Je Suis Charlie? Terrorism, the Left, and Religion

In the following bit of cultural commentary there is much on Islam. I am not directing a critique toward all of Islam. I do not think that all Muslims are Islamists. Far the contrary. There are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world who actively despise acts of terror. Countless clerics and rulers and Islamic organizations constantly and publicly denounce these acts. Even the Hezbollah chief has recently condemned terrorist violence (whatever his definition of terrorism might be).

I: The Spirit of Marx is Dancing

On Jimmy Kimmel Live a few nights ago, Bill Maher claimed that hundreds of millions of Muslims applaud terrorism, because when you insult the Prophet "all [non-violent] bets are off." I'm unconvinced. I simply don't know what most Muslims harbor in their hearts about the Prophet and terrorism. And I know enough of Maher's anti-religious utopia. But as a Westerner - an American holding a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies from a State University, currently enrolled in a graduate political theology course at Harvard - I am able to think critically about the heart of the cultural seas around me. (edit: I don't say these things to boast, only to emphasize that I'm deep within Western culture, as an outsider.)

In the same 5 minutes with Jimmy, Bill Maher criticized American liberals, of whom he is a part. Liberals in the West, Maher implied, are part of a weak nation (he used a different word) of political correctness and tolerance. Liberals have forgotten what it means to be the critical, liberal Left. They are, according to Maher, supposed to fight for the oppressed with  ideology critique and social justice.

While I applaud true Leftists for their zeal for social justice and ideology critique, I am critical of their strong tendency toward a unique ideology, their own propaganda. Since the French Revolution, and probably before, the Left has used mass-produced vulgar satire to change opinions and incite violence. And when violence is incited, the world watches. This time, it happened in Paris - a figurehead capitol in the West. The world is watching.

What's more, the staff of Charlie Hebdo had been attacked before. They knew that they were flirting with death. They died for a cause. They died for the Party. People love martyrs. We always have. In the second century CE, Tertullian wrote this, of Christian martyrs:

...Those who see us die, wonder why we do, for we die like the men you revere, not like slaves or criminals. And when they find out, they join us.

The world is on the side of the martyrs. This martyrdom is an unprecedented victory for today's Leftists. Even YouTube has cast its vote. Of some 400,000 views, 5,082 people liked the five-minute, anti-religion Leftist satire by Bill Maher; 2,513 disliked it. That's a two-thirds majority for Leftism from viewers of Jimmy Kimmel and Bill Maher (a widely varied audience). The spirit of Marx is dancing.



II: The Ideology of the West

David Brooks published an op-ed in The New York Times on January 8th slamming the West for its failure to be self-critical, focusing his attack against political correctness. The West has failed to be Charlie Hebdo:

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

But before we thoughtlessly leap onto the 'freedom of speech' bandwagon, we should remember, as Brooks cautions, that to be intentionally hateful and malicious toward the views of others is not helpful. On the other hand, I don't agree with the slogan that says, "if you mess with the mean dog, you're gonna get bit." The purpose of satire is to show the satirized party their own ridiculousness, so that progress can be made. But satire should not be done simply out of malice and contempt. Such acts are, without a doubt, childish. If we treated each other as fellow humans, even in satire, we'd be much better off. Nevertheless, satire should not be stopped by the rule of law. That would be censorship.

Maher rightly pointed out that gay people are being beheaded in the Middle East by followers of extreme forms of Islam. He also asked the audience to imagine the response in the West if the Vatican were beheading gay people. But his imagined example fails. The Vatican does not represent the same sector of society as extremist religion in an extremist country. In extremist countries, the political power is in the religion. But in the West, the power is in secular, liberal, mass-proliferation of ideas. Television shows are cancelled due to a character's stance on homosexuality. ESPN sports reporters are canned because their views go against the reigning ideology. What if they had been shot? Would the ideology be so very much different? In extremist countries, to be ir-religious is grounds for silencing through death. In the West, on the other hand, to be religious is grounds enough to be ostracized from the world of ideas. Is Charlie Hebdo of a propagandistic tradition? (Someone asked a similar question in an NPR interview I caught this morning). Are the martyrs on the good guys' side? What is the truth?


