It seems to me that in the authors' desire to make the facts fit their thesis they have taken some liberties. The Right may be at fault for conflating "Islamist" with "Islamic" and immigration with illegal immigration, but that's rather a quibble when compared with the Left's narrative of racism and oppression.
On-the-other-hand, the Right's explanation can be said to "confirm[...] the jihadist narrative that the religion demands bloodshed and that the Western world is forcing this upon Muslims," whereas the Left's reaction-to-racism-and-poverty explanation cannot.
I agree that both left- and right-wing American interpretations of violent Islamist extremist attacks demonstrate motivated thinking that reflects US ideological positions. In Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman makes the case that American liberals are blind to the ideology that motivates such attacks, preferring to read the attackers' motivations in ways that exculpate them. I guess my question for Micheron and Haykel is: besides taking into account these most recent attacks in France, how is your analysis different than Berman's?
Violence exists in every society, but the idea that in 21st century France a person can be casually "beheaded" (should it even be a thing in our times?) for an academic discussion in a school classroom is downright bizarre and scary to most French people. Lecturing them about racism etc misses the point; no society is completely free of racism and France is a pretty impressive and tolerant liberal democracy. (though far from perfect). These terrorist incidents, if they continue, will help Right wing political parties because their message that some immigrants have values that are incompatible with French society will gain wider acceptance.
I agree that left and right mischaracterize jihadism, but the left's dishonesty is much more problematic IMO. I say this as a left-of-center person myself. The message I'm getting from this piece is that if you're American, you don't have a right to an opinion on France's Islamist problem. Talk about a lazy argument! To be fair, it's extremely hard to criticize religion and particularly Islam in a head-on, direct way. But I think this is what we have to do to build a better world. We can't just say that jihadism is "complicated" and try to change the subject. I suggest this movie "Islam and Future of Tolerance" as a way into this conversation. https://islamandthefutureoftolerance.com
We must all be personally diligent in our tendency to try to place situations/issues/tragedies in convenient preconceived boxes. When we do so useful critical thought suffers and thoughtful solutions are missed leading to the item being wrongly represented and the situation behind it exacerbated.
Glad we agree on something! Yes, there is a law but I do not know the reference. But when I gave a lecture to a French University class on Race in the United States, the professor wrote the law on the blackboard and explained to her students that because of my status I was exempt!
It is important to look at the facts of the situation. President Macron claims that the French have a "right" to their cartoons. But this is totally hypocritical. It is forbidden in France to publish an anti-semitic cartoon with the caption "The Jewish Race" and of course no teacher would ever display such a cartoon. The violence must be soundly condemned but France must also examine her own hypocritical position.
I disagree. It's only hypocritical if you want to conflate religious satire (a cartoon of the prophet) with an anti-Semitic caricature of "The Jewish Race", surely. I think these are categorically different, and I think it is a little bit disingenuous of those who cry "Islamophobia" whenever Islam is critiqued, satirized or otherwise held to the standards of criticism we allow (indeed relish) when Christianity is the subject.
Denigration is denigration whenever it is Jews, Muslims or any other minority group. Fortunately the norms about Black people in the United States have changed so that now employees using the N* word risk being fired. And no teacher could appear in class in blackface without being fired.
I think you are confusing the issue. To say the two things are the same as each other is to deny the role of intention, and to deny us all the right to fair criticism or satirical commentary if anyone feels denigrated by it. That's hugely illiberal.
For your analogies to work, you need to believe that a teacher using a political cartoon depicting the Prophet in class to teach a lesson on freedom of expression as equal to a teacher turning up in blackface and using the N word to refer to himself or his students. They just aren't in the same ballpark, and the perverse, homicidal overreaction of extremist should not lead one to assume that they are.
Perhaps a better analogy is with the dozens of Chalie Hebdo cartoons irreverently depicting Jesus and critiquing the Catholic church, which are pubished without incident despite the fact that they may offend members of that faith. The real hypocrisy, in my view, would be if these were seen as fair social commentary but the Islam cartoons were not.
So one intends to make fun of Jews? Or worse by posting a cartoon of a stupid looking Jewish man looking down on a terrified Christian baby.
Fortunately Jewish people do not do Jihad but there would be very strong condemnation and retaliation by Israel and the US. And by the way speech is restricted in France. Using the word "race" is outlawed; so give me a break about "free speech" in France. It follows that there is also no such thing as "racism" in (permitted) French speech.
Hi. I can't find any sources to support the claim that "using the word race" has been "outlawed" in France. Perhaps you could direct me to a link that suggests its use is actually outlawed?
I can find sources saying it has been removed from the constitution, and if some French journalists are to be believed its use is controversial and can be polarising in French society. But just because a concept has been removed from a country's constitution it doesn't follow that the concept itself doesn't exist - only that it is not officially endorsed. And I doubt very much that the intention of those to remove the word race from the constitution was to cleverly make racism an conceptual and legal impossibility, but I am not a constitutional law expert!
It strikes me as a well-intentioned denial of any biological reality to race and a rejection of the disunifying potential of racial identity before national identity, but also a pretty naive denial of the problematic socially-constructed reality of race. So in that sense I agree it's an unusual move. In any event, it seems like we agree that it is not good to impose sanctions - be they laws or norms - that have a chilling effect on people's freedom of expression.
