On Wednesday 7th January 2015, around 11.30 am, two gunmen armed with Kalashnikovs burst into the office of the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The two individuals, Chérif and Said Kouachi, French Muslims of Algerian descent, fired at the journalists killing 12 people. Four famous cartoonists were killed including the director of the newspaper. Afterwards, the two brothers fled the place.
What ensued afterwards was probably the largest manhunt in French history with some 4,000 police officers and gendarmes tracking them all over the country. The following day, a then unidentified man shot and killed a police officer in the streets of Paris. Then on Friday, the Kouachi brothers were spotted in the countryside outside of Paris. A police chase followed and the two brothers went in a company office where they initially took the owner of the shop hostage, however they later freed him.
The same day, Amedy Coulibaly, a French Muslim of African descent, entered a Jewish Casher supermarket in Paris and took the people hostage. He was the person responsible for the killing of the police officer the day before. Later, that Friday, elite police teams launched assaults on both places and killed the 3 persons. These events will prove to be the most emotionally charged in France since World War II.
Starting on Wednesday, spontaneous demonstrations took place all over the country, even in small towns, with candlelight vigils being held in memory of the cartoonists. On Thursday, pretty much all public places from primary schools, to hospitals, including buses stopped at exactly 12pm in order to hold a moment of silence. Even workplaces, including both public and private sector ones, held such commemoration. People would come out on the street with the slogan “Je suis Charlie”. Footballers, except Muslims ones, would wear at the start of matches black shirts with the words “Je suis Charlie”. TV show hosts would cancel or change their planned programs. Pretty much all French singers and actors released statements of support of the newspaper and their cartoonists.
Then on Sunday 11th January, the biggest march in France since then end of World War II took place with almost 4 million people all around the country. Some 47 heads of states, not including ministers from foreign governments, flew to Paris to attend this exceptional march. It included Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, King Abdullah of Jordan and his wife Rania, Malian President Ibrahim Sekou Touré. Even a Saudi delegation flew to offer their condolences to French President François Hollande. French comedian Dieudonné described that march as “a magical moment only comparable to the big-bang”.
These were definitely the tensest days I have experienced in my almost 30 years life. Armed attacks and bombings have happened in the past, especially after 9/11, but never had I seen in France until 2014 average people spontaneously going to the streets to demonstrate against these attacks.
I could feel the tension from TV broadcasts and the way the media, politicians, public figures covered and commented these events. When I would go out of my house, I would see discussions taking place on buses, on the tramway. I would see quite a lot of businesses putting up the “Je suis Charlie” slogan on their windows. Not far from my house, one house had even placed candlelights and “Je suis Charlie” slogan next to its door.
A friend of my wife told her that when she went to the supermarket with her husband, the security guard followed them everywhere. A Muslim who attended the same mosque as a friend of mine was brutally murdered by a Frenchman. The murderer stabbed the brother 17 times in front of his wife and his baby child. A mosque was bombed while others were struck by gunshots.
In one week we had so many Islamophobic attacks. The atmosphere really felt as a pre-civil war one. I really felt that all that was needed was a small spark for the whole place to burn.
The situation had similarities to those of Muslims in Central African Republic (CAR) before their ethnic cleansing last year or those of Tutsis in Rwanda before their genocide in 1994. Both ethnic cleansings/genocides took place under the supervision and command of the French government and their armed forces which were present in both countries. So, the French state has a historical track record in how to cleanse and genocide whole ethnic and religious groups. The extremely bellicose rhetoric espoused by a large group of French politicians makes one feel that this is the plan.
A popular and widely followed French Jewish intellectual/journalist, Eric Zemmour, whose last book is a bestseller, openly expressed the idea of expelling all the Muslims living in France like what happened to the Europeans after the independence of Algeria. Indeed, France is the European country with by far the largest Muslim population. People talk of 5-6 million Muslims living in France, but this was the same figure from 20 years ago when I was a kid at school. In my city alone, about 25% of the people are Muslims and I think that there could easily be 8 million Muslims, if not 10, for a country with a population of 65 million people. Muslims, by their Islamic creed, do not adhere to the principles upon which the French Republic is founded, i.e. laïcité (secularism) and freedom. Secularism, which came about as a contextual reaction to the centuries long oppression meted out by the Kings of Europe with the collaboration of the Catholic Church, bans religion from all public spheres including the political and legislative ones. Thus, laws, political decisions, economic policies and social ones cannot be based on any religious text or moral principle but they must be based upon things that only the human mind can perceive, i.e. tangible benefits. This contradicts the core Islamic belief that only Allah سبحانه وتعالى has the right to legislate and that humans don’t have this right. Allah سبحانه وتعالى says,
مَّا أَنزَلَ اللَّـهُ بِهَا مِن سُلْطَانٍ ۚ إِنِ الْحُكْمُ إِلَّا لِلَّـهِ
“The hukm (command, judgment, legislation) is for none but Allah”
(12:40)
So, when we, Muslims, shun banking interest, it is not because of some perceived benefit like avoiding the 2008 financial crisis, but it is solely upon the basis of the verse where Allah سبحانه وتعالى says,
وَأَحَلَّ اللَّـهُ الْبَيْعَ وَحَرَّمَ الرِّبَا
“Allah has permitted trade and forbidden Riba (interest)”
(2:275)
And this thinking and ideological outlook contradict the basis upon which the French Republic was founded.
