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Home , Charlie Hebdo, Je suis Charlie

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Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik German Institute for International and Security Affairs

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#We Are Not Charlie WP Muslims’ Differentiated Reactions to the Paris Attacks, and the Dangers of

Indiscriminate Finger-pointing S Jannis Grimm

After the January 2015 attacks in Paris, Muslims from all over the world showed im- pressive solidarity with the victims. This was the more surprising given that the victims included cartoonists working for the satirical magazine “”, whose cari- catures of Mohammed had previously caused mass protests in predominantly Muslim states. However, European media took more notice of the protests against the new edi- tion of the satirical magazine than of the declarations of solidarity. This selective per- ception can partly be explained by the fact that European societies constantly expect Muslims to distance themselves from violent acts committed in the name of . These demands reinforce negative associations of Islam with terrorism and violence, and nour- ish threat perceptions and anti-Islamic prejudices, which in turn contribute to Muslims feeling increasingly excluded in Europe. Extremists can take advantage of this alienation for recruiting purposes. To counter this danger, politicians and the media must act decisively against negative portrayals of Islam and reduce the pressure put on Muslims to justify themselves, a pressure that deepens the division of European societies.

Rarely has an Islamist terror attack been supreme councils of Muslim scholars of the met with such an unequivocal and quick Arabian Peninsula, South East Asia, , response from Muslims both within Europe and the Balkans. The heads of state or for- and outside of it. The attacks in Paris were eign ministers of a great number of pre- condemned in the strongest possible terms dominantly Muslim countries (Egypt, Alge- by critics ranging from the Arab League and ria, Jordan, , Mali, Palestine, Saudi journalist associations to the most Arabia, , United Arab Emirates) took influential religious authorities and Islamic part in the unity march of 11 January in organizations. Those voicing criticism of Paris. Other states condemned the act of the attacks included Egypt’s Al-Azhar Uni- terror in official statements or messages of versity, the International Union of Muslim condolence, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Scholars under the chairmanship of Sheyk Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia and Pakistan. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Organization of When key Western media interpreted Islamic Cooperation in Jeddah, and the the attack on Charlie Hebdo as an assault on

Jannis Grimm is Research Assistant in the project “Elite change and new social mobilization in the Arab world” SWP Comments 12 realized by the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP). The project is funded by the German Foreign Office in the framework of February 2015 the transformation partnerships with the Arab World and the Robert Bosch Stiftung. It cooperates with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Ph.D. grant programs of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung and the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung.

1 press freedom, and thus on one of the came from , its neighbouring coun- cornerstones of democracy, the media of tries and the US. The number of Arab or the above countries largely agreed. The Turkish-language contributions remained two most influential pan-Arabic daily news- extremely low at a little over 100,000 papers, Asharq al-Awsat and Al Hayat (both tweets. financed by Saudi Arabia), classified the This can in part be explained by the fact attacks as massacres and any attempts at that the Paris attacks were displaced in justifying them, as terrorism. Al-Hayat Arab media coverage by jihadist violence referred to an attack on the very heart of closer to home, such as a devastating car Paris. Many newspapers published cari- bomb that was detonated in the Yemeni catures which declared the moral victory capital Sanaa at almost exactly the same of over jihadist terrorism or chal- time. The same is true for sub-Saharan lenged the attackers’ religious legitimacy. Africa. Under the slogan “I am Charlie, Some national newspapers, including the but I am Baga, too”, African bloggers and Egyptian Al-Masry al-Youm and Masr al-Arabiya, journalist tried to draw attention to the discussed the attacks in the context of the Boko Haram massacres in northern , international campaign against the Islamic which between 3 and 7 January cost hun- State (IS) jihadists. In this context, the dreds of lives. Many of them also lamented Iranian Doulat-e Bahar even printed a Charlie that in general Western victims of terrorist Hebdo caricature of the IS leader Abu Bakr attacks received noticeably more media al-Baghdadi. attention – independently of whether the The solidarity campaign “Je suis Char- attacks took place in European or non- lie”, which had been started by French European countries. journalists’ associations after the attacks, A number of Palestinian newspapers, struck a chord in Muslim countries as well. such as Felesteen, which is close to Hamas, This was especially true of states with close and the national Al-Quds al-Arabi, had a connections to France, such as Lebanon, similar attitude. Both analysed the attacks , Morocco as well as in Turkey. The exclusively within the context of the many Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal promoted the acts of revenge against Muslim institutions slogan to its front page, as did Turkey’s four in France. The messages of condolences biggest satirical newspapers, Girgir, Penguen, were also put into perspective by the head- LeMan and Uykusuz. In , demonstra- lines of a few big Arabic and Iranian news- tors expressed their solidarity by parading papers, which made the editors of Charlie “” placards in front of the Hebdo and Western policies vis-à-vis the French cultural institute. partially responsible for the attacks. The front page of the Egyptian Al-Shorouk claimed that the satirical maga- Critical nuances zine’s series of insults to the Prophet had However, the online campaign of the same “ended in fire”. Oman’s Al-Watan argued in name (#JeSuisCharlie), which in the first the same vein, “They sow the wind and three weeks after the attacks mobilized users reap the whirlwind”. of and in particular, Surprisingly, firm critics of the attacks remained largely limited to Europe and the included a number of groups and parties Anglo-American world. Contributions from that had in the past been denounced – states with majority Muslim populations not least by Charlie Hebdo – for their alleged using these on social media made extremism or ideological proximity to up less than one percent of the total tweet jihadist networks, including the Egyptian volume, which by the end of January com- Muslim Brotherhood, its Palestinian sister prised almost eight million comments. organization Hamas, or Lebanon’s Hez- Over three-quarters of the contributions bollah (however, these organizations did

