Am I Still Charlie?

One of the things that makes it hard to defend Charlie Hebdo is Charlie Hebdo's habit of publishing stuff that's hard to defend.  In particular, I'm thinking of the editorial published on the 3rd: "How Did We End Up Here?".  In this article, it seems that the magazine is placing the blame for Islamist violence not only on Muslims (which is trivially true, inasmuch as that non-Muslims are unlikely to take up the Islamist cause), but on all Muslims (which is trivially false, and feeds into a rather unpleasant right-wing narrative).

Having said that, we do need to be clear about what, exactly, Charlie is supposed to have done, and why, and what our response should be.  The Independent's piece on criticism of the editorial gave much more attention to the critics than to the editorial itself.  (Admittedly, this later article did make the case for the other side.)  And I'm fully signed up to the principle of charity when it comes to assessing people's arguments; even if they screw up the argument, the thing for which they're arguing may still be worthwhile.  So we ought to take the best possible interpretation of a given article, and dismiss it only to the extent that a charitable reading is not possible.  For some things, the dismissal will come fairly quickly; for others, it'll take longer; and for some it'll be late, if it comes at all.

Photo: Exeter Express and Echo

Based on the application of that principle, I don't think that the Charlie editorial is quite as bad as it might appear at first.  It certainly does have the whiff of the train-wreck about it  in certain respects; but upon examination, my sense is that things could probably be worse; it seems analogous to the weekend's bump between trains in Plymouth.  There were no serious injuries caused when the trains bashed into each other - but it's clear all the same that someone can't have been paying attention, and the damage is going to need more than a bit of paint to put right.  As for Great Western, so for Charlie.

(At least, I think so.  Look: writing about this stuff is always going to be difficult, so I make no claim that what follows is anything more than thinking aloud.  But since this is a blog rather than an academic analysis, and I'm writing under my pen-name rather than ex cathedra, I reserve the right to throw stuff out there pretty much as it occurs to me.  So, suitably disclaimered, here we go.)

The first thing we should note is that Charlie is, and always has been, fiercely irreligious, and fiercely anti-clerical.  The image on the right is the cover it published on the first anniversary of the murders in its own office.  It's god who's fingered as a the guilty party here.  Religion is not going to get an easy time in its pages - and it is no harder or softer on Islam than on any other religion.  The figure in the image could be Allah, or Yahweh, or anyone: the name and the particular mythology don't matter one bit.  So the background for any article is a presumption that religion, or at least the encroachment of religion into the public realm, is something to be resisted.  With that noted, how should we read the editorial?

The trivial answer is that, at the very least, we should read it.  And some of it is, I think, misjudged.  But it's worth quoting at length, all the same.  (I'm tempted to C&P the whole thing, except that I think that this is already going to be quite a long post, and there's really no need; you can follow the link above if you're really bothered.)  And it starts off well - if vaguely - enough:

For a week now, experts of all kinds have been trying to understand the reasons for the attacks in Brussels. An incompetent police force? Unbridled multiculturalism? Youth unemployment? Uninhibited Islamism? The causes are numerous beyond counting and everyone will naturally choose the one that suits best their own convictions. Law and Order fans will denounce the haplessness of the police. Xenophobes will blame immigration. Sociologists will rehash the evils of colonialism. Urban-planners will point to the evils of ghettoisation. Take your pick.

In reality, the attacks are merely the visible part of a very large iceberg indeed.

So far so good: who would deny it?  (And I do like the dig at sociologists...)

Last week, Sciences-Po* welcomed Tariq Ramadan. He's a teacher, so it's not inappropriate. He came to speak of his specialist subject, Islam, which is also his religion. Rather like lecture by a Professor of Pies who is also a pie-maker. Thus judge and contestant both. 

No matter, Tariq Ramadan has done nothing wrong. He will never do anything wrong. He lectures about Islam, he writes about Islam, he broadcasts about Islam. He puts himself forward as a man of dialogue, someone open to a debate. A debate about secularism which, according to him, needs to adapt itself to the new place taken by religion in Western democracy. A secularism and a democracy which must also accept those traditions imported by minority communities. Nothing bad in that. Tariq Ramadan is never going to grab a Kalashnikov with which to shoot journalists at an editorial meeting. Nor will he ever cook up a bomb to be used in an airport concourse. Others will be doing all that kind of stuff. It will not be his role. His task, under cover of debate, is to dissuade people from criticising his religion in any way. The political science students who listened to him last week will, once they have become journalists or local officials, not even dare to write nor say anything negative about Islam. The little dent in their secularism made that day will bear fruit in a fear of criticising lest they appear Islamophobic. That is Tariq Ramadan's task.

