Translation of article linked from “Dessine-moi un lâche”

From ¡No Pasarán!: Dessine-moi un lâche we linked the following in Libération:

“Two blasphemies”

Pascal Bruckner

The extremists appear to have won. From Jakarta to Teheran, and not to forget Gaza, Beirut, Damascus furious crowds were ready to kill, express their anger, and vandalize any symbols of the west comparable to the mass riots of the 1930s. In London, demonstrators wanting to display the tolerance of Islam, held up signs saying: "to hell with freedom" , "Prepare for the real Holocaust" , "Exterminate anyone who insults Islam" , and "Europe, your 11 September is coming" . In Strasbourg, Mohammed Latrèche showed an allegiance with all terrorists, and integrated islamists. In Bangkok, an Imam interviewed on CNN made death threats to the caricaturist, or failing that the amputation of their hands as the only condition of a possible apology. In Pakistan, a religious brotherhood proposed a million dollars plus a car as a bounty to anyone who would kill one of the accused cartoonists.

One then expected Europe’s usual minimum of dignity - a graceful gesture: she sends out her ambassadors, temporarily suspends aid to the Palestinians who threatened to kill our diplomats, and expel the Imams which provoked much the outrage by propagating the drawings everywhere. Europe then made a solemn sounding warning to the governments which allowed the defacing and destruction of the Danish and Norwegian missions. Europe chose to sit it out: having seen little support of any kind, the Danes had to make painful excuses. Our leaders played Pontius Pilate. The churches condemned the sacrilege, and French supermarket companies in the Middle East put up small posters saying "We are not Danish." Javier Solana, which once boldly faced off with the Serbs changed his tone with the Arab governments like an apologetic messenger. The jittery holy alliance made notice of this. Curiously, except for a few Europeans press outlets, the only people with any bravery came mainly from North Africa or Southeast Asia. Among them were Jordanians, Yemenis, Malasian, and Algerian journalists who were thrown in prison for having the audacity to publish the 12 caricatures. Hamadi Redissi, a professor at the university of Tunis urged them: "You should not give up the freedom to criticize. If you yield, it will be be gone."

The mobs we managed using an air of panic, and a hovering sense of terror. After all, it’s now known that the outrage was entirely fabricated. The rage is only the symptom of something obvious and intolerable: even the killers want to hide behind a mask of virtue. This business has been truly revealing because the caricatures in question, far from being poor, got to the root of the matter. There are two kinds of blasphemy: one is an indirect homage to the faith which one claims to trample, the other a salutary damage. "To live the divine dream in one’s actions" (Sade), to insult the name of God in the way one shows one’s love for him, "to curse strong in the intoxication of the pleasure" , like the Austrian Oskar Panizza, in “The Council of Love” (1894) represented the pope and the cardinals as being lost in an orgies and fornication, still shows a form of worship that revolts, even if it comes at the price of its freedom, its life, or its’ mental health. The profaning is a recognition of the negative nature of the masses. It is another form of impiety which shocks and raises disturbing questions.

The only thing which one can see in these drawings is not their bad taste, but their truth. They are not so much caricatures than they are portraits of a prophet who was also a warlord, whipping and killing without scruple in the name of the true faith. In their brutality, these sketches insist on the ambiguity of the message of the Koran and present a paradox: up to which point does have one the right of objectify a religion to put it at the service of a policy of violence, murder, and extermination? If all Muslims are not terrorists, a majority of terrorists claim Islam and ruin the reputation of their co-religionists, drag their religion through the mud, blood, massacres and bring terrible confusion. The "blasphemy", in fact, in its brutality, obliges the faithful them to set aside their piety of the impure vision of fanaticism and to reinterpret the canon itself. A taboo was broken. The offence was not useless. God bless the kingdom of Denmark and Charlie Hebdo!

Dealing with these drawings by calling for the respect of religion doesn’t have a point. Why is it that in Europe, there is the right to criticize Judeo-Christianity (it’s even become a national sport in France), to make fun of Buddhism, even of the hinduism, but never of Islam under the penalty of being called a racist? Why the double standard? Why does only one religion escape examination, pluralism, irony, sarcasm, and the anti-clericalism which characterizes our nation? Christianity did not have anything sizeable when, in the name of the love and of the Lord Jesus, it hung, burned, tortured, and destroyed heretics, witches, pagans, Indians, and Muslims. It took centuries of engagements, including inside the Churches, and the council of the Vatican II to make it conform with the message of the Gospel and regains its’ nobility. Islam, to find itself again must be reformed, purged of its’ verses against Jews, Christians, and homosexuals. It must proscribe the cruel habit of stoning, repudiation, and polygamy. It’s a tabula rasa that relates to all of humanity: that, of many intellectuals and enlightened Moslem clerics know it and proclaim it. But these men and these women of all professions, all nationalities, are a minority: insulated, worried, even condemned to death like the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen or the Dutchwoman of Somali origin Hayaan Hirsi Ali. They need our help just as the dissidents of Eastern Europe did at the time of the Soviet empire.

It is urgent to form a network of assistance to all the rebels of the Arab-Muslim world: the moderates, non-believers, libertines, atheists, apostates, the indifferent, and the schismatic. If Europe wants to build secular Islam inside its’ borders, it should encourage these divergent voices, and bring its talents, its financial, moral, and political support to them. There is no more noble or serious a cause, one which must be engaged for the harmony of the future generations. But with a suicidal lack or self-awareness our continent kneels in front of the insane ones of God and muzzles or ignores the free-thinkers. How long will it take the spirit of penitence to strangle the spirit of resistance here at home?

End of text.