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2 not explicitly refer to the victims in the two Charlie Hebdo attackers, had only been Jewish supermarket, or else made their retweeted about 78,000 times by the end comments before the hostage-taking there). of January 2015 – as compared to the more Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah em- than 7.5 million re-tweets of the phasized that the acts of the Paris assassins #JeSuisCharlie. were even more of an insult to Islam than the satirical attacks on its messenger. The messages of condolence also included a Selective perceptions communiqué from the President of Tunisia’s However, the declarations of solidarity Ennahda party. Its victory in the country’s made by Muslims across the world quickly first free elections in October 2011 had given retreated into the background of European rise to the controversial Charia Hebdo special media reports. This echoed the aftermath issue, whose front page showed a drawing of previous attacks, for example those of 11 by the cartoonist of the Prophet Moham- September 2001 or the assassination of the med issuing the warning, “100 lashes of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004. whip if you don’t die of laughter.” An arson After these events, demands for Muslims to attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices and distance themselves publicly from terror- personal death threats followed that issue. ism did not diminish even when the largest Since then, the editors had been under Islamic institutions denounced the attackers police protection. At Friday prayers in Teh- or when tens of thousands of Muslims in ran, the January 2015 attack was roundly Europe demonstrated against violence. After condemned – although it was also pointed the Paris attacks, once more, the worldwide out that the rise of jihadism had been made condemnations by Muslims were quickly possible among other things by European overshadowed in European media coverage and American arms deliveries. by new and partly violent protests in a However, as a whole, the messages of number of Muslim majority states (Algeria, condolences were in sharp contrast to pre- Yemen, Jordan, Mali, , Pakistan, Chech- vious statements. For instance, in 2012 the nya and the Palestinian territories, among Freedom and Justice Party of the Egyptian others). Muslim Brotherhood had still been demand- These Protests flared up following the ing that the French government prosecute new issue of Charlie Hebdo, which appeared the Mohammed caricaturists. Years earlier, the week after the massacre with a total Hezbollah had even indirectly called for the print run of eight million copies (as com- assassination of caricaturists who insulted pared to the usual 60,000) – the highest the Prophet. total circulation ever of a French magazine. The Paris attacks were approved only Its provocative cover, showing a grieving by the Nigerian group Boko Haram, whose Prophet Mohammed with a “Je suis Charlie” leader Abubakar Shekau declared himself sign in his hands, caused outrage, although “happy” with the events; by Islamic State; that outrage did not reach the intensity of by Al-Qaeda offshoots in the Maghreb and the 2006 wave of protests against the cari- by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (which catures published by the Danish newspaper assumed responsibility for the attack). On Jyllands-Posten. Yet, once again there were the Internet, too, congratulatory messages riots against Christian or French institu- remained in the minority. The attacks were, tions that left several people dead, this time however, glorified in many print and on- in Niger and the Gaza Strip. With great line media that are popular with Islamists media impact, a member of parliament in and jihadists, including Inspire (Al-Qaeda), Pakistan put a private bounty on the owner Dhabiq (IS), Al-Sumud (Taliban) or Manba al- of Charlie Hebdo. There were violent reactions Jihad (Haqqani network). Nonetheless, the to the publication even in the civil war hashtag #JeSuisKouachi, referring to the areas of Syria. Jihadi militias burnt down

