Would curing Islamophobia be a solution to the Paris massacre?

What the Arabic language press is saying about the Paris attacks. Translated by Racha Makarem

Flowers at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper offices in Paris. Photo: Francois Mori / AP

World leaders joined hands with millions of French yesterday in a historic march in the heart of Paris in support of the freedom of expression following last week’s deadly terrorist attack on the weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo that left 12 people dead.

Lebanese journalist Diana Mukalled, writing in Al Arabiya, sought to analyse the reactions to the massacre in Arab and Muslim public opinion. Were they condemning the cold-blooded massacre, or did they come closer to justifying and even blessing it?

“It is a question that conveys that big flow that re-emerged following the murder of these French journalists.

“Two young Muslim men perpetrated the crime to avenge religion. They are to be held responsible for the slaughter,” she wrote.

“True. But we, too, are responsible for our reactions and our justifications.”

Despite the absence of precise gauges of public opinion in our world, it isn’t difficult to detect a bold overriding tone in the media coverage, headlines, talk shows and on social media that reflect an undeniable penchant to justify and play down the hideous crime, and even to attack the precepts of freedom held in France and other western countries, including the freedom to mock.

“It seemed as if it was difficult to condemn the atrocious crime without following it up with a most sly ‘but’ to justify it,” she added.

France and the West are presently delving even further into the discussion about the integration of Muslim immigrants into their communities. They are trying to explain every detail related to the immigrants, to regulations and how western values can be protected from extremism. At the same time, they are trying to prevent the denigration of Muslims in the west after the attacks.

But what about the discussions that should be held in our countries and in our societies, Mukalled asked.

“We are still caught up in trying to figure out whether the crime is absolutely condemnable or not. Doesn’t everything that is going on around us, and in our name, warrant that we review our own environments and our own communities?”

In a similar vein, Saudi columnist Abdullah Nasser Al Otaibi wrote in the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat: “Yes, we indeed must eliminate the distorted ideologies that are promoted by some radical religious groups – or at least contain, isolate and criminalise them, just as the liberal West does with extremist and radical Christian ideologies.

“In return, however, we need to engage further in curing western culture of Islamophobia that makes otherwise calm, peaceful people blow up at all Muslims whenever a crisis occurs.

“The present revolution in western media and in western public opinion isn’t the result of the Charlie Hebdo massacre itself. It is the outcome of the Europeans’ inability to assimilate Islam as a third divine religion, and it is the result of Muslims’ failure to protect their own religion from underhanded attacks.”

But how can western societies be made to assimilate the Islamic religion and to coexist with it and how can Muslims be afforded the protection of their religious sacred symbols, he asked.

“This can be achieved by the introduction of a law that criminalises assaults of any kind on divine religions in western countries, to go hand in hand with the anti-Semitism laws that are in force in several European countries, including France,” he noted.

Europe’s Muslims and Christians would find in such a law a deliverance from the disease of Islamophobia and many terrorist attempts on their culture, he concluded.

Translated by Racha Makarem