Our Leaders Must Stand With France Against Islamic Calls for Blasphemy Laws To Stifle Free Speech

Emma Webb, Director of the Forum on Integration, Democracy and Extremism (FIDE) at Civitas calls out the hypocriscy of Islamic leaders of Turkey, Pakistan etc. and urges us all to stand with France in defence of our hard-won civil liberties and oppose attempts to stifle free speech. To quote:

"France has a long history of political satire and caricature. In the mid-19th Century, one notoriously provocative weekly repeatedly depicted King Louis Philippe as a pear. The artist was charged with “outrage against the person of the King” and fined – but soon enough, doodles of pears could be found all over Paris.

"184 years later, two Islamists forced their way into an office in Paris and gunned down the director, cartoonists, columnists, editors and copy editors, a bodyguard and building maintenance worker, a police officer and a travel writer – it was the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. All because they published cartoons mocking Muhammed.

"But they remained defiantly irreverent despite repeated attacks and threats. With the trial beginning only now, in 2020, they republished the cartoons.

"And so it was that a young Pakistani man felt entitled to go to their old HQ and attack two people with a meat cleaver. Or that a teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded in broad daylight because he showed the cartoons to his class as part of a civics lesson about free speech.

"Soon enough, church bells rang out across France – a 70-year old woman had been decapitated and two of her fellow worshippers murdered in a catholic church in Nice. It was not the first of its kind, of course; everyone should remember the priest beheaded as he celebrated mass in 2016.

"But Paty became a symbol. As Macron memorialised, he had become the fact of the Republic. On the front line, teaching the next generation to be French citizens, republicans, capable of free thought.
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"The perverse reaction of Muslim leaders, the mob and the English language press did not go amiss. With a magnificent sleight of hand cynical figures like Turkey’s President Erdogan and Pakistan’s Imran Khan managed to paint France as the villain.

"They’re Islamophobes, who have provoked Muslims, and if they want peace they must cease and desist. Cease, that is, to be France. Days before the attack on the Nice church, the Turkish Minister for Culture and Tourism tweeted at Charlie Hebdo in French ‘You are bastards, you are sons of bitches’.

"Countries across the Arab world boycotted French goods and removed them from their shelves. In London, protesters carrying banners that read ‘insult is not freedom of speech’ screamed ‘shame on you’ at Louis Vuitton. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and its 57-member states followed Pakistan, with a boycott.

"In no time, #NevertheProphet was trending alongside #Islamophobia. The Turkish government accused France of attacking Islam and Erdogan said Macron needed “mental treatment”. Imran Khan said that Macron’s defence of the cartoons deliberately provoked Muslims.

"The former Indonesian PM tweeted that “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past”. Just as a campaign of hatred was stirred up against Paty, Muslim leaders knowingly agitated against the entire nation – and by association, other European countries too.

"France has now rightly recognised the Turkish president’s comments as “declarations of violence”.

"What followed was a spate of attacks, including in Austria – four murdered and fourteen injured by an Islamist gunman starting outside of the city’s main synagogue.
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"Despite the intimidation, Macron has shown remarkable backbone. He refused to disavow the cartoons ‘even if others recoil’. He insisted that France would continue to ‘strongly proclaim the concept of laicite’, to ‘nurture a love for the Republic’ and fight for freedom and reason as Samuel Paty did.

"What other world leader would respond so positively and robustly, saying that the French love their nation, geography, landscape, history and culture?...

"...It is clearer now than ever that European leaders, very much too late in the day, need to wake up and stand with France as robust defenders of our hard-won liberties. And that the people of Europe should feel entitled to draw as many pictures as they like of Imran Khan, President Erdogan or certain religious as whatever fruit they fancy – because blasphemy laws have no place on this continent. "

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