Sorry, I Am Not 'Charlie'
Although most mainstream American media are refusing to run the cartoons that have offended Muslims -- among others -- the most, any news consumer can instantly Google them up. It's easy to see why most media are reluctant to publish or broadcast them. Some of their work that I have seen is quite sharp, deft and biting in its wit. Others look like they came out some American hate group's newsletters.
Some cartoons show Muhammad naked and in pornographic poses. Some show nuns masturbating, popes wearing condoms and the Christian Holy Trinity locked in a three-way homosexual orgy -- in apparent commentary on French religious leaders' opposition to gay marriage.
One cover cartoon of four young black women in burqas was headlined: "The sex slaves of Boko Haram are angry. 'Don't touch our child benefits!' "
Yet, offense does not mean you should relinquish your rights -- or your life. Christiane Taubira, France's first black minister of justice, has made that point well. After the weekly depicted her as a monkey in a cartoon that followed a far-right politician's scandalous description of her in those terms, she nevertheless defended free press rights as "the enemy of obscurantism and violence," and said that it inconceivable that Charlie Hebdo should cease to publish.
In that spirit, a second hashtag quickly emerged after the Charlie Hebdo tragedy: JesuisAhmed. That's a reference to one of the two police officers who was fatally shot, Ahmed Merabet, who also happened to be a Muslim.
As Twitter activist Dyab Abou Jahjah(cq) said in a tweet that has gone around the world in retweets, "I am not Charlie, I am Ahmed the dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so."
Ahmed Merabet, like the slain editors and artists at Charlie Hebdo, did not set out to be a martyr. But today he symbolizes how well the melting-pot model of assimilation, that Europeans are trying in their own various ways to emulate, can still work.
I am not Ahmed, but he sounds like an excellent role model.
========
E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
(c) 2015 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
