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NICE, France – When the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in early September, it sparked a chain of events that included two stabbings, protests in Muslim nations, a boycott of French products and criticism from allies. Tensions escalated when a young Islamist extremist beheaded a teacher near Paris this month, and another cut the throat of two people and fatally stabbed another inside a church in the southern city of Nice this week.
But French officials have not only defended the right to republish the cartoons, some have gone further, including regional leaders who announced that a brochure with those images would be delivered to high school students as a commitment “to uphold the values. of the Republic. “
In France’s tortured 14-year history of cartoons, the response to images has undergone a profound transformation. Once denounced by the head of state for provoking and disrespecting Muslims, and then kept at a cautious distance by other officials, the same drawings are now fully accepted throughout the political establishment, often combined with the commitment of France with freedom of expression.
The cartoons have put France in a dangerous impasse, widening its division with Muslim nations and leaving many French Muslims feeling alienated. For Muslims outside of France, and some within, the cartoons are simply provocative and gratuitous insults directed at their faith. One drawing shows the prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb in his turban.
France’s toughening defense of images has also differentiated it even from the United States and other Western democracies that, faced with increasingly diverse societies, have become more cautious with speech that could be considered offensive, especially of racial origin. , ethnic, religious or religious. other minorities. Many French see such attitudes as a form of American political correctness that threatens French culture.
On Friday, the day after a 21-year-old migrant from Tunisia killed three people in Nice’s main basilica, police announced that they had arrested a second suspect. About 50 people gathered in front of the church to pay tribute to the dead. What began as a moment of solidarity was interrupted by a couple of local residents who blamed Islam for the attack, to the protest of passersby. A veiled woman asked people not to mistake Muslims for terrorists.
The mayor of Nice said the constitution should be amended so that France can properly “wage war” against Islamist extremists. France’s hardline Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin set the tone by declaring: “We are at war, against an enemy who is both within and without.”
The martial language reflects a general hardening of the French view of radical Islam. The fierce defense of cartoons has placed the French in a position with little room for maneuver, where any compromise could be seen as undermining a fundamental value: France’s strict secularism, called laïcité.
Pierre-Henri Tavoillot, a philosopher and laïcité expert at the Sorbonne University, said the conflict over the cartoons has led France into “a trap.”
“In fact, they have become symbols and that turns the situation into a conflict,” he said. “But it is a conflict that in my opinion is inevitable: if the French secularism surrenders at this point, it will have to give up all the others.
He added: “If we abandon cartoons, for a Frenchman, we are abandoning freedom of expression, the possibility of criticizing religions.”
In 2015, the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the murder of a dozen people, including cartoonists and columnists, led to a mass mobilization in Paris under the slogan “Je suis Charlie” or “I am Charlie.”
Representatives of Muslim countries such as Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan and Qatar joined this march against terrorism and for freedom of expression. But all these countries have in recent days criticized the reissue of the cartoons, arguing that they offended Muslims.
Charlie Hebdo editors republished the same cartoons to mark the start of a long-awaited trial of suspected accomplices in the 2015 attack, saying they were affirming France’s democracy.
The reissue was quickly followed by a high-profile speech by President Emmanuel Macron detailing his plans to combat Islamism and the government’s widespread crackdown on what he described as Islamist individuals and organizations, measures that contributed to the shift in perspective abroad.
“Publishing and reissuing are not the same,” said Anne Giudicelli, a French expert on the Arab world who has worked for the French Foreign Ministry. “The reissue of Charlie Hebdo is seen as a stubborn will to keep humbling. That is what is different from 2015. Now there is a feeling that France has a problem with Islam while, in 2015, France was a victim of terrorists.
Enraged by the reissue, a Pakistani asylum seeker stabbed two people outside the magazine’s former offices, and a refugee of Chechen descent beheaded a high school teacher who showed two cartoons of Muhammad in class, including one depicting him naked. on all fours.
Freedom of speech, or the freedom to say blasphemous things about religion, is considered a principle of French democracy, which was established by eradicating the power of the monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church, and has consistently become a pillar of the French secularism or secularism. .
Rooted in a law established in 1905, when France lacked a significant Muslim community, French secularism separated the Church from the State and was based on the idea that faith is a private matter and therefore should be restricted to the private sphere, Mr. Tavoillot, the philosopher, said.
Jean Baubérot, a leading historian of French secularism, said the idea was to give priority to the state. “Modern France considers that it was established against religion,” he said.
France’s strict secularism has also been indirectly reinforced by the increasing secularization of French society. Only 8 percent of French people regularly practice their faith today, according to a 2016 report by the Paris-based Institut Montaigne.
But the way secularism is lived and applied has hardened in reaction to the growing number of Muslims in France, Baubérot said. Today, about 10 percent of France’s population is Muslim, and they are much more religious than their Christian or Jewish counterparts. The report found that 31 percent of Muslims visit a mosque or a prayer hall once a week.
French secularism appreciates the right to criticize all religions, although not believers. The line is often difficult to draw and has left many Muslims feeling personally insulted by the publication of cartoons of Muhammad.
To complicate matters, France curbs part of freedom of expression, prohibiting, for example, attacks on people because of their religion or skin color, and prohibiting Holocaust denial.
The teacher who was beheaded had used two cartoons of Muhammad from the pages of Charlie Hebdo in a class on freedom of expression, which angered many Muslim students and parents. The government viewed her assassination as an attack on the state, as public school teachers have played a key role in teaching about secularism.
A few days after the assassination, the leaders of the 13 regions of France announced that they would publish a brochure for high school students with cartoons of Muhammad.
“Cartoon art is an old tradition that is part of our democracy,” said Iannis Roder, a high school history teacher and member of the Council of the Wise, created by the government in 2018 to reinforce secularism in schools. public.
He added that he was facing increasing difficulties in teaching freedom of expression and the right to caricature due to “a greater penetration of religiosity among many students who call themselves Muslim.”
But Mohammed Moussaoui, president of the French Council of Muslim Faith, said there should be limits to offensive satire when it comes to religious beliefs. Limiting the publication of cartoons of Muhammad avoids fueling extremism, he said.
“I don’t think this is the correct way to explain freedom of expression to children,” Moussaoui said of the cartoons in an interview with France Info. “The duty of brotherhood requires everyone to renounce some rights.”
In a later statement, Mr. Moussaoui said his suggestion to “give up some rights” had been clumsy. But he added: “If freedom of expression gives the right to be satirical or humorous, we can understand that the cartoons that put a fundamental prophet for millions of believers in suggestive and degrading positions cannot fall within this right.”
As cartoons have taken on powerful symbolic meaning since the 2015 attacks, it has become politically difficult to ask questions about them.
Clémentine Autain, a far-left lawmaker for the France Unbowed party, said the debate on terrorism and secularism “is dominated by emotion and no longer rational.”
Some politicians are using secularism as a way to “exclude all Muslims,” he said. “My concern is that by doing this, several Muslims are being returned to the arms of the radicals.”
Antonella Francini contributed research from Paris.
