Fanatics Without Borders
Finkielkraut, Alain
INSTANT COMMUNICATION has conquered space and time. The gap between the far away and the near-at-hand has dwindled. Only a few years ago, this phenomenon thrilled us. We grew enchanted with our...
...The picture that lit the fuse shows Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb...
...This inability to differentiate is the spirit of terrorism...
...One kills innocents because there are no innocents...
...Thomas Mann used to say that Hitler didn't land on German ground like a meteor, and so Germany, as a result, could never simply rid itself of Nazism...
...Moreover, the pictures of furious and screaming crowds sacking the Scandinavian embassies are infinitely more obscene, infinitely more caricatured than the sketches from Scandinavia...
...And it's against this renunciation that Islamic fundamentalist elites and masses raise their holy rage...
...Moved, we watched as technology placed itself at the service of ethics...
...Those who are fighting against free speech in the name of respect for their faith despise the beliefs of others, and they make it very clearly known...
...Why were there no demonstrations in the Arab/Muslim worlds against the bloody attacks in New York, Madrid, Mombasa, Bali, 44 n DISSENT / Spring 2006 and elsewhere...
...But what use is geography...
...Was Bin Laden only an hors d'oeuvre...
...Insulting picture, they tell us...
...There seemed to be a miraculous harmony between the cosmopolitanism of global media and demands for a global politics...
...The believers who count themselves outraged and calumniated by such a representation of Muhammad respond by saying "Kill those who insult Islam...
...It is not enough to confess our crimes and to proclaim urbi et orbi that we do not have enemies in order to live in a peaceful world or, for that matter, to make peace...
...And those who insult Islam, in their eyes, are not only the authors of these incriminating drawings, but the governments of the countries where the drawings were published and all those within the jurisdiction of these countries...
...But this link wasn't suggested by Danish cartoonists, it was forged by the Jihadists...
...We grew enchanted with our new ways of life, our newly ubiquitous culture...
...From Pakistan to Algeria, a minuscule minority of those protesting against the cartoons in the Danish dailyfyllands-Posten, would know where to find Denmark on a map...
...An unexpected guest has crashed the party of those "without borders": after the doctors, pharmacists, nurses, lawyers, and reporters, it's the hour of fanatics without borders...
...Within the worldwide civil society that we were wishing into existence, opposition to humanitarian intervention is becoming more and more peremptory and strident...
...Certainly...
...The proof: we have ardently sought peace, and yet it's time to acknowledge, for all our efforts, that we are encountering determined, formidable enemies...
...He added, however, that he too was Germany...
...In the Internet age, everybody is everywhere and the whole world is anywhere...
...These sages forget that respect for beliefs and freedom of speech are two sides of the same coin...
...Now we face the globalization of hatred...
...An aboliDISSENT / Spring 2006 n 43 FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION tion of distance seemed to lead, quite naturally, toward a growing closeness and friendliness among peoples...
...Anonymity reigns: everyone is assigned to a group, anyone is a target...
...But pay attention: this "we" is not only "we, French," or "we, Europeans," not even "we, Westerners...
...Reprinted by permission...
...Rather than trying to sweettalk fanatics with dishonorable pieties about The Other and respecting The Other, it is incumbent upon us to affirm unceasing solidarity with all the Thomas Manns of the Muslim world...
...Translated from the French by Marco Roth...
...The notion of democracy seemed to bore indiscreetly through the thickest of walls...
...2006 Liberation...
...We are all angels, and there's the horror...
...There are not even individuals, only specimens...
...The question is thrust upon us in the wake of these delirious demonstrations added to the nuclear bellicosity of Iran and the electoral success of Hamas in Palestine (and perhaps one day soon of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt...
...FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION and respect for the beliefs of others begins with a painful renunciation of the absolute authority of your own particular convictions...
...It also encompasses all those moderate Muslim traditionalists, secular Muslims, emancipated Muslim women or those who aspire to become so, together with Christians living in Muslim lands...
...The demand for legal recognition of inalienable similarities among all human beings came with our denunciations of the "sovereign" right of tyrants to massacre minorities and opponents behind the refuge of their borders...
...Who is responsible for this crisis...
...The newspapers of Tehran, of Damascus, of Cairo vomit vindictive caricatures that savage shamelessly orthodox Jews and demonize the Talmud...
...A hurtful connection, an offensive connection, a defamatory connection between the Prophet and terrorism...
...The cartoonists and journalists who did not know how to temper the use of free speech with a respect for beliefs," say the majority of Western heads of state, and a number of intellectuals are right with them...
Vol. 53 • April 2006 • No. 2
