Prospero | Charlie Hebdo and PEN

Free all speech

By J.F. | SINGAPORE

ON THE morning of January 7th two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, forced their way into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper. Because they did not like what that newspaper published, they machine-gunned 12 people to death.

On May 5th the PEN American Center—a branch of an organisation founded to defend free expression—will give Charlie Hebdo the Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award. PEN is not giving Charlie Hebdo the “We Like Your Cartoons” award, or the “Most Incisive Social Commentary” award or the “We Agree with Everything You Stand For” award. The Goodale prize is for courage.

Charlie Hebdo’s offices were firebombed in 2011 by others who disliked what they published: the editor-in-chief, Stéphane Charbonnier, lived under police protection from that bombing until the Kouachi brothers killed him and his bodyguard. The next year Charlie Hebdo published another series of cartoons that people disliked; riot police had to be stationed around their offices. The cartoons that Charlie Hebdo published were often insulting, juvenile and crude. Its writers and cartoonists may have lacked good taste, cultural sensitivity and a sense of self-protection. They did not lack courage.

Yet for some PEN luminaries, this award proved intolerable. Six writers—Peter Carey, Teju Cole, Francine Prose, Michael Ondaatje, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi—scheduled to be “table hosts” at the $1,250-per-plate fund-raiser on May 5th at which the prize will be given withdrew from the event. A further 29 signed an open letter supporting the six, worried that the award “is not simply conveying support for freedom of expression, but also valorizing selectively offensive material: material that intensifies the anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the Western world…To the section of the French population that is already marginalized, embattled, and victimized, a population that is shaped by the legacy of France’s various colonial enterprises, and that contains a large percentage of devout Muslims, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering.”

There is in fact no reason those cartoons “must be seen” that way, by France’s marginalised population or anybody else. Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons skewered everybody: they fit squarely within the sharp-elbowed, no-sacred-cows tradition of French satire. Most of their work had nothing to do with religion at all. The most frequent targets of their jibes were French politicians: of the 523 Charlie Hebdo cartoon covers from 2005 to 2015, a mere seven concerned Islam.

How not to respond to the attack on Charlie Hebdo

There is no question that France has done a poor job integrating its immigrant population into the country’s mainstream. French Muslims have good reason to feel aggrieved at the double-standard that permits mockery of Islam but criminalises Holocaust denial (yet another good reason to decriminalise Holocaust denial). And, unfortunately, anti-Islamic, anti-Arab sentiment is indeed prevalent in the West. But the Kouachi brothers did not kill Charlie Hebdo’s staff because they disagreed with French immigrant policy; they did it because they believed Islam ought to be beyond the bounds of satire, and this letter’s signatories seem to agree.

Islam is the second-most-practised religion in both France and the world. Dozens of countries call themselves Islamic and derive their laws, in whole or part, from Islamic religious law. The militant strain of Islam is particularly vital: witness Islamic State’s rampage across the Middle East, and its draw on disaffected young Western Muslims. The core message of Islam is one of temperance, honesty, equality and modesty before God; Islam is a source of strength, comfort, inspiration and guidance for more than one billion people around the world. It is strong enough to withstand some schoolboy scrawls.

Francine Prose’s letter strikes a similar tone to the one with 29 signatories: first the throat-clearing (“I believe in the ideals of PEN…I was horrified by the tragic murders…I abhor censorship” etc etc), then the nub: “The problem is that the “narrative of the Charlie Hebdo murders—white Europeans killed in their offices by Muslim extremists—is one that feeds neatly into the cultural prejudices that have allowed our government to make so many disastrous mistakes in the Middle East. And the idea that one is either ‘for us or against us’ in such matters not only precludes rational and careful thinking, but also has a chilling effect on the exercise of our right to free expression”.

It’s true that the murders feed an unfortunate narrative that seeks to pit the West against Islam. It’s also true that the murders happened, and just because some people might seek to use them to fit a belligerent and false “clash of civilisations” narrative does not mean that the rest of us must remain silent. People should not seek to pit groups against each other; governments should not launch ill-considered wars; cartoonists should not be executed for drawing. One can and should believe all of these things equally.

Like Alex Massie, I find it quite easy to decide whether I am “for us or against us” when it comes to murdering people for what they say, write or draw. And the notion that the real threat to free expression comes not from people who will kill you if they don’t like what you say, but from being too strongly “for” or “against” those who will kill you for what you say is practically self-parody.

In her letter of dissent Deborah Eisenberg calls the cartoons “reckless”, which effectively gives assassins a veto on free expression: if your speech provokes violence, you have only yourself to blame. This is ghastly: no words—nothing, ever, anywhere—are offensive enough to be punishable by death. And as Nick Cohen points out, it’s not just the schoolboy provocateurs of Charlie Hebdo who are subject to that veto; its victims include gay men and women in Iran, atheists in Saudi Arabia, Christians in Malaysia and liberal Muslims everywhere.

The dissenters’ letter closes by wishing the award could have gone to someone whose “work was pointedly exercised for the good of humanity”. Unfettered free speech is good for humanity. Charlie Hebdo was firebombed, and its journalists were threatened and attacked for what they wrote—yet they persisted. That they persisted in drawing crass, juvenile cartoons is beside the point. Defending free speech means defending speech you don’t like; otherwise it’s just partisanship, not principle. PEN is pressing ahead with the award, as it should.

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