Again, I think that this is fair enough: having a pop at a highly-paid academic isn't punching down.  It's a bit broad brush, and it's a bit rude to Ramadan; but it's nothing more than you'd find in a good number of broadsheet editorials.  More Ramadan does split opinion.  To some, he represents modern and modernising intellectual Islam; to others, he's the friendly face of jihad.  He might even be both.  I've not read enough of his work to say.  Charlie is suspicious, and that's fine.  I see no reason to think that the suspicion is simply because he's a Muslim; rather, they see him as chipping away at secularism.  Note, too, that even if the suspicions are well-grounded, Ramadan would have companions in guilt from other faiths - there's no shortage of Christians who've gone on record to moan about how terrible secularism is.  (Hi there, George Carey!  Hi, Peter Saunders!  They both seem to think that secularism means an attack on religion per se.  Moaning about secularism, and how it doesn't grant them any special place, is a particular characteristic of the theocratically-inclined.  Christian, Muslim, whatever.

Thus, the editorial goes on to say that

[t]his is not to victimise Islam particularly. For it has no opponent. It is not Christianity, Hinduism nor Judaism that is balked by the imposition of this silence. It is the opponent (and protector) of them all. It is the very notion of the secular. It is secularism which is being forced into retreat.

"Victimise" probably isn't the right word to use, and the French version is behind a paywall, but I take it that the argument here is precisely along those lines: Islamist theocrats may not have much time for the details of Christianity or Hinduism or whatever; but they do have time for theocracy.  And that is precisely why it is not rare to find strategic alliances drawn between theocrats of any and all denominations.  Making a special space in public life for religion sensu lato is the important bit; the details about whose religion will follow later.  Ramadan isn't being picked on because he's unusual.

So far so good.  It's in other places that the Charlie editorial starts to lose its grip.

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.

The visible part of a very big iceberg.

Right: things are perhaps beginning to go awry here.  This is not a critique of a particular person, but on an archetype.  And inasmuch as that it's an attack on an archetype, it's an indirect attack - it would appear - on actual people who match that archetype.  In not talking about a Muslim woman with a clear and articulated position, it's talking about all Muslim women.  So this is tricky.  It's getting horribly close to Matthew P Doyle territory - and Britain First territory isn't so distant.

All the same, can we - should we - still be charitable?  Actually, I think that we possibly can (and should).  I think that the idea here is that the veil represents a small part of a failure to confront Islamism.  It is, of course, true that not all women who take the veil are Islamists or victims of Islamist gender oppression.  I take that as a given.  But some are: you only need to spend a bit of time looking at ex-Muslim and ex-hijabi blogs and fora to see stories of women who are genuinely scared lest their families find out that they prefer not to cover themselves.  (Here's one example.  Here's another.  Here's Aliaa Elmahdi making the same point: "When I talk about hijab, I don’t talk about a piece of cloth, but about a complete set of rules for how women should behave, hide and withdraw. [...] I met countless women who were forced or pressured to wear hijab, who wanted to take it off but feared incarceration, beatings and/or social rejection".)

There're two related boilerplate responses to this: one is that the non-Muslim world's norms are also not always great when it comes to how women are treated; the other is that it's a matter of cultural difference.  But who ever said that culture should be immune from analysis?  Why should branding the word "CULTURE" across something mean that we can't ask questions about it?  And it's true that women are commodified in all cultures, and that's not a good thing.  But there are no countries with laws requiring women to wear revealing clothing as there are countries with laws that require them to cover themselves; nowhere that a woman will be disowned for not wearing a low-cut top.

That's what I think Charlie is getting at here.  The cultural forces that drive people to plant bombs in airports and shoot cartoonists are coeval - so the claim goes - with those that threaten women with violence for the way they dress.  If you're going to confront one, you have to confront the whole thing.

Whether or not Charlie's claim is correct is a different matter.  I don't know.  But that, I think, is what's being said, however unclearly.  On the other hand, if that is what's being said, it could have been said more clearly, and with less flailing.  Why not just say that it'd be good if there was more honest and open debate about the cultural roots that feed Islamism?  Simpler, clearer, and less all-round iffy.

The editorial continues:

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.

Yeah: this is a mistake.  A baker deciding not to sell pork is no more an attack on laïcité than is his deciding only to sell vegetarian food.  Noone's rights are infringed here.  I'm not quite sure what the point being made here was supposed to be.


And so it goes on.

The first task of the guilty is to blame the innocent. It's an almost perfect inversion of culpability. From the bakery that forbids you to eat what you like

[He doesn't]

to the woman who forbids you to admit that you are troubled by her veil,

[She doesn't; write letters to the paper, write academic papers, do what you like; just don't harangue actual people on the street unless they're actually harming or likely to harm you]

we are submerged in guilt for permitting ourselves such thoughts. And that is where and when fear has started its sapping, undermining work. And the way is marked for all that will follow.

[This is reasonable; but it's so polluted by what came just before it... ugh.]

"How did we get here?" is a perfectly reasonable question to ask.  Some of what's identified in the editorial is pertinent.  But Charlie Hebdo isn't the first or only outlet to ask it, and it's probably not doing so in the most useful way here.  Given the sensitivity - no, the incendiary nature - of the subject, it shouldn't be necessary to rely quite so heavily on the principle of charity.

And that's why the editorial is, inescapably, something of a train-wreck.