More stories

  • in

    Emmanuel Macron Defends His Crusade

    Throughout the month of October, French President Emmanuel Macron projected himself into the global news cycle as the leader of a new crusade launched ostensibly to bring Islam into conformity with French Enlightenment ideals. In reality, his campaign is aimed at bolstering his chances of winning a second term in the 2022 presidential election.

    Is Peace Religious or Secular?

    READ MORE

    The Muslim world’s reaction to Macron’s crusade has been one of stunned bewilderment. In an interview with Al Jazeera on Saturday, the president offered no apologies and instead sought to explain his motives: “I understand the sentiments being expressed and I respect them. But you must understand my role right now, it’s to do two things: to promote calm and also to protect these rights.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Promote calm:

    Engage in any action — however ill-conceived, unjust or destructive — that affords peace of mind to a politician worried about his diminishing chances of winning the next election.

    Contextual Note

    Can President Macron be serious when he says that his actions and discourse have served to promote calm? Has the world or France itself become calmer since his speech at the beginning of October, when he declared that Islam was in crisis globally? Can he be unaware that when a Western leader announces what Al Jazeera describes as “his plan ‘to reform Islam’ in order to make it more compatible with his country’s republican values,” some may interpret that as a sign of aggression against their culture by a European who appears to have retained a neocolonial mindset?

    Does Macron believe that by providing a supplementary motive to unhinged individuals driven by fanaticism and ready to engage in murderous violence against his own people he is promoting calm and protecting rights? President Donald Trump might claim the same thing when he encourages white supremacists and the police to attack protesters in the name of “retribution.” The only logical perspective that could lead to calm in the struggle he describes would be total victory. In other words, crushing and humiliating the other side. But even that would be a failed plan. Humiliation brings short-term peace but sets the stage for major revolt as soon as the winner’s grip begins to loosen.

    Macron proudly announces: “I will always defend in my country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw.” The only threat to that freedom can come from institutions with the power to repress it, not from individuals who react irrationally to what some people write, think and draw. Macron’s language is fundamentally dishonest. The controversy that has been going on for over a decade is not about the right to speak, think and draw. It concerns the possible social consequences of publishing, disseminating and amplifying messages that some may interpret as an expression of hateful and discriminatory intimidation. 

    Embed from Getty Images

    Jules Ferry, the virulently anticlerical father of laïcité, created France’s modern public education system. As minister of education in 1883, he instructed teachers to speak “with the greatest reserve, whenever you risk even brushing against a religious sentiment of which you are not the judge.” He insisted that if “a single honest man may take offense at what you are going to say … abstain from saying it.” Macron has a different reading of laïcité. In fact, the controversy turns around a bigger problem at the core of today’s civilization: the role of the media. In its quest to increase its audience, the media routinely amplifies every difference of opinion or quarrel that it presents as a cause to be defended, on one side or the other. In such circumstances, every word and gesture may be perceived as a provocation of the other side. 

    By way of contrast, in a society that encourages healthy dialogue and debate, friction and tension will inevitably exist, but they contribute to building a culture of tolerance and open exchange. Social dialogue can have its ugly moments, as parties directly challenge each other. But respectful dialogue creates networks of understanding rather than pockets of conflict. As soon as debates are turned into defending “a cause,” dialogue disappears.

    Causes kill debate by invoking a higher principle that often exists only in the purveyor’s mind. Emmanuel Macron’s formulation of the idea of freedom is far more absolute than its actual practice in France, where restrictions on freedom of speech, including libel and hate speech, incitement to violence and insulting public servants, exist and are enforced. Jules Ferry would have expected his teachers to reflect on whether the Charlie Hebdo cartoons fell into any of those categories.

    French political culture has traditionally reserved a special status for satire. Its preservation ensures that the people may criticize the government and institutions of authority. The government is free to counter with its own arguments but runs the risk of being held to account if it goes too far in restricting citizens’ rights. The cartoons in question had nothing to do with the questioning of national authorities. They were much closer to nationalistic propaganda.

    The controversy over the cartoons appears to cross an invisible borderline between satire and gratuitous and xenophobic insult. There is no readily identifiable borderline but a culture that pretends to be as rational as France’s vaunted Enlightenment culture claims to be should acknowledge the reality of the borderline. Even in his attempt at an apology in the Al Jazeera interview, Macron clearly refuses to do so.

    It is a well-known fact that politicians distort everything to attain their ends. It is part of their job profile. Macron distorts even the idea of distorting. He complains about “distortions” that led people “to believe that the caricatures were a creation of the French state.” That is clearly a distortion on his part. No serious voice has made that claim. He then generously notes that “in the world there are people who distort Islam and in the name of this religion that they claim to defend, they kill, they slaughter.” That may be true, but the effect of his speeches has been to distort the nature what he calls the “global crisis” of Islam.

    Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, sagely and humbly expresses the wish that Macron “should begin to improve the atmosphere between France, Europe, and the Muslim world.” Bishara nevertheless implies that is unlikely. On this occasion, he doesn’t mention the reason why, which he is well aware of. There will be a new presidential election in 18 months.

