Það var fyrir níu árum......

Voðaverkin á ritstjórnar Charlie Hebdo og eftirleikur þeirra kom okkur flestum í opna skjöldu.  Við urðum reið, hissa, jafnvel örlítíð hrædd.

En í raun þarf atburðurinn ekki að koma á óvart, þó að vissulega sé erfitt að ímynda sér annað eins fyrirfram.

En það er engin leið að fyrirbyggja öll hryðjuverk, alveg sama hvernig reynt er, hversu vel við búum út lögreglu og leyniþjónustur.

Því miður eru alltaf líkur á því að einhver sleppi í gegnum netið. 

Og ef til vill má segja að við hefðum átt að egia von á þessu.  Atburðirnir í París eru ekki endir langrar slóðar, það má jafnvel efast um að þeir séu hápunktur hennar.  Þeir eru langt í frá að vera upphaf hennar.

Skopmyndir af Múhameð hafa verið í sviðsljósinu síðan 2005.  Síðan þá hafa skopteiknarar mátt búa við líflátshótanir og árásir.

Engin þeirra bar árangur fyrr en nú.  Við getum verið þakklát fyrir það, en það minnkar ekki áfallið eða angistina yfir atburðunum í París.

Við getum líka minnst á nöfn eins og Salman Rushdie, Ali Hirshi og Theo van Gogh.

Þeir sem vilja fara lengra aftur er er líklega rétt að stöðva við atburði eins og Alsírstríðið, innrás múslima Spáni og Krossferðirnar.

 

2006 skrifaði Flemming Rose, starfsmaður Jyllands Posten athyglisverða grein sem birtist á vef der Spiegel.  Þar má hana enn finna og hvet ég sem flesta til að lesa hana.

Þar sagði hann m.a.:

And yet the unbalanced reactions to the not-so-provocative caricatures -- loud denunciations and even death threats toward us, but very little outrage toward the people who attacked two Danish Embassies -- unmasked unpleasant realities about Europe's failed experiment with multiculturalism. It's time for the Old Continent to face facts and make some profound changes in its outlook on immigration, integration and the coming Muslim demographic surge. After decades of appeasement and political correctness, combined with growing fear of a radical minority prepared to commit serious violence, Europe's moment of truth is here.

Europe today finds itself trapped in a posture of moral relativism that is undermining its liberal values. An unholy three-cornered alliance between Middle East dictators, radical imams who live in Europe and Europe's traditional left wing is enabling a politics of victimology. This politics drives a culture that resists integration and adaptation, perpetuates national and religious differences and aggravates such debilitating social ills as high immigrant crime rates and entrenched unemployment.

As one who once championed the utopian state of multicultural bliss, I think I know what I'm talking about. I was raised on the ideals of the 1960s, in the midst of the Cold War. I saw life through the lens of the countercultural turmoil, adopting both the hippie pose and the political superiority complex of my generation. I and my high school peers believed that the West was imperialistic and racist. We analyzed decaying Western civilization through the texts of Marx and Engels and lionized John Lennon's beautiful but stupid tune about an ideal world without private property: "Imagine no possessions/ I wonder if you can/ No need for greed or hunger/ A brotherhood of man/ Imagine all the people/ Sharing all the world."

It took me only 10 months as a young student in the Soviet Union in 1980-81 to realize what a world without private property looks like, although many years had to pass until the full implications of the central Marxist dogma became clear to me.

...

This kind of thinking gave birth to a distorted approach to immigration in countries like Denmark. Left-wing commentators decided that Denmark was both racist and Islamophobic. Therefore, the chief obstacle to integration was not the immigrants' unwillingness to adapt culturally to their adopted country (there are 200,000 Danish Muslims now); it was the country's inherent racism and anti-Muslim bias.

A cult of victimology arose and was happily exploited by clever radicals among Europe's Muslims, especially certain religious leaders like Imam Ahmad Abu Laban in Denmark and Mullah Krekar in Norway. Mullah Krekar -- a Kurdish founder of Ansar al Islam who this spring was facing an expulsion order from Norway -- called our publication of the cartoons "a declaration of war against our religion, our faith and our civilization. Our way of thinking is penetrating society and is stronger than theirs. This causes hate in the Western way of thinking; as the losing side, they commit violence."

...

An act of inclusion. Equal treatment is the democratic way to overcome traditional barriers of blood and soil for newcomers. To me, that means treating immigrants just as I would any other Danes. And that's what I felt I was doing in publishing the 12 cartoons of Muhammad last year. Those images in no way exceeded the bounds of taste, satire and humor to which I would subject any other Dane, whether the queen, the head of the church or the prime minister. By treating a Muslim figure the same way I would a Christian or Jewish icon, I was sending an important message: You are not strangers, you are here to stay, and we accept you as an integrated part of our life. And we will satirize you, too. It was an act of inclusion, not exclusion; an act of respect and recognition.

Alas, some Muslims did not take it that way -- though it required a highly organized campaign, several falsified (and very nasty) cartoons and several months of overseas travel for the aggrieved imams to stir up an international reaction

Maybe Europe needs to take a leaf -- or a whole book -- from the American experience. In order for new Europe of many cultures that is somehow a single entity to emerge, in a manner similar to the experience of the United States, both sides will have to make an effort -- the native-born and the newly arrived.

For the immigrants, the expectation that they not only learn the host language but also respect their new countries' political and cultural traditions is not too much to demand, and some stringent (maybe too stringent) new laws are being passed to force that. At the same time, Europeans must show a willingness to jettison entrenched notions of blood and soil and accept people from foreign countries and cultures as just what they are, the new Europeans.

Flemming Rose skrifaði eftir hryðjuverkin í París, aðra grein sem var þýdd á Íslensku og birt á Eyjunni.  Sömuleiðis grein sem vel er vert að gefa sér tíma til að lesa.

P.S.  Eftir að Jyllands Pósturinn birti skopmyndirnar af Múhameð, reyndu Íranir að efna til "æsings" með því að efna til samkeppni um skopmyndir af gyðingum og Helförinni.

Þær eru margar smekklausar og ef til vil "brútal".  Hver urðu viðbrögðin?

Eftir því sem ég veit best engin. Engum teiknara var hótað, engin teiknari var tekin af lífi.  Lífið hélt áfram.

Það er upp og ofan hvernig húmor siðað fólk hefur.  Sumir hafa engan. En það er ekki ástæða eða afsökun fyrir morðum og hryðuverkum, hvort sem gerandinn segir þau gerð "guði til dýrðar", eður ei.