JeSuisCharlie: hard truths

Revivez la mobilisation historique du 11 janvier 2015 Paris - France - RFI

This attack puts into sharp relief a few hard truths that have to be confronted in the war with religious based extremists.
Charlie Hebdo is an extreme publication, attacking all targets out there in the world, to the edges of what many in France and Europe probably think appropriate. After all the circulation before the killings was 60,000. So perhaps that is behind the reluctance of some media establishments to re-publish the same caricatures in their own journals. Frederic Filloux in his Monday Note argues that "Anglo-saxon media that refused to publish religious caricatures should revise their position. This is the worst time to surrender to self-censorship and politically correctness. There is a too much at stake, here."
Of course, the very real worry is that this will simply put more fuel on the fire. But this comes to the crux of the issue about the fight with these extremists.
"There is no right *not* to be offended, only a right to be offended. No idea, no religion, is above scrutiny, and satire is a form of scrutiny" from Maajid Nawaz, a one time extremist who now works to help others understand and counter the attraction of these groups.
Islam needs more voices like Maajid to be highly visible in their support of free speech, even when in disagreement. As George Packer writes in the New Yorker (The Blame for the Charlie Hebdo Murders - The New Yorker), "A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents. Islam today includes a substantial minority of believers who countenance, if they don’t actually carry out, a degree of violence in the application of their convictions that is currently unique."



More on Maajid from NPR
How Orwell's 'Animal Farm' Led A Radical Muslim To Moderation : NPR

Maajid Nawaz grew up in Essex, England, in the 1990s, the son of Pakistani parents. At age 16, Nawaz was transformed from a disaffected British teenager to an Islamist recruiter when he joined the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Nawaz continued his college studies and spent a year abroad in Egypt, where he continued his recruiting. As a result, he was imprisoned for four years, starting in 2002. It was while in prison, surrounded by several prominent jihadist leaders, that Nawaz realized he wanted to take a different path. He was reading George Orwell's Animal Farm and came to a new understanding of "what happens when somebody tries to create a utopia."

"I began to join the dots and think, 'My God, if these guys that I'm here with ever came to power, they would be the Islamist equivalent of Animal Farm," Nawaz says. He says he began to see that it's "impossible to create a utopia."