Amatoritsero Ede<\/span><\/p>\n Contemporary democratic ideals about Freedom of Expression are distilled into that metonymic and tired but valid catchall, \u201cthe pen is mightier than the sword.\u201d It is usually buried amongst other common aphorisms \u2013 buried, that is, but not forgotten. This is because flowers have grown over that \u2018grave\u2019 expression and yielded overgrown fruits. Some of the most round and constipative of them (for human rights violators) are the numerous PEN centres around the world or Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. All are part of about eighty sundry rights NGOs, which make up the umbrella group, International Freedom of Expression Exchange or IFEX.<\/p>\n The Cartoonists Rights Network International is of urgent concern here, even if only indirectly \u2013 by way of the Parisian cartoon publication, Charlie Hebdo<\/i>. It is in support of that lively organ belonging to the body of the aforementioned sister NGO that the American PEN centre suddenly finds itself in \u2018cartoonish\u2019 skirmishes in which individual writer-members disagree fiercely in the public and throw large darts \u2013\u00a0oversized poisoned pens \u2013\u00a0\u00a0at each other across different ideological streets. This is the ghost of the matter \u2013 because this situation resurrects the dozen dead French cartoonists cut down in a bitter hailstone of bullets by two\u00a0 \u2018Islamic\u2019 terrorist siblings on 7 January 2015.<\/p>\n It is in the mourning of human rights \u2013\u00a0twelve times felled \u2013\u00a0and in showing moral support for, and solidarity with,\u00a0Charlie<\/i> Hebdo<\/i> that American PEN honours that publication during its annual Gala this year. That organization performs its obligation and executes its mandate to protect Freedom of Speech and recognize bravery, fatal and otherwise, and the expressing of the same wherever it appears. Why then does PEN\u2019s traditional salute to Freedom of Expression become the occasion for a divided house? I think that the problem has to do with a confusion arising out of the deployment of the wrong language in describing the right phenomenon. This is ironic for an organization whose membership consists mainly of writers \u2013 Poets, Essayist and Novelists (PEN) \u00a0\u2013\u00a0who happen, in this instance, to have been defeated by language. Witness the argument of a small but significant group of protesting American PEN writers:<\/p>\n [o]ur concern is that, by bestowing the Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award on Charlie Hebdo, PEN is not simply conveying support for freedom of expression, but also valorizing selectively offensive material: material that intensifies the anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the Western world.<\/p>\n The over-two-hundred signatories to that letter from which the above excerpt is taken have a valid but problematic argument against American PEN as a representative body and against Charlie Hebdo<\/i>, both of whom, in turn, equally have valid but questionable opinions in this matter. Everyone is right and wrong at the same time and simply talk past each other.<\/p>\n On the one hand, protesting American PEN writer-members suggest, in the language of their letter, \u00a0that Charlie Hebdo<\/i> continues a French colonial ethos of demonizing the Other in a supposedly postcolonial and global world. On the other, the publication\u2019s official position is that its caricatures are a \u201cequal opportunity offense,\u201d which neither discriminates between races nor cherry picks the personalities, institutions or religion it mocks. Charlie Hebdo<\/i> insists on its right to satirize violence against personal opinion no matter how distasteful. That is irrespective of whether the protest against it provides as evidence the cartoonists\u2019 apparent negation and demonization of the \u2018Maghreb\u2019, \u2018Islam\u2019 or \u2018Arab.\u2019 However, the protesters ignore the fact that a very large population of World Muslims \u2013 some Asian, some African, and others European \u2013 are not Arabs nor do they live in, or identify with, the Maghreb. Of course, those substantives could stand in as metonymies for the entire Muslim world. But that would ignore the fact that identities are more and more fluid and complex in a global world and that a small crowd, no matter how loud, cannot represent the multifarious population of Muslims in the world \u2013 East-meets-West-meets-South and collides with North.<\/p>\n In deploying a binary divisive \u2018we-them vs. you-you\u2019 language in their letter, the protesting PEN members unwittingly fall into the trap of a discredited clash of civilization rhetoric reminiscent of Samuel P. Huntington. And all of that because Western relationship to Islam is mediated by a language that seems to have remained static since the Middle Ages when King Richard I (the Lion Heart) of England did battle with Muslim Saracens led by the Sultan Saladin during the Third Crusade. Basically there is an urgent sociolinguistic and theological need to separate the word Muslim or \u2018Islam\u2019 from \u2018terrorism\u2019 because, by a spiritual equation, a Muslim cannot be a terrorist at the same time. That is irrespective of the fact that some self-proclaimed Muslims interpret the \u201csword verses\u201d in the Al Quran literally and devoid of historical context for their own political goals \u2013 hence another unfortunate and confusing term, \u2018political Islam.\u2019 While religion and real-politics can form a toxic and explosive mix, the spiritual is totally anti-political and not at all enamoured with the inordinate material desire for which \u2018political Islam\u2019 is a tool. 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 \u2018Christian terrorist\u2019 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/i> 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<\/i> affair he insinuates the need for a distinction between religious criminals and hijackers of Islam in admonition to the protesting American PEN writers:<\/p>\n \u201c[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.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Fanatical Islam\u2019 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<\/i> is justified and proper.\u00a0 What is not justified is to offer such an award as a reproach to \u2018Islamic terrorism,\u2019 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.<\/p>\n And while, Charlie Hebdo<\/i> 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 \u2013 if not sacrilege \u2013 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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Charlie Hebdo’s Ghost Amatoritsero Ede Contemporary democratic ideals about Freedom of Expression are distilled into that metonymic and tired but valid catchall, \u201cthe pen is mightier than the sword.\u201d It is usually buried amongst other common aphorisms \u2013 buried, that is, but not forgotten. This is because flowers have grown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":238,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2433","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2690,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2433\/revisions\/2690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nCultic behaviour as an ill social force, its admixture with illicit power and the neurotic \u00a0and its propensity for evil ought to be re-appraised as ‘corrupt religion.’ There is a need to stop confusing gross religion with spirituality \u2013 whether of the Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist variety. Inferior, empty and ritualistic religion \u2013 in other words, the cult \u2013\u00a0is a confine within which some, or groups of, people in the \u201clunatic fringe\u201d 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 \u2013 religious and psychic criminals and spiritual outlaws but certainly not Muslims \u2013 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.<\/p>\n