TO BIN LADEN, forward to, by Regis Debray
Sir,
You addressed a missive on March 19 to the "intelligent beings" of the European Union, demanding explanations with respect to the publication of Danish caricatures representing Mahomet. A letter warrants a response. Your e-mail box is undoubtedly saturated, and I hardly have the time to make a hop to North-Waziristan and present you with my response in person. Le Monde will serve as my winged messenger.
Why have it in for Europe? By going on-side with the Americans, in aid of a government parachuted in by Washington, these brave people have, in Afghanistan, put themselves at your service. This Christian coalition (with Turkish back-up), ignorant of all languages, mores and history of that country, is but sinning in the direction of the clash of civilizations it objects to at home. It will lead to, as with all foreign occupations, with undue demands and civilian victims, a nationalistic and tribal spasm, which gives back power to your friends the Taliban to whom we are unintelligently handing the flag of independence. The people of Afghanistan have always ended up ex pulsing their invaders, be they British, Soviets and tomorrow Nato. Algeria and Vietnam have taught nothing to our elites, who always repent fifty years too late. This colonial war, counter-productive, stupid, and lost in advance, should answer to your desires, even to the fears of Mr Huntington. Thus is the dark irony of history. If humour is not your strong point, nor forgiveness, an artist of destruction should at least appreciate the strategic paradoxes of backlash.
On the issue of the caricatures. You see in these "an insult and a crime worse than the killing of women and children in Muslim villages". I am not denying that one might compare visual violence to physical violence. Consider a stupid and mean drawing of the throat-slitting of a prisoner on camera. Fill in the blanks on the legal papers. If the killing of an unarmed man is a crime everywhere (while a drawing kills no one), blasphemy (words, writings or images insulting God) as sacrilege ( the active desecration of places, objects or persons) remain crimes or misdemeanours in the legislation of many European countries, but not in Belgium or France (except for Alsace-Lorraine). The European Union is here -thankfully - not of one mind. Do not expect the French to expiate for a crime they do not recognize, in a country, where, since 1789, "no one is to be cited for his opinions, even religious", and, let us add, anti-religious. What virtues you make them detest, your hand men, by playing on Muslim sensibilities. As for the accusation of "injury towards a group of persons stemming from their religion", or again defamation, it is indeed recognized by our law dated the 29th of July 1881 on freedom of the press (article 29, paragraph 2). Our courts have ruled that these drawings, certainly irreverent, were aimed only at obscurantists and authors of suicide-attacks invoking abusively the name of the Prophet.
Let us come to the heart of the matter. There is more than one civilization on the planet and it is a good thing. In ours, even if these Danish drawings are of a sorrowful platitude, caricature is an ancestral art, descendant of grotesque ornaments, gargoyles and medieval masks, and an art of the people, acquired, as with the newspaper, through struggle. So come and visit the current Daumier exposition. In yours, tradition, if not the Coran, silent on the subject, forbids images, and of God even more (also true in the Decalogue). It is a fact. Let us respect this liberty. As well as the chronological discrepancies between our cultures, all equally respectable. The word caricature appears for us in the XVIth century, with Annibal Carrache, and it takes time to untangle artistic creation from moral edification. In any event, no one is forcing a follower of the Prohet to buy a newspaper or a book, although if Mahomet were being offendingly caricaturized Place de la Concorde, then it would be reasonable to protest: it would be an attack on consciousness.
Freedom of expression is nowhere without limits. An Israeli artist excludes the Shoah; the Moroccan, the king; and the French, many taboo subjects. Every culture has areas of sacredness. All the more reason to exclude the single-minded sacred. You do not want universal western culture? So be it, and I do not want universal Islamic culture. Internet now a factor, here we all are, rights-of-man proponents and Islamists, rent-payers in the human house. Among neighboring apartment dwellers, tact is important. A certain reserve, like our beloved Plantu, who does not concern himself with what happens in heaven and does not take Prophets to task, but only bearded men. And let us avoid an international police force of the visual, which would force us all into euphemism.
I doubt if a simple friendly agreement between civilizations, which would avoid throwing oil on the sacred flame, will meet with your agreement, but for the management of common spaces, a candid not overly clever man sees no better than the maxim "do not do unto others what you would not want done to you".
It is a well-worn expression, but do not worry, Confucius said it before Jesus-Christ. Holy madmen, you see, have a pacifier: the wisdom of nations. Think about it. It is always better, all said and done, than our moments of craziness.
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