    Historical Note

    Samuel Paty, the assassinated teacher at the heart of all this, undoubtedly believed that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, originally published in 2015, belonged to history and could be treated as artifacts of the past when he presented them in a civics class. After all, political cartoons published in newspapers are essentially ephemera. They quickly disappear from everyone’s cultural memory. The Greeks understand that since their word for newspaper is εφημερίδα — ephemerida. 

    If Paty believed that the cartoons belonged only to the past, he was wrong. Because of the media’s and politicians’ obsession with causes and the fact that the Charlie Hebdo murder trial was currently underway, the issues around the cartoons were very much alive. 

    In the late 20th century, Ireland endured a prolonged conflict between Protestants and Catholics marked by terrorism. The IRA was better organized and better equipped than any of today’s loose Muslim extremist networks. We might wonder today whether it would have made any sense for Protestant cartoonists to publish cartoons of the pope as a terrorist? (They obviously could not have taken Jesus as their target because both of the warring religions were Christian). 

    The answer is simple. It didn’t happen. Everyone understood the conflict had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with communities and conflicting loyalties. This is perfectly illustrated in a joke from that time: It’s night and a man is walking on the streets of Belfast. Suddenly a shadowy figure leaps out and thrusts him against a wall in a dark alley. He feels a gun pressed up against his skull. A voice shouts, “What religion are you?” He thinks: “If I say Catholic and he’s Protestant, he’ll kill me. If I say Protestant and he’s Catholic, I’m dead.” Thinking quickly, he said, “I’m Jewish.” He then heard the voice blurt out, “I must be the luckiest Palestinian in Ulster.”

    Now that is meaningful and effective satire. Though troubling, it can elicit a laugh from people of any religion. 

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

  • in

    Is Peace Religious or Secular?

    Reporting on yesterday’ horrendous knife attack in Nice’s cathedral, Al Jazeera defined the context: “The incident comes amid growing tensions between France and the Muslim world over French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent speech wherein he said Islam was in ‘crisis’, and amid renewed public support in France for the right to show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.”

    After the US Election, Will Civil War Become the Fashion?

    READ MORE

    Earlier this week, Fair Observer’s founder, CEO and editor-in-chief, Atul Singh, teaming up with the great and respected scholar Ishtiaq Ahmed, published an article with the title, “Macron Claims Islam Is in ‘Crisis.’ Erdogan Disagrees.” Citing the public quarrel that recently broke out between the French and Turkish presidents, the authors review various moments of violence in the political history of Muslim expansion in Asia.

    France finds itself undergoing a historical psychodrama with existential implications. At the beginning of October, Macron asserted that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis,” accusing it of the anti-republican crime of “separatism.” Commentators avoided noticing that this was a clever ploy on Macron’s part to distract attention from the fact that France and Europe have been in an existential crisis for some time. Pointing to someone else’s crisis is an efficient way of hiding one’s own.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Above all, Macron wants to convince voters in France that he, far better than the nationalist Marine Le Pen, has the stature to confront the consequences of Islam’s global crisis. The president has built a fragile center-right power base, and his main challengers in the 2022 election are on the right and the extreme right. He must at all costs occupy some of their terrain. The Muslim threat is the hot-button issue that has the most immediate impact.

    Shortly after President Macron’s denunciation of the global crisis of Islam, the gruesome killing and beheading of Samuel Paty took place. The history teacher’s 18-year-old assassin, born in Chechnya, had been educated in French public schools from the age of 6. Paty’s crime had been to show his class the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons ridiculing Islam in a lesson about freedom of speech. Macron has since made a point of defending the “liberty of blasphemy” as a basic right, protesting that he would not “renounce the caricatures,” which for some may sound as if he is endorsing their content.

    The article by Ahmed and Singh builds up to a fundamental question: “Does Islam lead to violence and terrorism?” After noting that “[m]any Islamic scholars and political analysts argue in the negative,” the authors boldly announce their “contrarian view that Islam can only be a religion of peace after it conquers the world and establishes a supremacy of sharia.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Religion of peace:

    Every religion at its spiritual core, just as every religion as soon as it is appropriated or overtaken by political forces becomes a religion of war

    Contextual Note

    Throughout mankind’s history, there have been so many sects, cults, churches and spiritual philosophies that generalizing about religion itself can only be a futile exercise. Generalizing about any single religion, especially one shared by more than a billion people and that has lasted over a thousand years, is equally fraught with ambiguity. Attributing to a religion the ambition of conquering the world begs so many questions of history, economy, political organization and culture that no discussion, however rational, can hope to produce an acceptable general conclusion.

    St. Augustine observed that if fire is used to produce warmth, we see it as good and peaceful, but if used to burn and destroy, it appears aggressive and evil. The same is true of any religion. History offers examples of both the good and evil uses of religion. Searching the sacred texts of any religion will provide examples of exhortations that may at times suggest aggressive inclinations and at others, peace and harmony.

    It is not the task of a Devil’s Dictionary’s to defend any particular religion or religion in general, but rather to recognize those occasions when even secular thought — and more particularly political thought — hides the fact that it has its own dogmas, often as categoric and absolute as the most puritanical religion.

