Should We Be Permitted to Think About Charlie Hebdo's Role in the Struggle for Muslim Inclusion?

In all of this Charlie Hebdo controversy, I think it's useful to take a step back and ask why anyone would particularly care what the publication was like.  Wouldn't it be equally wrong to murder the employees of almost any type of publication?  And wouldn't it then be right to honor just about anyone who risked murder to express a view?

Well, the answer to the first question is "yes," and the answer to the second question is "it depends, that's why we're having this discussion."

What I think must be borne in mind is that there is a specter haunting Europe, a decisive collective choice that is being made step by step, with every step hugely consequential.  One possibility is that Muslims will be accepted into European institutions as equal participants and as rights-bearing people.  Muslims will turn away from extremism.  They will be woven into European politics, not as dogs to be kicked, but as voting blocs and political leaders.  In short, they will be folded into European society in roughly the same way that African-Americans became full citizens when they got the right to vote.  (I'm not pretending things suddenly turned rosy for blacks when they started voting en masse, but I can say with certainty that things got much, much better.)  We only hope that the process in Europe is quicker and creates less residual hatred and distrust.

But I am using "we" loosely, because a lot of Europeans are cheering for the opposite outcome:  that Muslims will be increasingly alienated and driven to extremism, that they will be denied full participation as equals in society, that they will ultimately be expelled from Europe and forced to seek decent lives somewhere else.  There are Europeans who devote themselves to harassing Muslims at every turn, to humiliating them whenever possible, to inflaming racial and religious tensions so as to prevent integration and mutual understanding.

So for instance, in the Netherlands several years ago the legislature advanced a bill to outlaw the production of halal meat, on the pretense of preventing animal cruelty.  It so happens that this would also make it impossible to produce kosher meat, but when you set out to make life as difficult as possible for Muslims, a little collateral damage is inevitable, and completely tolerable if we are just talking about Jews.

Or take the recent case of a French Muslim schoolgirl, forced to go home and change clothes because her skirt wasn't revealing enough.  It is very hard to understand this as anything but a flagrant attempt to make her life miserable, to humiliate her, because she is a Muslim.  ["What's the matter, girl?  You think what you've got under there is too precious for French eyes to look at?  Go put on a shorter skirt!"]

Now the right response to this is to vote the bastards out.  To engage in peaceful protest.  To lobby the government and bring the spotlight of world attention on these bigots.  (I suspect France, under international pressure, will soon adopt a policy that female students cannot be compelled to wear revealing skirts.  I mean, my God.)

But there is a contingent in Europe that hopes Muslims will take a darker path.  That hopes that with non-stop harassment they can be radicalized, marginalized, and ultimately thrown out.

And now we have to ask ourselves:  where does Charlie Hebdo fit into this?  Was it trying to make Europe a welcoming place for Muslims?  Or was it trying to inflame their worst passions, humiliate them, pillory them, and generally do everything possible to prevent their successful integration into European society?

This isn't an either-or.  Charlie Hebdo fits somewhere on a spectrum.  Charlie Hebdo was not the UKIP or the Lega Nord.  But by the same token, Charlie Hebdo was very far from praiseworthy.  And it's no defense that Charlie Hebdo liked to lash out at Jews as well as Muslims.  As we've seen, Jews are considered expendable in this fight.

In the U.S., one way that we brought blacks into mainstream life is by adopting very strong norms against explicit racism.  (I am not arguing that we banished all forms of racism from our society, just that certain explicit forms of racism became socially unacceptable.)  If you look, you can find plenty of crude hatred.  But it is almost entirely relegated to the margins of society, to informal institutions like the gaming community (which, in its defense, has plenty of anti-bigots as well).  Telling a racist joke can be career-ending.  We've arguably over-shot, so that using the word "niggardly," even in a good-faith way, can be career-threatening.

But in any case, the point is that we adopted these norms for the very good reason that in their absence it would be virtually impossible to make blacks feel as though they are welcome in our society.  We sent the FBI down to the South to go to war with our own little fascist domestic terrorists.  We adopted widespread affirmative action in our major public institutions (you can criticize how it has operated, but there is little question that it has drawn a lot of blacks quickly into the elite echelons of society).  In fact, we probably focused too heavily on black elites and not nearly enough on the rest of the black population.  But the point is that we have an aversion to explicit racism that is almost instinctual at this point.  We all understood that Trent Lott was toast once it became common knowledge that he had praised Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign.  In other words, our racial sensitivity is almost automatic at this point.  (And again, I'm not defending it in all of its nuances.  We paid a lot more attention to Trent Lott's remarks than we did to the cauldron of injustice that is the U.S. justice system, and that was a mistake.)

And so, Charlie Hebdo is a big "fuck you" to racial sensitivity.  It is a big middle finger to the process of inculcating norms of decency and mutual respect that are virtually preconditions to the successful integration of the Muslim population.

We can debate exactly how Charlie Hebdo fits in, and exactly how beneficial it is to treat people with respect.  Maybe the U.S. would have been better off with less racial sensitivity over the last 50 years.  Maybe free speech is more important than successful Muslim integration into the Western world—so much more important that it is not merely to be legally protected, but lionized.  Maybe Charlie Hebdo wasn't nearly so racially insensitive as it facially appears.  But this is the argument.  This is the discussion that everyone seems to want to preempt by claiming that there is no possible reason, other than some weird hatred of free speech, that anyone would decline to stand up and cheer for Charlie Hebdo.  By claiming that Charlie Hebdo's bravery is simply undeniable, its entitlement to our praise beyond question.

And I think that's wrong.  Charlie Hebdo is a strategic player in a very important game, and one of the sides in that game is repugnantly evil.  We can't come to a reasonable opinion on Charlie Hebdo until we have an open discussion about where it fits in.

(I emphasize, as if it needs to be said, that even if Charlie Hebdo is at the very worst end of the spectrum, which it is not, it is still utterly evil to kill its employees.  In fact, the killers were themselves useful idiots in the game of Muslim exclusion, since their actions have done more to lower the stature of Muslims in Europe than Charlie Hebdo could ever hope to accomplish.  But that is not the main reason they are evil, the main reason they are evil is that they murdered 12 people.)