Last week, France’s president Emmanuel Macron said, during a memorial ceremony for beheaded teacher Samuel Paty, that France “will not give up cartoons” that depict Mohammed.
The General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has been following the ongoing practice of running satirical caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), being struck with astonishment at so unexpected a discourse from certain French politicians, which it deems to be harmful to the Muslim-French relations, hatemongering and only serving partisan political interests.The General Secretariat says it will always condemn practices of blasphemy and of insulting Prophets of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.Taking an unequivocal condemning stance against all acts of terror in the name of religion, the General Secretariat had earlier condemned the brutal murder of French citizen Samuel Paty.While dissociating this horrendous crime from Islam and its magnanimous values, blaming it as an individual or collective terrorist enterprise punishable by law, the General Secretariat continues to decry justification for blasphemy-based harassment of any religion in the name of freedom of expression. Furthermore, the General Secretariat deplores pairing Islam and Muslims with terrorism, urging for a review of anti-Muslim discriminatory policies, unjustifiably provocative to the feelings of a billion and a half Muslims across the world.
We will not give in, ever.We respect all differences in a spirit of peace. We do not accept hate speech and defend reasonable debate. We will always be on the side of human dignity and universal values.
Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons, offensive to all religions and groups, are not motivated by hate. Even though this cover that equates Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with Nazi treatment of Jews is inarguably offensive, in the context of Charlie Hebdo which delights in offending literally everyone, this is not hate speech. Whether it is funny is another question – offense for the sake of offense is puerile, not witty. In practically every other context, that equation of Jews to Nazis is unquestionably antisemitic and hate speech, meant to hurt Jews. For Charlie Hebdo, it is “look at us and how edgy we are,” the equivalent to dead baby jokes.
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