    .custom-post-from {float:left; margin: 0 10px 10px; max-width: 50%; width: 100%; text-align: center; background: #000000; color: #ffffff; padding: 15px 0 30px; }
    .custom-post-from img { max-width: 85% !important; margin: 15px auto; filter: brightness(0) invert(1); }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-h4 { font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-h5 { font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
    .custom-post-from input[type=”email”] { font-size: 14px; color: #000 !important; width: 240px; margin: auto; height: 30px; box-shadow:none; border: none; padding: 0 10px; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-pen-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right 14px; background-size:14px;}
    .custom-post-from input[type=”submit”] { font-weight: normal; margin: 15px auto; height: 30px; box-shadow: none; border: none; padding: 0 10px 0 35px; background-color: #1878f3; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-email-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 14px center; background-size: 14px; }

    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox { width: 90%; margin: auto; position: relative; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;}
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label { text-align: left; display: block; padding-left: 32px; margin-bottom: 0; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;
    -webkit-user-select: none;
    -moz-user-select: none;
    -ms-user-select: none;
    user-select: none;
    order: 1;
    color: #ffffff;
    font-weight: normal;}
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label a { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline; }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input { position: absolute; opacity: 0; cursor: pointer; height: 100%; width: 24%; left: 0;
    right: 0; margin: 0; z-index: 3; order: 2;}
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:before { content: “f0c8”; font-family: Font Awesome 5 Free; color: #eee; font-size: 24px; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; line-height: 28px; color: #ffffff; width: 20px; height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 2; }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:before { content: “f14a”; font-weight: 600; color: #2196F3; }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:after { content: “”; }
    .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:after { position: absolute; left: 2px; width: 18px; height: 18px; margin-top: 10px; background: #ffffff; top: 10px; margin: auto; z-index: 1; }
    .custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}

    Most media commentators have refused to notice what is obvious about the situation in France. Laicité in the hands of French politicians has become a surrogate religion. It has produced a belief system with doctrines increasingly formulated as dogmas. Political scientist Olivier Roy wonders whether Macron isn’t seeking to abolish the separation of church and state, the foundation of laïcité, by focusing only on Islam. Macron’s stance implies that “the simple fact of placing God above men is a declaration of separatism.” Laïcité risks becoming a religion of war, not peace.

    Emulating the Catholic Church, Macron’s government turned Paty into a republican saint and martyr when it instantly conferred upon him the Légion d’honneur. In the days following his killing, some had proposed to have him interred at the Pantheon, to be entombed with the “gods” of the republic. In contrast, the Vatican requires an elaborate procedure, the passage of time and the intervention of the devil’s advocate before canonizing its saints and martyrs.

    One prominent voice in French politics has suggested a subtle but necessary distinction that Macron’s government and the media prefer to avoid. Jean-Luc Mélanchon, the head of the party La France Insoumise, has consistently militated in the past for severe punitive measures directed not at “Islam in crisis,” “radical Islam” or even fundamentalism, but at the actors of “political Islam,” a term Roy defines as “the contemporary movement that conceives of Islam as a political ideology.” For this crime, Macron’s minister of education calls Mélanchon a treasonous “Islamo-gauchiste.”

    Historical note

    Though the characterization of Islam by Ishtiaq Ahmed and Atul Singh appears abusive in its generality, there is a very real sense in which is true. All systems of thought that claim to be universal are tempted by despotism. If we define secular peace as a state of shared understanding and harmonious interaction across an entire population, we must recognize that it implies some degree of submission and conformity to an order, usually a political order. It’s a question of degree and the means of enforcement available. France’s Reign of Terror was conceived by secular rationalists. Throughout history, submission and conformity have been achieved through fear and intimidation, conquest and slaughter.

    Both Christianity and Islam claim to be universal. In the history of both religions, we have seen examples that tended toward two extremes: the generous belief that the religion is accessible to all people and the insistence that all people in a specific region embrace it. The determining factor has always been the political climate and social traditions within which the universality of the religion and its moral system have been applied or imposed.

    The same is true of secular religions such as French republicanism and American exceptionalism. These non-religious cults play a determining role in the nations’ foreign policy. The US and France have each created a political religion that they believe is not only proper to their nation, but represents a universal model that other nations should emulate. In both cases, the separation of church and state plays an important role, clearing the way for universal adherence to the declared values of the republic and the civic religion.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Some point out that Islam differs from Christianity, whose founder insisted on rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s but not what is God’s. They may argue that Islam has never taken the trouble to distinguish between religious and political authority and has, throughout history, consistently invited confusion between the two. But in the Muslim world, the tradition of Sufism dates back to the early Umayyad period. Though it never had any pretension of becoming dominant, its historical reality demonstrates the awareness of a radical distinction between the spiritual (faith) and the worldly (politics).

    In short, religions play the role that history allows them to play. They also influence the politics we in the West, somewhat presumptuously, consider to be the unique basis of history. Moral philosophy always accompanies religion and can at times play a dominant role. But more often, political forces associated with religion manage to push it aside or mold it into something new. Whether any dominant religion becomes a religion of war or peace lies in the eyes of the beholder at a specific moment of history.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More