Charlie Hebdo: If you don't get the satire, the joke's on you
Albert Einstein's centuries-old words, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former," has yet again been proven true, thanks to certain people who don't understand the meaning of a joke. Because only in a humourless, utterly stupid world - the kind that the Islamist terrorists envisage for themselves and others - can satire be attacked this fiercely. Rationality has been the biggest victim of religion.
Every single time the Prophet is satirised, lampooned, or even depicted or drawn, blood is spilled, almost always. The problem is that the ones indulging in these heinous attacks take the words "the pen is mightier than the sword" for its literal value, and go on to turn the same on its head by showing time and again, that the pen is not mightier than the sword. Or the assault rifles, which were used to kill Charlie Hebdo.
It's not as if this is the first instance of a brutal satirising of a religion or a regime. As a tool of constructive criticism, satire has been around for centuries. It has always had a tense relationship with beliefs. Even in places/time where/when religion ruled. The form of satire thrives on the concept of an aftertaste. While in most cases, it is viewed as constructive criticism, for religious fanatics - and in modern times, mostly the Islamist ones - satire is viewed as life-threatening. So much so, that in order to defend a God that they haven't even seen a representation of, they are willing to kill.
More often than not, a satirical attack on religion attracts the ire of the followers of the faith. There are protests, bans and burning of effigies. After a while, the storm dies down. When Muslims of France prepared for a massive protest against Charlie Hebdo, the government wanted to crack down on it. Editor Stéphane Charbonnier opposed a crackdown, saying that the protest against his cartoons, by those who were offended, should be allowed. He defended the right to feel offended as strongly as he defended his right to offend. His killers clearly did not respect that basic human right.
Terrorism, it has been said time and again, has no religion. True, terrorism doesn't differentiate one victim from another. The terrorism-and-religion nexus is being pushed to a neat compartment these days, one which sees terrorism and Islam as intertwined, thanks to the rising avengers of the religion, and their deeds. And as if Islamophobia wasn't already at its peak, post 9/11, incidents like these take place, making the life of the ordinary Muslim difficult.
The main problem with these fanatics crying we-are-victims is the fact that they end up demonising themselves further, in this process of protecting their religion. And as far as criticising satire with guns is concerned, art takes the bullets, the artists being at the receiving end of the same. From Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses to Taslima Nasreen's Lajja, art has never fallen short of angering the perpetrators of Islamism. Hence, books have been banned, pages have been torched, and artists have been forced into exile. For reasons which reason would be ashamed to term reasons.
Rushdie's statement on the Charlie Hebdo killings was quite apt. He said, "Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry, becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force of liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. "Respect for religion" has become a code phrase meaning 'fear of religion'. Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and yes, our fearless disrespect. "
While criticising something as unreasonable as religion - something that threatens the basic definition of sanity - satire is quite useful a tool. It is when satire is made to sound politically and religiously correct, that the real threat comes into existence. Kowtowing to these Islamists and staying quiet out of "respect for Islam", like Rushdie so fittingly puts it, is just a euphemism for "fear of Islam". The answer to the fear is not in blurring out content that is meant to stir discontent in minds. The answer to an attack on free speech is something that ends up taking place on its own, without any external aid: like a certain tweet pointed out yesterday, after the Charlie Hebdo killings, the toughest thing to find in Paris was a copy of the weekly. Satire has a potent way of playing a joke on the ones who attack it. It is on you, if your minds are incapable of understanding the fact that it is a joke.