not been assimilated. Largely Muslim, they lack education, are jobless and engage in petty crime, thanks to France’s dismal record of social welfare schemes for the marginalised. Their dire socio-economic status makes them ripe targets for indoctrination.
However, to play into the hands of the extremists by denigrating Islam would be a step in the wrong direction. To do so would be injudicious as the vast majority of Muslims are nonviolent and industrious, law abiding citizens. The question remains: where are the millions of moderate Muslims, and should they not be rising against this relentless tide of violent extremism? Finally, what is most upsetting is the manner in which the Western media has transmitted the killings across the world. The news of the thousands slaughtered at the hands of the Boko Haram in Africa, their villages torched and decimated, continues to find negligible space in the press. Are we not culpable as a society in imputing unequal value on human life depending on geography and socio-political superiority? Are we not capable of striking a right balance between free speech, secular tradition and the demands of a multicultural society?