'Political correctness' requires censorship, from kindergarten to the university. In public schools the propagation of ideology is very effective. It's no wonder that political activists aim for college campuses, and that the President wants to make the first two years of State-funded community colleges free for all. Those who control the schools control the power base. They are the Vatican, and they are silencing the opposition. They are the wannabe Charlie Hebdo, but more pernicious, insidious.

People who hold views opposed to the cultural norm are silenced. They have no real voice; no real martyrdom. Perhaps if, and when, they start dying for their views, then the masses will notice the contradiction of 'tolerance.'

III: Now, to Islamic Extremism.

A common problem, even in the academic field of Religious Studies, is that non-believers have a very difficult time empathetically understanding what being a believer is truly like. A believer has a vision of the end in which he hopes; he believes - if he's of the Islamic extremist camp - that the fury of Allah should be unleashed against those who dishonor his Prophet. 

In 2001, following the attacks on the Twin Towers (2985 people died, mostly American), the United States declared an ‘official’ start to the ‘War on Terror.’ The country was ringing in shellshock. The idea of a 'war,' though elusive in its real object, helped many people respond, however unconsciously, to the horror that had just brutalized the nation. The tremors of the attack rattled the whole world, and continue to frustrate and terrify, daily. Post-9/11 airport security, anyone?

During the Sydney hostage siege, I spent about two hours monitoring Twitter, constantly refreshing the search feed for #sydneysiege—one of the highest trending Twitter feeds of the year, though now totally dwarfed by #jesuischarlie. I observed a significant pattern in the content of these tweets. There were tweets from extremists somewhere, that said things like this: “See what happens when you align your politics against us, Australia! Submit to Allah!”, often accompanied by a video or an ideological image or symbol(s). On one occasion, I clicked on one of these videos. I was transported to the sands of the Middle East. A man stood in the sand, a white Canadian with a blonde pony-tail, with a black and white bandana neatly tied about his forehead (he looked like the blonde male character from Street Fighter, Ken). He spoke, in HD video, in plain, educated English for several minutes about the wrongs of the West and the need for radical Islamic extremism. He said, “If you aren’t coming here to help us, then you had better be fighting where you are.” He was convincing. Sharp. Articulate. Handsome, even. And he ended his sermon with a reminder of Allah's return with swift, severe judgment.

The problem with the ‘War on Terror' is this: we are not fighting terrorists. We are fighting a really convincing idea; especially for the oppressed peoples of the world. We are fighting an idea that promises liberation - "If only we'd fight for true doctrine, then the world would be at peace!" We’re dealing here, even, with apocalyptic eschatology. What that means, basically, is an ‘end times’ vision: a promise of future justice and dominance and the vindicating return of Allah! This is a religious war. Fundamentally. Ideologically. These people are serious, committed believers, with a passionate zeal for a supreme being who they believe demands recompense and dominance for and from them. These are ideologically trained, completely convinced, believers in the extremist idea.

Saint Paul said this of the war:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Again: We’re trying to fight terrorists, but we can’t. Because we’re actually fighting an idea. And ideas, as Dostoevsky reminded us somewhere, cannot be killed. Or hunted down. Ideas must be converted, they must be transformed. From the ground up, from the inside world, these ideas must be confronted. But ideas are too magnificently powerful for us. All we can do is kill and spread propaganda. We need to learn how to transform ideas.

One significant source of an ideology's strength comes with the digital revolution we’re living in. Personal technology is an outrageously effective tool for the communication of ideas, especially in short, easy to read ideological slogans and videos. We are not witnessing the work of a simple, old-fashioned ideology; we’re living in an age when complex ideas and global communication tools are instantly accessible to nearly everyone. 

