Cultic behaviour as an ill social force, its admixture with illicit power and the neurotic and its propensity for evil ought to be re-appraised as ‘corrupt religion.’ There is a need to stop confusing gross religion with spirituality – whether of the Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist variety. Inferior, empty and ritualistic religion – in other words, the cult – is a confine within which some, or groups of, people in the “lunatic fringe” hide and commit acts of terrorism, depravity, dark occultism or demonic behaviour, all of which eschew the spiritual. Such individuals or groups should be seen for what they are – religious and psychic criminals and spiritual outlaws but certainly not Muslims – or Christians or Hindu. To do otherwise is to give these outlaws political legitimacy. To refer to terrorists as ‘Muslims’ is to aid them in their terrorism.
For example, the cultic American Pastor, Jim Jones, who perpetuated the “Guyana Tragedy” was definitely not a Christian but a cultic thug. That psychotic character murdered over 914, including 200 children, through cyanide poisoning under some mad delusion of a need for instant and collective rapture. He was never seen as a ‘Christian terrorist’ but as a sick criminal and leader of a cult. Nor was David Koresh, the loony cultic ‘prophet’ of the Branch Davidians sect seen as a ‘Christian terrorist;’ he was just a criminal exploiting the Christian religion. That some exploit Islam for dark deeds and declare that they act on behalf of Allah does not make them Muslims. And it does not matter how ‘normal’ or widespread such behaviour has become. We need new concepts and a new language for describing it. ‘Muslim terrorist’, ‘Islamic terrorist’ or ‘political Islam’ are lazy concepts; collectively they are a confusing and imprecise oxy-moron! This is because murder is against all esoteric laws within any religion. It is ‘irreligion’ – a deep and frightening ignorance of spiritual matters.
No one, perhaps, is better placed than Salman Rushdie to warn us about the dangers of misconstruing and misunderstanding the nature of terror. For writing the Satanic Verses a fatwa and bounty was placed on his head by a terrorist and cultic irreligious mullah posing as a Muslim. It is imperative to listen to an innocent man forced to hide from terror for many years. In this Charlie Hebdo affair he insinuates the need for a distinction between religious criminals and hijackers of Islam in admonition to the protesting American PEN writers:
“[t]his issue has nothing to do with an oppressed and disadvantaged minority [muslims]. It has everything to do with the battle against fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non Muslims, into a cowed silence.”
‘Fanatical Islam’ is, again, a misconception here. Those terrorists simply hide behind the veil of Islam to commit crimes against humanity. This is why an American PEN award to Charlie Hebdo is justified and proper. What is not justified is to offer such an award as a reproach to ‘Islamic terrorism,’ in response to cartoons which also wrongly and sacrilegiously lampoon the prophet and Islam. Again terror and Islam are not synonymous. It is the conflation of Islam with terrorism that discomfits everyone from political pundits to presidents or scholars and street side philosophers when they try to approach the subject. It immobilizes moral consensus and the world of policy in legislating against these criminals and social misfits.
And while, Charlie Hebdo appears to be right in satirizing the perceived institutional support for terrorist activity, namely Islam, its prophet and other related icons, that magazine’s action lies on the borders of hate speech – if not sacrilege – because of the same problem of definitions pervading the whole affair. All parties involved, including American PEN, are right and wrong at the same time in their different positions. What unites these actors is their failure to re-think the language with which Islam is discussed in the public sphere – a situation which further problematizes popular imaginations of the Islamic and colours political discussions and analyses about Islam, Muslims and radicalism. Everyone seems to have developed a blind spot to the atrophy or inadequacies of the usual language of address where that religion is concerned. Is the terror group, Isis an Islamic group for example? Definitely not; it is a band of criminals which murders Christians as well as Muslims. Their excesses prove the point that Islam and terrorism have nothing in common.
The dissenting writer-members and their representative body, American PEN have been deceived by language. They are both victims of the trickster Yoruba god, Esu, who sets two friends upon each other by sending a man to walk between them wearing a traditional cap coloured totally white on one side and totally black on the other. Both friends see different sides of the same hat and therefore have different languages for describing the same phenomenon. One insists it is white and the other swears it is black. So do these two close friends engage in total battle and so begin the greatest enmity amongst bosom friends. In this wrong-headed PEN family quarrel only the criminal terrorists have won. They must be laughing, re-energised, to their next suicide mission! Is the PEN then mightier than the terrorist sword?
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Finally the much-needed statement that everyone is right and wrong at the same time. On reading other Hebdo commentaries there was a one-sidedness where this paradigm was missing. I was surprised to read this politicized topic written with such beautiful language, alliteration, metaphor, twining of language into complex meaning. Rather than distract us the extended complexity fleshes out the political description.
The ghost within us speaks when we choose to respond to events–not the way the world expects us but by virtue of our conscience. Here is a piece of indictment and celebration of the power of the word against the vestiges of hate in the name of religion.
Important read Ama. I would have only stressed that the Middle east have journalists that die every day for pissing off the same sorts of people. And that the Charlie Hebdo massacre should have pushed for a wider understanding on the restrictions of press freedom in the region and offer more attention to those who risk their lives to defy the same censorship.
And that any argument that ‘we should not’ be publishing things of ‘offense’ in fear of retaliation is the same argument made by authoritarian regimes in the region to censor any opposition. Islam is not terrorism. Of course not. But i must also add that press freedom is a fight taken up by people from all corners of the world.
No, I don’t think that the writers who dissented were wrong. The murder of the Charlie Hebdo staff was reprehensible. PEN America’s decision to laurel Charlie Hebdo for its bravery to offend was too. Charlie Hebdo, and similar organizations, give alibi to terrorists who believe in no God and are criminals, as you rightly wrote. The wings of crime with which they strike would have carried them to the sun and razed them were organizations like Charlie Hebdo not to exist. They hijack members of the species who are at the edge, and recruit, because their fingers find offence against Allah, against God, to point at. They inspire people who are remote from the scenes of terror to replicate barbarism because unthinking sacrileges are that rationalize and moralise their cause. The terrorists, Charlie Hebdo, and organizations like them, damage the world.
Ahh such refreshing, nuanced insight into an often polarizing conversation. Indeed if we understood the oxymoron of Islamic terrorist, we would be better placed to mock it freely and effectively! Though, if we take a look at other issues of Charlie Hebdo, there is a continuous refusal to be nuanced in the way you describe. So while I feel you’ve touched on a needed balance, there does seem to be a refusal to understand the Muslim experience and use satire in their defense. Nonetheless, you always manage to take hard topics and beautifully–almost romantically–articulate a hard-ass perspective.
Nice work, Ama. A balance that disrupts the easy either/or binary on which the entire conflict is based. However I am interested in the idea of sensitivity towards Islamic values. While I do not subscribe to the idea of bowing to the pressures of terrorists, it is important to consider the adherents of the faith who often feel pain at the cruel satirization of their religion. It is because of this harmless victims of Hebdo’s insensitivity that I feel that the award is a mistake.
First of all I must comment on the beautiful way you used language. I loved it. Unto the issues, I get the whole point of balance. But let’s not forget that one of those who was a former PEN America president had a price on his head. What I don’t understand is why other religions don’t react in equally violent manner. Of course religious views and all that should be respected, if Charlie Hebdo only picked on Islam, I’d have protested against that. But that’s not the case, other religions and people have also been satirized why does Islam get to have a special case?