"Peace in Our Time" Appeasement of Terrorists
by
Eric Paul Nolte
A cartoon portrait of a weeping Mohammed appeared on the cover of last week’s Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine of satire, declaring, “Je suis Charlie.” Above the cartoon figure of Mohammed is the declaration, “All is forgiven.”
All the commentary I have read about this declaration of mercy assumes that it is Mohammed who is forgiving the murderously rampaging Muslim terrorists who had recently killed 12 people in the Parisian offices of the magazine. The terrorists proclaimed that they were avenging the prophet Mohammed for the allegedly unforgivable sin of drawing pictures of the Prophet.
But I wondered who or what was really meant to be forgiven?
Couldn’t it just as well be intended that Mohammed might be depicted as forgiving the cartoonists? This would be a lovely thought! What a fond hope!
But this forgiveness of the cartoonists would be impossible because it is contrary to the Islamic commandment to kill all those who dare to portray the prophet in pictures. Put another way, it was Mohammed himself who commanded righteous Muslims to kill such infidels. So the idea that Mohammed might forgive the cartoonists would be a lovely possibility only if the prophet could be imagined as the head of a religion that is actually preaching the kind of peace on earth that does not treat a difference of opinion as an unforgivable sin that must be punished by death. This is not the historical figure who was Mohammed, who was, instead, a petulant little snit who got his nose bent out of joint over every little slander, real or imagined, who intractably called for death to every infidel, and carried his religion by the sword damned near to the Great Wall of China, in the east, and in the west almost to the gates of Paris, and all the way to the gates of Vienna.
Parenthetically, but not entirely incidentally, the Muslims assaulted Vienna three times, the last time as recently as 1683! John Locke had already developed his unprecedented theory of human rights that gave us the ideological origins of the American project, including, to the point here, our bedrock belief in free speech.
So, imagining Mohammed to be forgiving the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists is ludicrous, to anyone who has actually read the Koran (I prefer this traditional spelling; same for "Mohammed.") Ha! Fat chance! Yet I can indeed imagine that this Mohammed's forgiveness of the cartoonists could have been the meaning intended by the cartoonist who drew the weeping prophet.
Unfortunately, I think that these cartoonists did not intend to show Mohammed as tearfully offering absolution to the poor murdered souls at Charlie Hebdo; the reason I think this is because of an article I read in the Manchester Guardian.
In a news interview, Renald Luzier, a.k.a. Luz, the cartoonist who drew the cover of this first issue of the magazine after the murders, was asked why he drew another picture of Mohammed, knowing that this would offend so many Muslims.
Monsieur Luzier was clearly emotional as he spoke of how cartoonists were once children who loved to draw and play. He fervently said that so too were the terrorists once children who drew and played, but they grew up and lost their sense of humor. The idea of a weeping Mohammed simply came to him as he pondered the matter, conjured up out of his own humanity. The whole idea is of a man, sadly crying out for those who were so cruelly murdered. Luzier may have been hoping to invoke the humanity of this impossible, imaginary Mohammed. The idea simply stuck with him, and, voila!— there was his drawing for the magazine cover.
A less symbolic explanation was given by one of the surviving columnists for Charlie Hebdo, Zineb El Rhazoui. According to the Guardian story, Rhazoui said that the cover was a call to forgive the terrorists who murdered her colleagues last week. I find it amazing that she said she did not hate the murderers, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi. Moreover, she “urged Muslims to accept humor.” She said, “We don’t feel any hate to them. We know that the struggle is not with them as people, but the struggle is with an ideology.” Not the people? The people who hold this murderous ideology? As if people are nothing but empty vessels filled with ideologies that make them bounce around helplessly like puppets on a string, pulled by ideas they have no power to resist or examine. The terrorists are people who choose to follow a murderous ideology.
Yes, I grant you that it is hard to exhibit intellectual independence in a culture that worships conformity to an ethos of mindless submission, which is the literal meaning of the Arabic word, Islam. But we don’t protect ourselves or make any progress against such cultural forces by encouraging them with the inducement and reward of forgiveness.
I am baffled, no, that’s not quite it, I am appalled by Rhazoui’s expression of forgiveness and her claim not to hate the terrorists who so righteously and terrifyingly murdered her colleagues.
Our emotions, the psychologists tell us (see Martin E. P. Seligman, for example) are the embodiment of our values, they are an automatic, psychosomatic barometer of our beliefs. Hatred is the emotion that arises from a perceived injustice, it is our response to what we believe to be unfair. So what would it mean not to feel hatred for a person who murders someone we deeply love? Imagine what you would feel towards someone who would murder your child, your wife, or your husband? What would it mean to forgive such a monster? Should we forgive Hitler?
Now, a reasonable person might be inclined to forgive somebody who expresses regret for his wrongful actions, begs your forgiveness, promises never to do it again, expresses some understanding of the evil actions he did, and offers a logical argument to persuade you to believe why he will never do it again. But to forgive these unrepentant, righteous murderers? Never!
I find it hard to believe that Rhazoui truly forgives these Islamic terrorist murderers. Such forgiveness sounds something like pious, Christian, turn-the-other-cheek bushwa. Maybe she is scared that she will anger the Muslim crazies even more if she expresses hatred and provoke them into committing ever more atrocities.
Or … here it is … maybe she holds the delusional hope that she can somehow appease these despicable monsters.
Maybe Madame Rhazoui truly believes that only by not condemning the terrorists can she leave open a space for dialogue and eventual reconciliation with Muslim murderers, for the purpose of achieving “peace in our time,” as the hapless British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain put it in 1938, after his appeasement of Hitler, and one year to the month before Hitler invaded Poland.
Fat chance of appeasement, rapprochement, or dialogue with Islamist totalitarians, like the Charlie Hebdo terrorists.
Those who wield swords in the name of mindless submission to the murderous commands of any ideology or religion are the least likely people on earth to be open to peaceful co-existence. If outright self-destruction is not our goal, then the language of those who begin wielding force, impelled by mindless faith, must be answered by force, in the name of self-defense.
If, without initiating physical force against others, we express our opinions, and affirm our cherished belief in freedom of speech, if our ideas offend their tender sensibilities, well then, too damned bad. Let them grow up and get on with their lives, peacefully. Or else we stop their threats with appropriate force.
E P N
2015.0120
rev.0801
