NIDRA POLLER:AUTO DA FE IN PARIS…IT’S NO JOKE PART 2
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/38979
NB: “Ch” is pronounced “sh” in French, which is how “Sharlie Hebdo becomes Sharia Hebdo.]
Over a hundred rockets were fired from Gaza in the space of a few days, aimed at civilian targets, reaching deep into Israel, licking at the road to Tel Aviv when France, in a shocking about-face, voted in favor of the admission of “Palestine” to UNESCO. The Palestinian Authority is licking its chops at the prospects of getting unesco to declare the Tomb of the [Jewish] Patriarchs a Palestinian holy site. Just for starters. A few days later, on the eve of publication of a special Charia Hebdo issue with Mohamed as guest editor, Charlie Hebdo’s brand new unmarked premises were fire-bombed.
Would you be surprised to learn that the same moral and strategic confusion that produced a travesty of cultural justice at unesco informs the Charia issue of the vulgar sardonic weekly that provoked Islamic ire? In voting to admit the unformed state of “Palestine” to unesco, France was presumably trying to balance out its planned abstention on the UN Security Council vote to admit “Palestine.” Wouldn’t the Palestinians magically become a state overflowing with art, culture, and education, if only they were brought into the bosom of the UN organization? And, if Charlie Hebdo could make fun of Islam, wouldn’t it become as tame as Christianity? Why can’t the Israelis see the light?
The 15th page of the 16-page Charia Hebdo is wholly devoted to an interview with David Chemla, French president of Peace Now and European director of JCall [http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/27501 ]. The interview is illustrated by a three-stage drawing of a billboard standing in front of a barren landscape. Stage 1 announces the construction of a Palestinian state in 2011 with the support of Peace Now. Stage 2: one corner of the billboard is broken off, the date is changed to 2023 with the support of Peace Soon. Stage 3: the top 2/3 of the billboard is broken off, the date is changed to 2041 with the support of Peace Someday.
Asked if Abbas is weakened because the “Hebrew State” negotiated the release of Gilad Shalit with Hamas, David Chemla replies that this might lead Hamas to abandon military action and enter into a political process. In any event, he says, no peace agreement can be made without Hamas approval.
What about shari’a in the Islamic rump state of Gaza? Might that have something to do with the delayed construction of a Palestinian state? Don’t expect a Charlie Hebdo journalist to even dream of the possibility. What about the deterioration of relations with Israel when shari’a becomes the foundation of Arab Springtimed governments in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia? What about the persecution of Christians? None of the above would enter into the line of reasoning of Charlie Hebdo. If you can call what they do “reasoning.”
Charlie Hebdo is a below the belt, grabass, gross, laboriously disgusting, sex-cremental niche publication, an outdated survival of a 1960s rebellion against the bourgeoisie, the church, and the powers that be. Such outworn throwbacks are a staple of French culture, kept warm by fresh blood from a constant trickle of young people. We have 16 year-olds who are 100% pure Communists and 60 year-olds who think it is funny to belch in writing.
The Charlies don’t deal in nuance. They call everyone con. Con means stupid, idiotic, dimwit but it has a sexual connotation—another throwback—because it is, literally, c__t, the female sex organ. Calling everybody con is a way for the Charlies to deflect attention from their own slapdash approximations. Like boisterous children, they take pride in their sloppiness. How can you take issue with them, when they are deliberately crude, clumsy, and offensive?
love / stronger than hatred declares the cover of the “rebuttal” issue published on November 9th, a week after the firebombing. A bearded guy with a big nose and Islamic cap, apparently dressed in a kamis, gives a drooling kiss and bearish hug to a juvenile Charlie with a pencil behind his ear. A similarly bearded, similarly dressed Muslim appears on the back page but this time he’s enraged. Arm in arm with an enraged Catholic brandishing a “fundamentalist Bible,” the Muslim brandishes a “fundamentalist Koran.” The legend is “one god…two suspects.”
