Dear Salman Rushdie,
Hope this finds you well.
It's now March. Spring has arrived and cheerful thoughts inhabit people's minds. At least, that is what they say.
I am writing to you about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. I know it's been two months, but, at the time of such traumatic events, emotions ran wild for many people and to make sense of reality seems a bit more difficult.
Being so, I write to you about your statement as posted on English PEN.
I like to say that I am more atheist than many atheists and more religious than most religious people. By that I mean that I follow a certain religion but I am not bothered by whatever one might say about it. I don't take it that seriously and it shouldn't be taken seriously, as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, getting to the subject at hand, regarding your statement I hold no quarrel with any of your views about religion being a medieval form of unreason and the reigning of totalitarianism on some factions of Islam. I have no quarrel with that.
My main problem with your statement is what bothered me on everyone else that saw this attack as an attack on freedom of expression.
Why?
To see those attacks as being on freedom of expression is to thwart our reality as a world. Freedom of expression is a concept that seems very hard to grasp to anyone on earth. We always defend freedom of expression until we don't like it and then we repress it. Happens every day to every good or bad people, to every law abider or law transgressor, to every mother or father. And is it wrong? If I made a statement I would be offending the freedom of expression of every good or bad people, every law abider or law transgressor and every mother or father. To take a stand is to immediately put a leash on others freedom of expression. Ultimately, as the late Bill Hicks once said, "Freedom is free". The consequences might be there for external reasons but nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, can stop me from saying whatever it may please me. At least once, obviously.
To see these attacks as being attacks on freedom of expression is to obviously misunderstand its results. Freedom of speech, as seen by the demonstrations everywhere a little bit around the world, increased. At least, supposedly. Everyone had their say about it. Everyone screamed, or shall I say, tore their torax so their lungs could jump out to express something beyond a scream to say Je suis Charlie. Anyway, there was an increase on Islam critic cartoons right from the offset and not many of those cartoonists were attacked.
To classify these attacks as being on freedom of expression is to completely fail in acknowledging them as terrorist attacks motivated by political reasons. That failed acknowledgment leads to an even greater failure. The failure to comprehend the reaons behind such attacks.
It is true, and I agree without reservations, that no reason justify those deaths. But they are reasons still. Those attacks were not caused by neurotic thoughts. They were carried out by sane persons who, for whichever reason saw that gesture as meritable.
Only understanding those reasons can we get to the root of the problem. And then trying to solve it insofar as it is something we can do, and oh boy, how much can we do.
I don't stand with Charlie Hebdo, because, to me, those deaths are as tragic as the deaths of the two thousand Palestinians on the last summer, as the thousands of deaths on Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of deaths in Lybia and Syria etc. They are all tragic. Why shouldn't we say I stand with Palestine? Is it because it is an old subject? Why don't we stand with Syria and Lybia? Truth might be that there are dictatorships there, but is it the western fueled chaos a better way to do it? By ruining the lives of a bunch of ordinary and innocent people? Why don't we care about that?
Why are you not worried about all those other casualties?
I won't speculate about your reasons. But looking at my fellow Portuguese countrymen Charlie Hebdo only shocked because it was close to us. Because for fifteen minutes our superior world was threatened. And because of that everyone rose from their pathetic seats and came out of their pathetic lives which themselves fail to understand to say Je Suis Charlie. Millions in Paris and millions worldwide. There they were giving airplay to many different world leaders fighting, like the children that wants to be picked for the football match, to go to the first row so they could be photographed and seen. Isn't Netanyahu a terrorist too, when his country indiscriminately kills Palestinians?
If we were to worry merely with freedom of expression shouldn't we worry that to poke fun at Islamics is okay but on the other hand to poke fun at jews is anti-semitic? Wasn't the Charlie Hebdo that once sacked a cartoonist over a cartoon? Tell me Mr. Rushdie are we really to worry about freedom of expression? Is this serious?
Those attacks will, now, forever be linked with freedom of expression and how a couple of savages attacked our western establishment and way of life. They will never be seen as attacks that followed something else and that is sad. As Joe Sacco brilliantly put it on a cartoon and with that I finish my letter.
"... perhaps when we tire of holding up our middle finger we can try to think about why the world is the way it is...
And what it is about muslims in this time and place that makes them unable to laugh off a mere image.
And if we answer "because something is deeply wrong with them" - certainly something was deeply wrong with the killers - then let us drive them from their homes and into the sea... for that is going to be far easier than sorting out how we fit in each others world."