We, Muslims, don’t also believe that people should have the right to say whatever they want this includes insulting prophets and God.
Furthermore, France has a two-century-old colonial history whose main bulk of colonies were in the Muslim world. It perpetrated a long list of genocides and crimes in those lands. When France invaded Algeria in 1830, it is reported that it killed around a third of the population and when France left Algeria in 1962, after an 8-year bloody war, it is estimated that France killed around a tenth of the population or 1.5 million. This colonial policy is something that continues to this very day, France has sent troops to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and is responsible or was involved in the genocide of Muslims in Bosnia (it was reported that French President Mitterand did not want an Islamic state in Europe).
More recently, France has orchestrated the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in CAR where the initially 20% Muslim minority was cleansed in a matter of months with horrific crimes perpetrated under the eyes of French troops who deliberately did not disarm the Christian anti-balaka militias. For these reasons (and you can add as well the constant discrimination that Muslims experience in France), Muslims cannot and will not integrate in French society and thus represent with their belief an ideological threat to the fabric of the present system or République. Hence, the ruling elites of France view this large expanding Muslim population as a fifth column.
It is no secret and I speak based on what I see on the ground that pretty much all Muslims hate France passionately, its government and what it stands for. This hatred is obviously reciprocal, except for a small minority of French people who are open-minded and less superficial in their thinking than the rest of the population. It is true that a sizeable part of the Muslim youth are involved in crimes such as drug dealing and armed robberies and they give a very bad image of Islam and Muslims, but I believe that the main driving force behind this hatred are the ruling and societal elites who despise Islam.
Now with regards to the issue of free speech. Let me start by saying that the hypocrisy is breathtaking.
The week following the attacks, Charlie Hebdo published again the insulting cartoons while French police arrested comedian Dieudonné for posting on Facebook “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” (Coulibaly being the name of the third person responsible for the attacks). He was charged for the offence of “condoning terrorism”. Over 50 people have been arrested, charged and some even imprisoned for expressing sympathy with the attackers under this offence of “condoning terrorism”.
People working in the public sector have lost their jobs because they refused to observe the moment of silence. Even an 8-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl were brought to the police station for comments they made in school. The reality of this free speech mantra is that you can insult the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, Islam and Muslims but you cannot even question the official account of the Holocaust, attack verbally French troops killing Muslims in Muslim countries or sell Shahadah flags.
The paper, Charlie Hebdo, itself is guilty of this double standards; in 2008 it fired its long time cartoonist Sine for having criticized the supposed conversion of Sarkozy’s son to Judaism in order to marry the Jewish heiress of a big fortune. A French court even rebuked Charlie Hebdo’s charge of anti-Semitism against the cartoonist.
France has lost the battle of ideas, there is no doubt about that. Freedom of speech was invented by Western philosophers at the time of the Enlightenment in order to resolve the problem of the tyranny of the kings in Europe. The Western thinkers argued that by granting people the right to say whatever they want, people would then be able to account the rulers and thus prevent rulers to lapse back into tyranny. This idea was brought along with the one of secularism. But 200 years later, when you have people who use speech to argue against secularism, then it is clear that free speech doesn’t serve the purpose for which it was invented and runs counter to it. Hence these states curtail free speech for these people. This is the result of ideas born out of the limited minds of human beings: sooner or later they will run into contradictions. Instead of free speech, we, Muslims, have a value that is better and nobler: enjoining the ma’aruf (good) and forbidding the munkar (evil). Through that principle, we account the rulers as the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said,
«أَفْضَل الْجِهَادِ كَلِمَةُ عَدْلٍ عِنْدَ سُلْطَانٍ جَائِر»
“The best of Jihad is (to say) a word of truth before an oppressor ruler”.
(Hadith Reported by Abu Dawud Tirmizi, Ibn Maja)
And yet we do not insult freely others or their religious beliefs as Allah سبحانه وتعالى says,
وَلَا تَسُبُّوا الَّذِينَ يَدْعُونَ مِن دُونِ اللَّـهِ فَيَسُبُّوا اللَّـهَ عَدْوًا بِغَيْرِ عِلْمٍ
“And insult not those whom they (disbelievers) worship besides Allah, lest they insult Allah wrongfully without knowledge.”
(6:108)
There can be no local solution to such a calamity. Muslims economically integrating into the society won’t make much a difference. The Muslims in CAR were economically very prosperous, yet that did not prevent the cleansing from taking place. Even though Muslims in France constitute a sizeable minority, they do not dispose of the institutional means to defend themselves in such a scenario. Muslims in France do not dispose of armed forces to protect themselves while the French government does, especially if it wants to perpetrate massacres. The only viable solution can come from a Muslim country with a sincere Islamic leadership that will not think twice before sending armed forces to protect the honour of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and the lives of the Muslims like the Khalifah Mutasim Billah who sent a whole army to liberate a sister imprisoned and abused by the Romans in the fort of Amauriyah. Unlike our current rulers who instead of even putting slight economic pressures (e.g. by banning oil sale to France), they come and attend the “Je suis Charlie” march.