Diversity and the freedom of interpretation

I must admit that even by my secular standards I find some of the cartoons in Charlie Hebdo uncomfortable if not downright offensive. Since the heinous murders in Paris, more of these cartoons were published, and while I could appreciate and understand the political context in which they are framed, I still cringe when I look at some of their depiction of prominent religious figures from all major faiths, especially when these figures are presented in compromising and even obscene situations. 

Yet, while I retain my reservation, I would never think twice to openly declare “Je Suis Charlie!” More so, I would not hesitate to hail Charlie Hebdo as that necessary line of defence by which a multicultural, diverse and free society must be sustained as the very expression of liberty and social justice. 

Hatred or offence?

Discussions are raised as to whether offensive material is equivalent to hatred. Indecency may be offensive to some but it is not a form of hatred. Like everything else, such questions are marred by contradictions and often such situations must be taken on though never fully resolved. To try to resolve them by the rule of thumb, let alone by force, would logically lead to the insanity by which someone decides to oppress or even murder those with whom he does not agree. 

So while secularism (what we would call laicità in Italian) does not in itself stop the possible spread of forms of hatred, it is an essential base-line on which we can assess situations without prejudging anything by ideological or religious assumptions. Be that as it may, one should make sure that democracies have robust laws to make sure that this distinction is held, these contradictions contained (and often sustained as necessary mechanisms for compromise), and that censorship does not stifle the liberty by which one can discuss and argue such cases. 

Ultimately, freedom of expression is there to safeguard those democratic forms of associated living by which we remain dutiful to each other, irrespective of race, creed, age, social class, gender, sexual orientation … and anything that makes us a diverse and inventive human race. 

Whether you like or loathe its cartoons, Charlie Hebdo remains one of those tenacious examples of freedom of expression that evolved in the liberal democracies for which women and men have fought through centuries of human sacrifice. As to the paradox of such situations, let’s not forget that France has for a patron saint a woman who is revered by the same Catholic Church that murdered and burnt her at the stake. Like St Joan of Arc, hundreds and hundreds were burnt in public spaces, murdered and massacred simply because they exercised their choice to express themselves freely. This ultimate sacrifice cannot be forfeited to murderous fanatics once more. 

There is no choice between dictatorships

We must not forget that the fanatics who murdered Charlie Hebdo’s satirists violently oppose diversity, integration and multiculturalism. So I would find it extremely difficult to understand how anyone could declare “Je Suis Charlie” while opposing diversity, integration and multiculturalism — if not argue (as some so-called “patriots” have done) that these murders happened because of integration and multiculturalism. 

I often wonder what the opponents of multiculturalism, diversity and integration really want. If they were in government or had real power, would they propose that Europe expel anyone who does not happen to be white and Christian? 

Adolf Hitler’s genocidal “ultimate solution” and South Africa’s Apartheid were prefigured by the wholesale attempt at the creation of a “monoculture” that goes back to King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile, who expelled all Muslims and Jews (unless they turned Catholic) from Spain and its territories and brought in the Inquisition to make sure that everyone toed the line. 

As the great poet Federico Garcia Lorca famously said, the fall of Granada in 1492 was one of the greatest historical disasters that Spain ever endured. This must be read against Lorca’s own personal experience and historical context. In 1936, in the first year of the Spanish Civil War, Francisco Franco led a Nationalist backlash against the Spanish Republic. As a consequence, Lorca was murdered by the same fanatics who followed suit in Franco’s false propaganda of an “España Catolicissima”, which supposedly reclaimed the same spirit by which Ferdinand and Isabella ended what was a refined and diverse society that was highly steeped in science, literature and beauty. 

Ironically we now witness massacres perpetuated by those who oppose diversity and freedom today while claiming to be the representatives of Islam — the same Islam that over centuries sustained the most advanced, sophisticated, diverse and inclusive forms of government and civilizations in the history of Europe before the Renaissance (though let’s not forget that giants of human thought like Giordano Bruno, Campanella and Savonarola were burnt as heretics at the same time the Renaissance was unfolding). 

One wonders how modern self-proclaimed book-burning and murdering “Jihadists” would have behaved in an Islamic civilisation to which the world owes the preservation of Ancient Greek and Roman texts on which modern liberal democracies sustain their philosophical and legal thinking to this day — forms of thinking which we rightly claim to constitute the cornerstone of Western civilisation. 

Many often forget that we owe the preservation and continuation of Ancient Greek Philosophy and Romanic Law thanks to the preservation of ancient Greek and Roman texts by Islamic scholars who saved these texts from barbarian pillaging and destruction. Some texts were later recovered thanks to the preservation of this whole heritage through Arab translations and collections held by Sheikhs whose Caliphates were centres of cultural diversity, religious tolerance, and continuous scholarship. This remains in stark contrast to what ISIS, Al Qaeda and other fanatics want to create in their own latter-day “Caliphates”. 