It seems to me that in the authors' desire to make the facts fit their thesis they have taken some liberties. The Right may be at fault for conflating "Islamist" with "Islamic" and immigration with illegal immigration, but that's rather a quibble when compared with the Left's narrative of racism and oppression.
On-the-other-hand, the Right's explanation can be said to "confirm[...] the jihadist narrative that the religion demands bloodshed and that the Western world is forcing this upon Muslims," whereas the Left's reaction-to-racism-and-poverty explanation cannot.
I agree that both left- and right-wing American interpretations of violent Islamist extremist attacks demonstrate motivated thinking that reflects US ideological positions. In Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman makes the case that American liberals are blind to the ideology that motivates such attacks, preferring to read the attackers' motivations in ways that exculpate them. I guess my question for Micheron and Haykel is: besides taking into account these most recent attacks in France, how is your analysis different than Berman's?
Violence exists in every society, but the idea that in 21st century France a person can be casually "beheaded" (should it even be a thing in our times?) for an academic discussion in a school classroom is downright bizarre and scary to most French people. Lecturing them about racism etc misses the point; no society is completely free of racism and France is a pretty impressive and tolerant liberal democracy. (though far from perfect). These terrorist incidents, if they continue, will help Right wing political parties because their message that some immigrants have values that are incompatible with French society will gain wider acceptance.
I agree that left and right mischaracterize jihadism, but the left's dishonesty is much more problematic IMO. I say this as a left-of-center person myself. The message I'm getting from this piece is that if you're American, you don't have a right to an opinion on France's Islamist problem. Talk about a lazy argument! To be fair, it's extremely hard to criticize religion and particularly Islam in a head-on, direct way. But I think this is what we have to do to build a better world. We can't just say that jihadism is "complicated" and try to change the subject. I suggest this movie "Islam and Future of Tolerance" as a way into this conversation. https://islamandthefutureoftolerance.com
We must all be personally diligent in our tendency to try to place situations/issues/tragedies in convenient preconceived boxes. When we do so useful critical thought suffers and thoughtful solutions are missed leading to the item being wrongly represented and the situation behind it exacerbated.
Glad we agree on something! Yes, there is a law but I do not know the reference. But when I gave a lecture to a French University class on Race in the United States, the professor wrote the law on the blackboard and explained to her students that because of my status I was exempt!
It is important to look at the facts of the situation. President Macron claims that the French have a "right" to their cartoons. But this is totally hypocritical. It is forbidden in France to publish an anti-semitic cartoon with the caption "The Jewish Race" and of course no teacher would ever display such a cartoon. The violence must be soundly condemned but France must also examine her own hypocritical position.
I disagree. It's only hypocritical if you want to conflate religious satire (a cartoon of the prophet) with an anti-Semitic caricature of "The Jewish Race", surely. I think these are categorically different, and I think it is a little bit disingenuous of those who cry "Islamophobia" whenever Islam is critiqued, satirized or otherwise held to the standards of criticism we allow (indeed relish) when Christianity is the subject.
Denigration is denigration whenever it is Jews, Muslims or any other minority group. Fortunately the norms about Black people in the United States have changed so that now employees using the N* word risk being fired. And no teacher could appear in class in blackface without being fired.
I think you are confusing the issue. To say the two things are the same as each other is to deny the role of intention, and to deny us all the right to fair criticism or satirical commentary if anyone feels denigrated by it. That's hugely illiberal.
For your analogies to work, you need to believe that a teacher using a political cartoon depicting the Prophet in class to teach a lesson on freedom of expression as equal to a teacher turning up in blackface and using the N word to refer to himself or his students. They just aren't in the same ballpark, and the perverse, homicidal overreaction of extremist should not lead one to assume that they are.
Perhaps a better analogy is with the dozens of Chalie Hebdo cartoons irreverently depicting Jesus and critiquing the Catholic church, which are pubished without incident despite the fact that they may offend members of that faith. The real hypocrisy, in my view, would be if these were seen as fair social commentary but the Islam cartoons were not.
So one intends to make fun of Jews? Or worse by posting a cartoon of a stupid looking Jewish man looking down on a terrified Christian baby.
Fortunately Jewish people do not do Jihad but there would be very strong condemnation and retaliation by Israel and the US. And by the way speech is restricted in France. Using the word "race" is outlawed; so give me a break about "free speech" in France. It follows that there is also no such thing as "racism" in (permitted) French speech.
Hi. I can't find any sources to support the claim that "using the word race" has been "outlawed" in France. Perhaps you could direct me to a link that suggests its use is actually outlawed?
I can find sources saying it has been removed from the constitution, and if some French journalists are to be believed its use is controversial and can be polarising in French society. But just because a concept has been removed from a country's constitution it doesn't follow that the concept itself doesn't exist - only that it is not officially endorsed. And I doubt very much that the intention of those to remove the word race from the constitution was to cleverly make racism an conceptual and legal impossibility, but I am not a constitutional law expert!
It strikes me as a well-intentioned denial of any biological reality to race and a rejection of the disunifying potential of racial identity before national identity, but also a pretty naive denial of the problematic socially-constructed reality of race. So in that sense I agree it's an unusual move. In any event, it seems like we agree that it is not good to impose sanctions - be they laws or norms - that have a chilling effect on people's freedom of expression.