Take this veiled woman. She is an admirable woman. She is courageous and dignified, devoted to her family and her children. Why bother her? She harms no one. Even those women who wear the total, all-encompassing veil do not generally use their clothing to hide bombs (as certain people were claiming when the law to ban the burqa was being discussed). They too will do nothing wrong. So why go on whining about the wearing of the veil and pointing the finger of blame at these women? We should shut up, look elsewhere and move past all the street-insults and rumpus. The role of these women, even if they are unaware of it, does not go beyond this.
Your government and the U.S. Military can claim it all you want, covering your hair and wearing a long skirt is not “passive terrorism” or inherently some sort of fundamentalist political statement.
Take the local baker, who has just bought the nearby bakery and replaced the old, recently-retired guy, he makes good croissants. He’s likeable and always has a ready smile for all his customers. He’s completely integrated into the neighbourhood already. Neither his long beard nor the little prayer-bruise on his forehead (indicative of his great piety) bother his clientele. They are too busy lapping up his lunchtime sandwiches. Those he sells are fabulous, though from now on there’s no more ham nor bacon. Which is no big deal because there are plenty of other options on offer - tuna, chicken and all the trimmings. So, it would be silly to grumble or kick up a fuss in that much-loved boulangerie. We’ll get used to it easily enough. As Tariq Ramadan helpfully instructs us, we’ll adapt. And thus the baker’s role is done.
…Oh yes, muslim-owned restaurants are ALL complicit in terrorism: by daring to not sell pork or alcohol, they’re forbidding you from it! What is this garbage?
The dread of being treated as an Islamophobe or being called racist. Really, a kind of terror.
…people calling you racist or bigoted isn’t a form of terrorism. Sorry Charlie, even under America’s broad definition that’s a reach.
Those are just what stood out to me in this…thing.
oh of course, it’s just…being on the “Yeah, this is not cool but lets not pretend the magazine is a Paragon of Progressivism” side back during the attack, this is…both vindicating and depressing because I’m sure people are still going to try and defend this.
All this article is putting forward is a very old, and very French defence of the concept of secularism, which holds that as soon as anyone imposes their faith onto the public arena, in that moment, secular society is under attack. Nothing more.
You may find these words expressed rather impolitely. However it barely registers on any scale of impoliteness or offence compared to shooting people with whom you don’t agree in cold blood. Which of course actually happened to their colleagues.
Most everyone here will agree that no matter how vile the Ku Klux Klan’s message, they have the freedom to make it. Most everyone here will agree that shooting KKK members is absolutely the wrong thing to do.
But if after that shooting people expressed solidarity by wearing and posting “I am KKK” banners, more than a few folks here would rightly disagree.
Take the local baker, who has just bought the nearby bakery and replaced the old, recently-retired guy,
...
So, it would be silly to grumble or kick up a fuss in that much-loved boulangerie.
This is a good reminder of why the United States has fewer home-grown Islamic terrorists than Western Europe. Even with all the hateful bigotry being spewed by the likes of public figures such as Trump and Cruz, it’s still easier for a Muslim in the United States to be accepted as a “real” American than it is for a Muslim in Paris to be accepted as a “real” Frenchman.
ETA: I don’t speak French and thus never really kept up with Charlie Hebdo, is it possible they just lost their wittiest/least xenophobic satirists during that last horrible attack?
There’s also the matter of birthright citizenship.
I read a while back that a lot of Algerians and others were brought into France as workers. And not given citizenship. Their children born in France didn’t get citizenship. And so you get a whole generation - and then another - who aren’t even second class citizens. They know it, they resent it, and of course it leads to unrest and worse.
Almost all of the western hemisphere has birthright citizenship. Even when immigrants don’t blend in well, their children - with automatic citizenship - do.
are you sure? I think most European countries use jus sanguinis (I’m sure for Germany) and jus solis is a less important add-on (in Germany since 2000 as the option-model for 2nd generation immigrants)
Frankly, several things Charlie Hebdo published recently went quite overboard. They seem to have forgotten lesson number one: be careful who you laugh WITH.
