Charlie Hebdo clarification and terrorism

I want to clarify a couple of issues that were brought to my attention given the serious nature of terrorism and our role in fighting these acts. First, I am not concerned with someone complaining about a single typo when everyone else understood what I meant. Secondly, I didn’t know the magazine had made fun of Christ but true Christians know not to respond with violence. It should also be noted that they only made fun of Christ once but they continue to flirt with catastrophe by attacking Muslims, their religion, and their founder. I taught my children and students that teasing or making fun of someone once is OK but two or more is antagonizing, ugly, and disrespectful. Freedom of expression does not mean you are free to say and do anything and you must be responsible and accountable. In fact, it is against the law to threaten the President in any way and if you yell “fire” in a movie to cause a panic, you have just committed a felony under federal law. Making fun of Mohammed was not a responsible or respectful act so what did they think would happen with radicals all over the world using any excuse they can to kill. Making fun of Mohammed certainly would not stop the terrorist acts and in fact we now know it escalated their activity driven by Charlie Hebdo’s irresponsible and disrespectful behavior toward a deity for the sake of media sensationalism and selling magazines, not fighting terrorism. The magazine did get their big sale of 5 million copies but look at the turmoil and cost in lives spent on them being held accountable.

I also object to the assertion that I am all wrong about Charlie Hebdo as my main concern was about the slandering of supreme religious deities, Christ and Mohammed, and not us “ordinary” people. Where is the line that Charlie Hebdo crossed as the facts illustrate that it was making fun of Mohammed, not Muslims or terrorists. In fact, it is clear the attackers were more concerned with revenge than terror. No one deserves to die for drawing a cartoon but I’m already hearing comments of people saying, “They asked for it.”

Charlie Hebdo should be fighting terrorists and terrorism, not making fun of the Muslim religion if freedom of religion means anything on planet Earth. But now we are witnessing Christians and others in anti-Muslim protests driven by Charlie Hebdo’s act when there should be united international protests against terrorism, not against a religion. Why attack a religion and its dead founder when it is people doing the terrorist acts, which is ridiculous to me. But even though I don’t support this protest against Muslims and their religion, I do understand the rationale for the protest because the Muslim nation is not doing enough to lead the fight against the use of their religion for terroristic purposes.

I taught my students in conflict with one another that if you don’t like Fernando, say you don’t like him but not his entire race of people as our youth learn from hearing adults swearing they hate those people—hating an entire race because they don’t like one person. Now the same thing is happening on an international scale with religion. Making fun of deities is treading in very dangerous waters given the history of religion and the billions of deaths associated with religious turmoil. We (Muslims and all religions and the media) need to be vigilant and accountable on all fronts in the war against terrorism and fight the good and honorable fight, not make fun of deities just to sell magazines, which is the true lesson to be learned. In closing, I wrote about this because I don’t want to see any of this Charlie Hebdo mess spilling over into the CNMI, not to hear nonsense complaints. I rest the world’s case against terrorism!

Ambrose M Bennett
Kagman, Saipan