Many Muslims — not just religious ones — find it deeply offensive to have their prophet treated irreverently, especially by the ex-colonising nations of Europe. These Muslims — like any other people — have the right to feel what they do, and to express their opinions through legitimate protests. But nothing justifies what happened in Paris — where the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo , known for its caustic comments on all kinds of religious and political icons, was subjected to a savage terrorist strike. Nothing at all justifies the killing of a person one disagrees with, or even threats to such a person.
Unfortunately, looking back, we might come to see the 20 century as an oasis — a momentary flash of freedom in the desert sands of dead habits and the tyranny of traditions. This oasis of the 20th century was itself born out of oppression and autocracy — best symbolised by colonisation. It was threatened — in the shape of Nazism and Stalinism, among others — by other kinds of ‘modern’ autocracies. Yet, looking back, there appeared to have been small victories of personal and political freedom throughout the 20 century. These are the victories that today, in the early 21 century, we celebrate or criticise as ‘democracy’ and ‘secularism.’
But the 20 century did not just give us the first really credible versions of democracy and secularism; it also slowly distorted their natures. Today, both democracy and secularism are under attack (often in ‘religious’ terms) because they have been repeatedly mis-defined over the past few decades.
You hear the mis-definitions all around. You are told that ‘democracy’ is a matter of your rights. It is my right, screams the mob, like a petulant child. It is your right, say our leaders, when they want the mob to back any of their agendas. It is my belief, scream the mullahs, pandits, re-born Christians, Israeli settlers, whatever. How dare you offend my sensibilities or beliefs? they thunder.
But, no, democracy is not a matter of being right. It is more a matter of being wrong. The notion of equal rights is not the same as the belief that you are right by virtue of being a citizen or a believer or even a human being. Instead, the reason why you have to allow other people the same rights as yourself (including the right to differ from you) is that you might be wrong after all. We can never be certain of being right. Not one of us.
Democracy arose from this honest and objective perception of human fallibility. No one could be certain of being right — no king, sage, book, philosopher, scientist, leader, interpretation. And hence, the honest and practical thing to do was to give everyone an equal chance of being wrong — and right. The core of democracy is not a belief in your own right; it is a belief in everyone’s rights. And that is so because you too might be wrong about any political, religious, economic or cultural issue that you believe in.
Secularism is similar. As the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved — which is why the religious always fall back on unique miracles, not repeatable experiments — one cannot simply believe or disbelieve in God. One cannot insist on being right — absolutely — about the nature of divinity; even its existence or non-existence. It is the same as the essence of democracy. That is why, a magazine like Charlie Hebdo has to be allowed to laugh — because no matter how strongly you believe in being right, you might well be wrong. Democracy and secularism — real civilisation itself — is not possible without laughter, and difference.
There is no person more wrong than the person who believes he is always right. There is no person more laughable. And when divinity is invoked by such a person to insist on his absolute rightness, what is actually brought into being is something absolutely wrong — yes, even demonic. The attack in Paris proved this once again. It is time for religious Muslims to stop fooling themselves: the attack was political, no doubt, but the ‘reason’ offered by the terrorists was supposedly ‘Islamic.’ This has to be faced by Muslims. It is time that more religious Muslims realise how close their conviction of being absolutely right brings them to what can only be called the opposite of justice, mercy, love, forgiveness — in other words, all the beautiful attributes of the divinity Muslims worship as Allah.
The views expressed in this column are that of the author’s and do not represent those of the newspaper.
