On the Paris attacks
As a Canadian, I believe in freedom of speech, but not as an absolute right. I believe in it as a social value that must be reconciled with other social values, such as tolerance and respect.
Those of us in the West want Muslims to tolerate and respect us. Therefore those of us in the West must collectively learn (and apparently this will take a lot of learning) to tolerate and respect them.
On another level I am totally committed to nonviolence as a means of social change. Therefore it goes without saying that I totally regret and condemn the murders of the journalists.
But I will not say “I am Charlie.” On the contrary, I am categorically NOT Charlie. Though one cannot equate the folly of the cartoons with the crime of the murders, the West (not just Charlie Hebdo) has much to apologize for. Therefore I deeply regret the mindless rush to ally oneself (as “Je suis Charlie”) with a mentality of disrespect that has already caused many deaths of innocent people (in cases like Rushdie’s Satanic Verses) and if not checked will cause many more.
I love France deeply as a country, and have happily visited nearly all of its Departments. But I am also aware that France, since before its Revolution, has been deeply divided culturally, leading to excesses on both sides. Vichy France in the 1940s was one such excess. In my view Charlie Hebdo is also an excess, rooted in unthinking social habits of disrespect if not actually hatred.
Therefore I hope some people will join me in saying, JE NE SUIS PAS CHARLIE.
https://www.facebook.com/peter.d.scott.9/posts/10152980434853794
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