Je Suis Charlie et Je Suis Musulman

Actually I’m not. A Musulman/Muslim I mean. I’m an agnostic. And my ancestry is English, not Arabic. But I’m lucky enough to live in France—a country I have come to love—and I believe in democracy. It was this, coupled with a desire to express my solidarity with all those that suffered in the awful Charlie Hebdo massacre and its aftermath, that motivated me to join the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ march in my local city of Montpellier.

But I did so with mixed feelings. You don’t need to convince me that the roots of terrorism run deep; that the West is reaping the bitter harvest of colonialism, foreign policy hypocrisy and CIA torture. (People have short memories — the report condemning Guantanamo came out only weeks ago.) Nor am I ignorant of the fact that for many Muslims in the West—like the ‘lost boy’ Kouachi brothers who were (quelle surprise) orphaned, brought up in care, alienated from mainstream society and radicalised in prison? — racism is the price they pay for self-repatriation. It comes with the territory.

So on this extraordinary day of popular gathering in France, the like of which had not been since the second world war, I was curious to discover beforehand whether my instincts about racism were right. Would the French press balance their right to ‘Freedom of Speech/Expression’ with an attitude of tolerance and inclusivity towards Muslims? Or would they point the rigid finger of blame? Scanning the shelves of a shop in the Gare St. Roch I didn’t have to look far for evidence. This image is from the front cover of the centre-left current affairs magazine ‘Marianne’.

In his analyses of popular cultural texts like magazine covers, the celebrated French structuralist/semiotician Roland Barthes revealed how meaning is constructed on different levels — the denotational (literal/surface) and the connotational (implied/deeper). Let’s make a literal analysis first. ‘Allah is big enough to defend Muhammad by himself.. Alright? We fight on!’ We see the huge hand of Allah pressing firmly on the small, middle-aged Muslim guy as it reminds him who is in charge. Of course the message is ironic — playing on the meaning of the original ‘offensive’ cartoon — but overall it seems obvious enough.

Now let’s dig a little deeper. It’s clear to me that what this cartoon is really intended to mean — the ‘preferred reading’ to use semiotic terminology — is that the ‘miserable little Muslim’ is guilty by association with terrorists (the JK Rowling vs. Rupert Murdoch Twitter spat?) and that he should fear the strong arm of the secular French state as much as that of Allah. A biased interpretation? I don’t think so. The signs are there.

So who exactly is ‘fighting on’ and against whom here? And does the cartoon itself constitute an act of racism? To answer the first question, it would be hard to conclude that French Muslims are included in the defence of democracy. Otherwise why depict a ‘stereotypical, man-on-the-street Muslim’ and not a terrorist? And to answer the second, we can reliably turn to the EU directive on media. This refers to ‘.. any incitement to hatred based on race, sex, religion or nationality.’ Hmm, tricky word that ‘incitement’..

At this point, in the interests of balance, I should be clear that I often find myself as critical of Islam as the West. I have no difficulty in understanding why Richard Dawkins, to take an obvious example, regards the former as a threat to ‘Enlightenment values’. But I distance myself from his firebrand atheism and regard religion in general as a legitimate human attempt to find kinship, meaning and identity in a mixed-up world, even if I’m in favour of the ‘post-religious’ world envisioned by Einstein — free of dogma and theology and unified by a deep (scientific and spiritual) understanding of our interconnectedness.

Naturally, with all these contradictions swirling in my mind, I was tempted to ask my fellow marchers — some of whom were ‘Musulmans’ proclaiming ‘Not in my name!’ — what they thought about the cartoon. But I decided not to risk a confrontation. Not on this important day for France and democracy where the mood was palpably about ‘Egalité’ and ‘Fraternité’ as much as ‘Liberté’. But I left the march reminded of the ugly backlash against French Muslims I’d read about the night before and with a humanitarian feeling of solidarity for them too: Je Suis Charlie et Je Suis Musulman. And I left under no illusion that if the West is to conquer the ‘terrorist problem’ it needs to look to itself as much as the Arabic world.