Islamic extremist ideas, which gained a revival in the mid-twentieth century, have been incredibly influential among fringe groups of Muslims, especially among the emotionally wounded, radically motivated youth with a pre-existing propensity to political violence. This is a very convincing ideology for them.

I notice, around social media especially, a tendency to minimize the involvement of “true spirituality” in the daily lives of perpetrators of terroristic violence. I would like to graciously point out how flatly wrong this view is. The news reports from a broad range of international outlets and YouTube videos featuring live-action terrorist takeovers of Christian or ‘heretical’ villages (there are many videos there, but truly brutal and to be avoided) - these are enough evidence. Each video is full of prayers and expressions of devotion to Allah from the mouths of masked terrorists as they behead or slaughter innocent people. In the Charlie Hepbo tragedy, the men were shouting “Praise Be to Allah!” as they shot.

Furthermore, the police went into the Jewish market in Paris when they did because they heard the terrorist reciting his prayers, the prayer for salvation, to be recited just before death. This is not purely political violence. It is an idea. A very, very powerful one. A religious idea. It is an idea that tells of the swift and coming return of Allah to pay recompense on oppressors—and that’s us, the Western, Gluttonous, non-believing world.

But this idea can be stopped. And not, sadly, through satire. It must be stopped through worldwide nuclear strikes. Just kidding. I hope that doesn't get me arrested. It is unclear how it can be stopped without more bloodshed and terror. This ideology has the momentum of a rather large snowball, bowling down steep terrain, building ever larger and destroying or pulling into itself all that it touches.

IV: (Part Of) The Solution

While it is certainly the case that terrorism does not represent normative Islam, to say that some interpretations of Islam are not to blame for the headlining stories in Nigeria and Kenya and France and the United States, would be to ruin our chances of being critical toward certain twisted worldviews and ideologies.

Religious discourse must be incorporated into the public square. We live in a religious world. If we do not understand one another, death and destruction will forever ensue. When two people, even in a long term romantic relationship(!), don't understand each other and are each constantly forced to confront the problems of the other, a fight is coming. We are beginning to feel the pains of the other's anger.

But the world does not need another war. God help us. The world needs its leaders - teachers, parents, school principals, tax advisers, and so on - to take a critical and thoughtful approach to their own ideology, and that of others; other worldviews, other religions, are being propagated around us. The goal is not first to stop them, but to understand them. If we cannot understand them, we cannot stop the violence.'They' are the embodiment of an idea.

We're surprised that we can't understand what would make someone want to commit acts of terror in the name of a god. Because we never talk about it. And if we do, we're seen as weird. But here's the thing: ideas and beliefs can easily lead a human being to commit public acts of terror and suicide.

It's called religious zeal, and it's nothing new. Charlie Hebdo, in fact, in their acts of zealous cartooning and subsequent martyrdom, showed a similar type of zeal - yet for Leftist ideology. Suicidal zeal, almost.

We're told to tolerate everyone. One love. But we're not allowed to learn anything about them, from them, in our schools, because we are afraid of those ideas. American teachers get fired for talking about religion. And they're forced to talk about things in their curriculum that many of them do not want to teach. But they do, because the State says so. If the teacher is a believer, wouldn't that teacher be the best person to explain that religion to the students? Shouldn't there be a freedom of ideas? Shouldn't we be allowed to express ourselves? Are you really Charlie Hebdo? Should you be?

edit 01/12/15: We are being confronted by a powerful Idea and its violent fruit. But we are so confused by our own messes, our own spoiled fruit, that we fail to see clearly how to stop this Idea without hateful propaganda and violence. This has been the case in world history with nearly every political entity that has ever existed. Propaganda and violence. That's what we're good at. We must confront our own bad ideas before we can confront those of others. It must start with you and with me.

We are all humans, made in the image of God, and we all therefore deserve love and justice, regardless of our differences. We must understand one another. We must be transformed by the renewing of our minds.