Best wishes and have a nice day.
Hope this finds you well.
It's now March. Spring has arrived and cheerful thoughts inhabit people's minds. At least, that is what they say.
I am writing to you about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. I know it's been two months, but, at the time of such traumatic events, emotions ran wild for many people and to make sense of reality seems a bit more difficult.
Being so, I write to you about your statement as posted on English PEN.
I like to say that I am more atheist than many atheists and more religious than most religious people. By that I mean that I follow a certain religion but I am not bothered by whatever one might say about it. I don't take it that seriously and it shouldn't be taken seriously, as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, getting to the subject at hand, regarding your statement I hold no quarrel with any of your views about religion being a medieval form of unreason and the reigning of totalitarianism on some factions of Islam. I have no quarrel with that.
My main problem with your statement is what bothered me on everyone else that saw this attack as an attack on freedom of expression.
Why?
To see those attacks as being on freedom of expression is to thwart our reality as a world. Freedom of expression is a concept that seems very hard to grasp to anyone on earth. We always defend freedom of expression until we don't like it and then we repress it. Happens every day to every good or bad people, to every law abider or law transgressor, to every mother or father. And is it wrong? If I made a statement I would be offending the freedom of expression of every good or bad people, every law abider or law transgressor and every mother or father. To take a stand is to immediately put a leash on others freedom of expression. Ultimately, as the late Bill Hicks once said, "Freedom is free". The consequences might be there for external reasons but nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, can stop me from saying whatever it may please me. At least once, obviously.
To see these attacks as being attacks on freedom of expression is to obviously misunderstand its results. Freedom of speech, as seen by the demonstrations everywhere a little bit around the world, increased. At least, supposedly. Everyone had their say about it. Everyone screamed, or shall I say, tore their torax so their lungs could jump out to express something beyond a scream to say Je suis Charlie. Anyway, there was an increase on Islam critic cartoons right from the offset and not many of those cartoonists were attacked.
To classify these attacks as being on freedom of expression is to completely fail in acknowledging them as terrorist attacks motivated by political reasons. That failed acknowledgment leads to an even greater failure. The failure to comprehend the reaons behind such attacks.
It is true, and I agree without reservations, that no reason justify those deaths. But they are reasons still. Those attacks were not caused by neurotic thoughts. They were carried out by sane persons who, for whichever reason saw that gesture as meritable.
Only understanding those reasons can we get to the root of the problem. And then trying to solve it insofar as it is something we can do, and oh boy, how much can we do.
I don't stand with Charlie Hebdo, because, to me, those deaths are as tragic as the deaths of the two thousand Palestinians on the last summer, as the thousands of deaths on Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of deaths in Lybia and Syria etc. They are all tragic. Why shouldn't we say I stand with Palestine? Is it because it is an old subject? Why don't we stand with Syria and Lybia? Truth might be that there are dictatorships there, but is it the western fueled chaos a better way to do it? By ruining the lives of a bunch of ordinary and innocent people? Why don't we care about that?
Why are you not worried about all those other casualties?
I won't speculate about your reasons. But looking at my fellow Portuguese countrymen Charlie Hebdo only shocked because it was close to us. Because for fifteen minutes our superior world was threatened. And because of that everyone rose from their pathetic seats and came out of their pathetic lives which themselves fail to understand to say Je Suis Charlie. Millions in Paris and millions worldwide. There they were giving airplay to many different world leaders fighting, like the children that wants to be picked for the football match, to go to the first row so they could be photographed and seen. Isn't Netanyahu a terrorist too, when his country indiscriminately kills Palestinians?
If we were to worry merely with freedom of expression shouldn't we worry that to poke fun at Islamics is okay but on the other hand to poke fun at jews is anti-semitic? Wasn't the Charlie Hebdo that once sacked a cartoonist over a cartoon? Tell me Mr. Rushdie are we really to worry about freedom of expression? Is this serious?
Those attacks will, now, forever be linked with freedom of expression and how a couple of savages attacked our western establishment and way of life. They will never be seen as attacks that followed something else and that is sad. As Joe Sacco brilliantly put it on a cartoon and with that I finish my letter.
"... perhaps when we tire of holding up our middle finger we can try to think about why the world is the way it is...
And what it is about muslims in this time and place that makes them unable to laugh off a mere image.
And if we answer "because something is deeply wrong with them" - certainly something was deeply wrong with the killers - then let us drive them from their homes and into the sea... for that is going to be far easier than sorting out how we fit in each others world."
Best wishes and have a nice day.
