Charlie Hebdo, the French satire paper, is and ought to be free to publish cartoons as foul, puerile, and blasphemous as they want. Anyone who responds with censorship or violence is a thin-skinned, narrow-minded tyrant.
In this spirit, people around the world responded to the terrorist murders of Charlie Hebdo’s staff by declaring “Je suis Charlie.” Many newspapers and websites planted their flag in support of free expression by printing the Charlie Hebdo comics that so offended the terrorists.
Some others reacted with more trepidation. The Daily News blurred out the Charlie Hebdo images that had offended. The Associated Press removed cartoon depictions of the Muslim Prophet Mohammad from its image archives, explaining “It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images.”
When bloggers pointed out that AP was still selling prints of “Piss Christ” — a photo of a crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s pee — AP reacted, amusingly, by removing “Piss Christ” from its archives, too. One fellow journalist asked me on Twitter “do you find Piss Christ offensive?”
The vocabulary we use here is flawed, and it reflects the sort of thinking that leads organizations like the AP astray. “Offensive” and “provocative” don’t really describe photos or ideas. Those words describe how some listener, viewer, or reader reacts to the content.
So, if you’re talking about provocative and offensive pictures, you need to ask whom you’re provoking and offending.
“Piss Christ,” like many of Charlie Hebdo’s anti-Islamic, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish cartoons, is foul and gross. This is an indelicate thing to say right now, but in the spirit of bold free expression, let me say it: Perhaps it’s the tradition they inherited from Rabelais, but Charlie’s Hebdo’s forays in blasphemy have often been juvenile, unfunny, disgusting, and dumb. That’s fine. Charlie Hebdo doesn’t care about my opinion, and I’ve never asked them to.
Today, there are virtues in republishing these cartoons: Mostly, they are newsworthy. Also, broadcasting them shows solidarity with the victims and a middle finger to the murderers hoping to terrify us. Sometimes being vulgar is worth it, if it shows terrorists and tyrants that they can’t win.
But let’s remember whom we’re trying to piss off with these comics — and whom we’re likely to upset. Some of the Charlie comics are “provocative” and “offensive” only to murderous terrorists.
Many of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons about Islam, however, didn’t mock terrorism, al Qaeda, or ISIS. They mocked Islam. That’s absolutely their right, and the West ought to be willing to pay a high price to protect that right. (In fact, Europe should probably move closer to the United States in tolerating “hate speech.”)
Mockery should be one of our counterattacks to terrorism. Blaring to the world every Charlie Hebdo comic you can find is a fine salvo in these days. But more effective than such carpet-bombing may be a precision-guided missile aimed not at the religion to which the terrorists belong, but at the ideology and tactics of the terrorists themselves.
The good news: al Qaeda and ISIS are easy and deserving targets of mockery. For starters, they lack a sense of humor. (How many Islamic terrorists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Die, you blasphemous infidel!)
Also, their behavior is nearly as ridiculous as it is barbarous. They’ve decided their jihad — their life’s struggle, their duty to God — is to do armed battle with cartoonists who work at a joke newspaper. Their great military victory was murdering middle-aged women and men armed only with crayons. And the “jihadis” were so brave they wore masks.
Charlie Hebdo, in its finest moments, trained its sights squarely on these sorts of vile beasts, and it was these images that very likely cost the editors and cartoonists their lives.
The paper first gained the ire of Islamic terrorists in 2006 with a cover featuring a bawling Mohammad. “It’s hard being loved by such a—holes,” the prophet weeps.
And if you’re looking for the proximate instigation of Wednesday’s attacks, check Charlie Hebdo’s most recent cover about Islam, drawn by the paper’s editor Stephane Charbonnier (“Charb”). It didn’t mock Islam. Instead, Charb pierced the terrorists’ ridiculous self-image.
In October, as ISIS beheadings of Western journalists hit the news, the paper ran a darkly compelling cover, recalling Dostoeyevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” tale. Under the headline “If Mohammed Returned,” a masked ISIS jihadi holds a knife to Mohammed’s throat. As he objects, “I am the Prophet, you fool!” the jihadi responds, “Shut your trap, infidel!”
Are these two comics “provocative,” and “offensive”? Yes — to the terrorists who hide behind masks, exploit religion, and kill the defenseless. That doesn’t make them any more deserving of free-speech protections than Hebdo’s more juvenile covers, but it does make them more worthy emblems of a free society that will not be cowed.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.