This week’s issue features countless messages of support, including these words from novelist and filmmaker Gérard Mordillat who sums up the Charlie Hebdo credo: “Religions deserve no respect …. All religions are instruments of oppression that we must combat…” The Charlies gleefully lump together rabbis, priests, and imams for collective spanking. Though, as I mentioned in Part 1, they repeatedly insist that they have nothing against Islam.
Page 15 of the November 9th issue is devoted to Cabu’s friendly sketches of the Occupy Wall Street folks at Zucotti Square. No such indulgence for the Catholics currently demonstrating in front of the Parisian theater that is running Romeo Castellucci’s Sul concetto di volto nel figlio di Dio [On the concept of the face of the son of God] in which a huge portrait of Christ is juxtaposed with a scene in which a son deals with his aged father’s incontinence, leading to confusion between the man’s bed drowned in excrements and the face of Christ soiled with, according to the playwright, India ink. For Charlie Hebdo the small group of Catholic protesters is no less dangerous than the thousands of death threats in the name of Islam. And if the sweetie pies in Zucotti Square are more like the avenging Muslims than the offended Catholics, it doesn’t count. They’re not religious.
Commentators outside of France, unfamiliar with the editorial line of Charlie Hebdo, have imagined a champion of free speech courageously standing up to the jihad battalions. Close up it looks more like a fools-rush-in operation. Infatuated with the illusion of an Arab springtime, the Charlies thought that Muslims are like us. Making fun of Islam was a friendly gesture. They believe Islam is divided like French Catholicism into a liberated, secularized majority and a fringe group of retrograde cons deserving of contempt.
On other issues—President Sarkozy and his government, capitalists, American imperialists, police, Zionists—the usual Leftist dislikes prevail. Charb—the boss– almost had to apologize for shaking hands with Interior Minister Claude Guéant. He was honest enough to admit that he also has to endure police protection when he appears in public.
Will the scatological, let it all hang out, grossly genital treatment of shari’a fare better than more serious well-informed works of art and politics that have left their authors in limbo when they weren’t brutally slaughtered? A French professor, Robert Redeker, has been in hiding for years, after writing a few simple truths about Mohamed. http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/refugee-in-his-own-country-february-09-france-islam-rushdie-threats A host of writers and intellectuals have discretely retired from public view because of physical attacks and credible death threats. Writers who dare to broach the subject of Islamization are vilified and marginalized. Most publishers turn down their manuscripts; when their works do appear they are not reviewed and many bookstores refuse to handle them.
The torching of Charlie Hebdo’s offices caused a flare up of awareness of the dangers of shari’a. Free speech, including the freedom to criticize Islam, became a cause célèbre supported all across the political spectrum. Leftists circulated petitions. There was a modest demonstration in front of the Paris City Hall. (The joke within the joke is that an official of the anti-racist establishment tried to exclude the vocal apostate Pascal Hillout of Riposte Laïque, accusing him of being on the Far Right.)
What will come of this unexpected shift in public discourse? Is it a flash in the pan? Or a sign that French people are beginning to stand up for their culture and their rights? Has the clumsy half baked punch from a marginal tabloid accomplished what dozens of brilliant thinkers weren’t able to do? History, you know, happens as if it were written by a novelist, not a historian!
Patrick Pelloux, an M.D. who writes for Charlie Hebdo, said “threats don’t scare us.” If so, bravo. But it’s going to be a long hard fight and this first skirmish was deceivingly simple. Remember, the initial reaction to the Mohamed drawings in Denmark’s Jyllands Posten was low key. It took months for a few imams to mobilize the “spontaneous” outburst of rage throughout the Muslim world. We can only hope that all the contingents that rushed to defend Charia Hebdo will be present and accounted for when jihad strikes again.
Part 1 was picked up on the UK Telegraph blog http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/richardlandes/100116383/nidra-poller-on-the-charlie-hebdo-bombing-its-no-joke/#.TrpyYr53vs4.email
For another Charlie Hebdo incident see Tempest in a Trash Can September 2008:
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/25151/sec_id/25151
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