No excuses
It was with utter
shock at lunchtime that I saw the news on the
canteen television set that 12 people had been murdered on the premises of the French
satirical magazine Charlie
Hebdo in Paris.
Nothing in my view
could excuse the blood-letting carnage meted out by murderous brigands in the
name of some belief system or religion.
Satire is a wonderful
tool and sophisticated medium of expression to carry interesting, difficult,
complex or controversial thought to a reading or listening public, it is to
make people think and reflect, never is it to inspire barbarity and atrocious
behaviour leading to murder.
Undermining their cause
The three cowardly and
masked criminals who shot up the place and left as they were heard shouting
"we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "God is Great"
in Arabic ("Allahu Akbar"), have done a great damage to any cause
they portend to represent.
To suggest they were
avenging the prophet is to promote the view that beyond the mystique, the mystery and sometimes the myth, the
so-called prophet is weak, powerless, fitful and ineffectual. This can never be
the case if the teachings of the prophet have thrived for over 14 centuries.
God is no doubt
great, but this is not how to project the greatness of God, by spilling blood
on the streets in the quest for their own personal sense of justice.
Lawless brigands
It makes you wonder,
who appointed these butchering criminals judge and jury to run riot with
weapons taking any life they see fit because they were seemingly offended?
In this day and age,
we cannot allow people to overrun civil society bringing carnage amongst us and
then running into some hiding place seeking refuge from justice. Cowards!
What damage these
people have wrought in the name of Islam is beyond reckoning, and much as they
are not representative of Islam per se,
this act of unmitigated violence will give the movement that appreciates
Islamophobia more fuel and support.
Damage to religion
Suffice it to say
that the people who do the most damage to religion are those who through their actions
in support of their beliefs are both unreasonable and extremist.
People whose
perspective of life strips humanity of any expression beyond one of
subservience to a deity that is cruel, merciless and humourless, yet, if we are
to lose the richness of satire and humour to the feeble religious sensibilities
of fanatics, we deserve no liberty nor freedom.
We must protect our
liberty, our freedom, our expression and our wonderful humanity from these sort
of people by chasing them and their sponsors; the acquiescent, the committed and those who give succour
to the ends of the earth, bringing them to face the full wrath of the law.
Much as we have
civilised ourselves beyond the routine shedding of blood, we must deprive these
people of their liberty that no one else comes to harm by their words, thoughts
or deeds.
Snakes in the backyard
We can no more
pussyfoot around religious extremism, it has to be tackled head on and brought
to heel, as every terrorist does not belong on our streets for more than an
overly generous second.
It is like what
Hillary Clinton said about tolerating terrorism in whatever form, “It's
like that old story - you can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them
only to bite your neighbours. Eventually those snakes are going to turn on
whoever has them in the backyard.”
That is what we do
when those with a tendency to terrorist activity are allowed to remain free because
of our fear of engaging them and eradicating whatever the radicalisation or
philosophy is.
Whose picture is it, really?
Then we need to deal
with the issue of depictions, nobody knows what any of the original religious
leaders looks like, it is quite beyond belief that anyone would then think a
depiction is a representation. Like every picture of a white man with blonde long
hair wearing a white robe is Jesus Christ, or every picture of a man with dark
hair, a big beard and a wearing a turban is Mohammed.
How we can be so
convinced of what we do not know to so act as if it were a personal living
experience makes the hold of religion on some people feel more cultist than
devotional. This is where people not so grounded in the richness of their faith
and belief systems get so easily offended by completely innocuous things.
Can we have come
through centuries of repression, persecution, wars and emancipating to then end
up in the 21st Century looking like the Dark Ages? It ought not be
so.
Protecting our expression
No one can so
suddenly be so religious to begin to personify the original prophets and
instigators of the belief systems we now hold dear, from whatever persuasions
and anything that attempts to create and nurture people with that kind of mind-set
needs to be nipped in bud.
Back to Charlie Hebdo, I am
saddened and perturbed by this tragedy, but for the victims of this tragedy not
to have died in vain, we must continue the discourse in the richness of satire
and humour, whilst condemning those who have decided to forfeit this wonderful
gift of human expression for murderous instincts.
Justice will prevail,
peace will rein and may the beauty of human expression on any topic we so
desire to reflect upon never wane.
May all those who
lost their lives in this unfortunate tragedy, rest in peace.