The Charlie Hebdo massacre has prompted a curiously diverse set of reactions worldwide. There has been outrage from people of France and rest of the world alike defending freedom of speech and condemning the terror attack. People declared their solidarity with the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie, some Islamist supporters continued to perversely defend the attack, some condemned the paper for the (perceived) racist and problematic cartoons, and in the most surreal turn of events, Saudi Arabia ‘condemned’ the massacre. This has all been so Kafkaesque that one struggles to keep track of what’s going on.
But let’s talk about the liberal left. It must be admitted that anti-Muslim prejudice and bigotry in the west is very real. The Charlie Hebdo massacre itself has triggered a set of violent reactions against French Muslims. It is also crucial to engage in critical discussion of the problematic and racist portrayals of any marginalized group or a minority (although it’s worth noting that Charlie Hebdo was not necessarily racist, far from it, but let’s set that debate aside for now).
But where one really feels that the left has lost track big time is in delineating racist speech and anti-Muslim prejudice from genuine criticism of ideologies like Islamism or fundamentalist Islam. This leads to inevitable silencing of voices of dissent, from Muslim community or otherwise. They sometimes end up stooping to such new lows that they even engage in implicit victim blaming, which is antithetical to the core values of progressive liberalism. And these very people ironically end up overlooking the diverse voices amongst people of color and just conveniently homogenize them instead. Makes one wonder if the whole thing smacks of a kind of elitist arrogance.
The hypocrisy of some factions of left is so evident when they accuse the lack of attention to the horrendous atrocities committed Boko Haram by the western media. While western media is guilty of resorting to orientalist narratives and problematic portrayal of the ‘third world’, had the media publicized the atrocities committed by Boko Haram enough, would they have been spared of accusations of peddling Islamophobia? There were similar reactions when #BringBackOurGirls trended worldwide, which quickly fizzled out after the initial support. The spotlight is completely off Nigeria and hence there’s little pressure on their government or international community in aiding the resistance against Boko Haram.
The problem is not the admittedly necessary critique of Islamophobia or racism. The problem is not the questioning of eurocentrism or American imperialism. The problem is the lack of a strong parallel narrative that encompasses critiques of Islamism and Islamist extremism, and also the sheer dismissal of such narratives by others, including reformist Muslims.
There is a popular quote attributed to Martin Luther King, which reads: “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people”. The complicit silence of the people who seeks to stand by the oppressed certainly doesn’t help; but the unintentional silencing of people of color who seek to speak up hurts even worse. The path to hell, indeed, is paved with good intentions.