 So before some right wing “patriot” begins to rant against Islam as a backward and oppressive culture, let’s be clear about one thing: one should fiercely oppose fundamentalist groups because these movements advocate the same barbarism by which we lost the diverse and vibrant civilisations on which our modern democracies were founded. Moreover, these civilisations were not only Christian, but they owe their rich diversity to many other traditions, including Islam and Judaism. 

We should be opposing all forms of religious and ideological fundamentalism. Barely 60 years ago our grand- and great-grand parents sacrificed their lives in fighting the monocultural dystopias on which Hitler, Franco, Salazar and Mussolini built their own oppressive political systems. I would insist on mentioning fascism because when one follows what modern right wing “patriots” and their anti-political parties are saying about immigration, diversity and multiculturalism, one finds, almost word by word, the same narratives that the fascists preached and wrote in the 1920s and the 1930s — which, let’s not forget, led to the worst forms of oppression and genocide the world has ever seen. Indeed no one dictatorship, religious or otherwise, is better than another. 

Interpreting the world

In 1994, a fanatical member of the Islamic Brotherhood stabbed the Egyptian novelist and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz and almost killed him. The fanatic’s qualm with Mahfouz was about his novel Awlad Haretina (translated as Children of Gebelawi) which was initially banned in Egypt because it was considered a blasphemous story about God and his Abrahamic prophets (Moses, Jesus and Muhammad). 

I mention Mahfouz because in the various discussions that ensued from the Charlie Hebdo murders, I kept thinking of what Mahfouz’s work and life have already anticipated. More so, just as in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, many have taken the opportunity to pit one religious text against another, citing violent narratives in old texts and almost justifying the argument that Islam is incompatible with “Western” thought. Once one reads Mahfouz’s work, it becomes clear that many are only happy to remain misinformed and prejudiced.

Apart from the fact that all religious texts are fraught with ambiguity over the use of violence, some keep forgetting that here the argument has nothing to do with old books, but with interpretation. The Algerian-French philosopher Jacques Derrida — an Arab Jewish person who married a non-Jewish woman and decided not to circumcise his sons — is perhaps best known for the ambiguous claim that he makes when he states that “il n’y a pas de hors-texte”, which translates somewhere between “there is nothing outside text” and “there is no outside-text”. 

Without entering into a lengthy discussion of Derrida’s philosophy, it is important to remind oneself that “text” and “textuality” represent the ever-expanding horizon of meanings that we “weave” together (as in a never-ending “textile”) to make sense of the world. 

Derrida’s (in)famous and often misquoted claim also reinforces what another philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, claimed about interpretation. The Italian philosopher and politician Gianni Vattimo sums up Nietzsche’s claim nicely: “All we have are interpretations”.

Far from sheer relativism, this approach to how we live within a world that is woven by our diverse meanings, comes closer to us in that we have been brought up on the Book — indeed holy texts like the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran — as that which matters for those who read, interpret and weave the text in their moral and political imaginaries. To many extents, one could claim that we owe our interpretative freedom to the Book, even when we might even choose to reject what’s in it. 

Let’s not forget that before Martin Luther decided to challenge Papal authority, Christians of the Roman rite were not allowed to read the Bible without permission, while translators of the Bible like William Tyndale were burnt at the stake as heretics. This shows the powerful politics of interpretation and how the freedom of interpretation had to be constantly fought for. More so the political freedom that we now enjoy pertains to the very meanings by which we engage each other in exercising our liberty through the power of interpretation. 

“Nous sommes tous Charlie!”

As our forms of interpretation become instruments by which people exert power, we often forget that we continuously interpret life and that this should remain open to further interpretations. The key to this continuity is found in the democratic conversations by which the freedom of interpretation takes place. This freedom can only be articulated by difference of opinion, as much as culture, background, religious and political ideas. 

So by way of concluding, I would like to remind readers that what matters to our claim to reason and the freedoms that were gradually won over centuries of political and religious struggles, is that unless we have the freedom to interpret and re-interpret the meanings we give our world in an environment marked by diversity, we could never preserve, let alone sustain, our democracies—those very same democracies that some claim to “defend” by wanting to live in a mono-cultural society. 

More importantly we must remember that we cannot defend democracy if liberty is not established within the freedom to interpret, and by consequence, the freedom to articulate an ever-expanding diversity of meanings, aspirations, ideas, and lifestyles that coexist peacefully and which expand our engagement with the world. 

To eliminate this multiplicity of interpretations by denouncing the confluence of a diversity of cultures as a “failure of liberal democracy”, is to cut out any possibility by which we can sustain our democratic freedom — the same freedom that urges us to say “Nous sommes tous Charlie!” – We are all Charlie!