Paris
What you should believe
You’ve seen the news. The rampage in Paris. A joke, albeit one that isn’t funny.
After the grieving and disbelief the fear of any right thinking person should be on the backlash. It will be large, and likely ask difficult questions of our attitudes to our freedoms. We can’t let this catastrophe assist the racist parties of the EU. Events like this cause the weak to falter, to submit to rhetoric that has no place in the our society. The shift to the right and individualism is already pronounced, Paris shouldn’t catalyse it further.
3 points that you need to consider (ones that FOX news won’t tell you).
Islam.
In the midst of all this the eternal question seems to be what of Islam? What role does it play in our society? It’s a stupid question. One that doesn’t even make sense. Terrorism is not Islam, to think so is ridiculous. Even to loosely link them is puerile. Just as a catholic IRA volunteer does not speak for a catholic British soldier stationed in the barracks he seeks to destroy, the two brothers are not representative of Muslims the world over.
Linking the two is sloppy and something for the bigots. Leave that to La Pen. Hollande may not be popular but he’s right. France is better together. Alienating a section of the community is both absurd and disrespectful. Clamping down on Islam is a nonsense, as is trying to make it apologise for extremism a la Murdoch. If I choose to be a Muslim it is my right, one that terror and the right wing can’t take away from me. The Tory MP David Davies, is fundamentally flawed in his belief that human rights are a privilege rather than a fundamental of our society. Everyone has rights — its what raises us above barbarism.
Religion or Expression?
Where to draw the line. A tricky one. Is religion or expression more important? On further exploration again a remarkably shallow assertion, one that links bloodshed with religion. Like any other mechanism, religion should and is rightly open to question, free speech is a basic right. Outside of that tyranny reins. If religion plays in this space and denies free speech it alienates itself, crucially though it doesn’t become complicit in the terror.
The West doesn’t always have the answer, just because we have begun to democratise faith doesn’t mean we are right. Our society is pretty fucked if you care to take a look out of your glass house. Our decisions on modern life are likely to blame, the US’s inequality and distribution of wealth is a shambles, the UK is heading that way.
Support freedom, it doesn’t make you a terrorist.
The right wingers will use scaremongering to make you think that borders should be closed and that Islam is a wave that will swallow you up. It’s not. Peace is deeply rooted in Islam, its a thread that runs through it.
Standing up to violence is one thing, standing against a ground swell of emotion is another. It’s different and its difficult but its necessary because if we don’t we may as well all pack up. There’s not much point hanging around if this is the reality. Living in a country that doesn’t question its actions doesn’t really float my boat.
A land that banishes human rights, spies on its citizens and waterboards suspects of terror before housing them as animals is not what my upbringing taught me was correct. It’s unjust. Linking Islam to terror and living as if they are explicit is simply dehumanisation. Grouping is the first tactic of genocide.
If you think in this way you are as bad as the jihadis.
I was in Paris in 2011. Beautiful weather, terrific coffee and fantastic food. I ate in Turkish cafes, visited a mosque and bought some tea from a Iraqi market stall. The smells, the colours, the smiles.
It was a parisian experience yet one that had been shaped by Islam and the Middle East. That isn’t a bad thing; cultures evolve and grow. Having a coffee and reading La Monde by the Seine is blissful, as are Fish and Chips and a pint of ale in London. Breaking down barriers and working towards something better and more meaningful though is much more relevant.
Multiculturalism delivers time and again. Lets’s hope this senseless attack doesn’t lunge Paris into an abyss that means the years of integration count for nothing.