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3 the offices of the rebel newspaper Souriyat- an expectation that, for many, is incom- na, which had devoted a whole page to the prehensible given that people of Muslim “Je Suis Charlie” campaign. faith make up the majority of the victims Beyond these extreme cases, a majority of jihadism across the world. of Germany’s Muslim umbrella organiza- The pressure on Muslims to justify tions as well as prominent religious insti- themselves, which re-appears after every tutions across the world condemned the Islamist terrorist attack, makes it more publication, including, for instance, the difficult for them to integrate into - Egyptian fatwa authority Dar al-Ifta and pean societies. Many Muslims feel uneasy the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Governments with being called upon to take a stand as whose representatives had participated in Muslims, rather than as citizens, because it the unity march in Paris only days before implies a latent complicity on their part. It (for instance the Egyptian and Turkish gov- also exposes an exclusive understanding of ernments) now blocked the distribution of citizenship, which, in Germany, is mirrored copies of Charlie Hebdo in their countries. in the controversies over such expressions On 21 January Iran’s Supreme Leader, Aya- as “the occidental Christian tradition” or tollah , declared in an open “the German Leitkultur”, and in the debates letter to the Muslim youth of Europe that over whether Islam is a part of Germany or the “derogatory and offensive” images were not. When European Muslims are expected part of a concerted campaign by Western to take a stance against terrorism, they nations against Islam, aiming to depict it are not being treated as equal citizens of as the new enemy. Al-Azhar University in Europe’s polities, but as potentially extrem- Cairo, on the other hand, tried to restrain ist foreign bodies. They can only shake off believers and called on them to ignore the such insinuations through their public new “provocation”. profession of loyalty, a profession which Even though the Qur’an – unlike, say, they often find problematic. the Bible – does not in fact explicitly pro- Thus the campaign of solidarity with the hibit blasphemy or imagery, Muslims per- heroized victims on the Charlie Hebdo edito- ceived the re-printing of a caricature of rial staff was a tightrope walk for many Mohammed as a further deliberate show Muslims, who did not want to identify with of disrespect for their religious sensibilities. the magazine’s contents. The spread of Moreover, many Muslims disapproved of #JeSuisCharlie hashtags on social media the cartoon’s caption, “Tout est pardonné” confirms this. The 25 countries with the (All is forgiven), because it seemed to be most contributions include only three interpreting Muslims’ worldwide expres- majority-Muslim countries: Lebanon, Tur- sions of solidarity as a collective apology for key and Indonesia. A much more promi- the crimes of individual jihadis. For them, nent hashtag in the Muslim world was this linked the whole of Islam with terror- #WhoIsMuhammad, which allowed hun- ism, just as the caricature published in dreds of thousands to emphasize the peace- Jyllands-Posten had done by showing the ful nature of their faith. However, most Prophet with a bomb under his turban. tweets by European Muslims came under the alternative hashtag #JeSuisAhmed (retweeted over 290,000 times), drawing Identifying with the victims, attention to the French Muslim Ahmed not the contents Merabet, one of the two policemen mur- For the past few years, Muslims in Europe, dered by the Charlie Hebdo attackers. as in many Arab countries, have already felt By contrast, pleas such as under constant pressure to justify them- magazine’s “We must all try to be Charlie, selves. They are regularly expected to take a not just today but everyday” disconcerted “clear stand” against terror and violence – many Muslims; so did the fact that a num-

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4 ber of leading international media wanting for making anti-Semitic statements; his to show solidarity with Charlie Hebdo un- colleagues, meanwhile, were allowed to critically reprinted caricatures mocking continue mocking devout Muslims. Islam. In the opinion of many Muslims, Charlie Hebdo, while waving the flag of press freedom and freedom of expression, pri- in Europe marily nourished racist prejudice and Against the backdrop of a noticeable rise violated the personal dignity of Muslims. in xenophobic protests in Germany since In an open letter in 2013, , October 2014, many Muslims – both in and who had worked for Charlie Hebdo until outside of Europe – increasingly feel that 2001, similarly accused the satirical maga- the authorities and political sphere proceed zine of racism and an obsessive desire to very selectively when it comes to protecting offend Muslims. religious or cultural minorities. With refer- Many devout Muslims – represented in ence to the Islamophobic theories of the public discourse by religious committees movement (Patriotic Europeans such as the Council of Senior Scholars at against the Islamization of the West) and Al-Azhar University, or by European scholars its imitators, the president of the Central of Islam such as the Swiss intellectual Tariq Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Ramadan – assert that Western media apply Mazyek, has criticized the fact that anti- double standards when discussing freedom Muslim racism is becoming socially accept- of expression. For notwithstanding the able in Germany. For him, this racism has solemn declarations that may have been been relativized by policy-makers, or even made after the Paris attacks, the right to explicitly tolerated as being a case in point free expression is not unlimited, not even of free speech. Such conduct creates the in Europe. Most European countries, in- impression that freedom of expression is cluding France, have laws against hate considered particularly worth protecting speech or other legal restrictions, such as whenever it serves as a cover for manipulat- Germany’s law making holocaust denial ing public opinion against Islam. Foreign a punishable offence. In addition, several Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s trip to European states (Denmark, Germany, North Africa in January 2015 showed that Greece, Ireland, , Malta, Poland) have outside Europe there is also a perception laws against blasphemy, just as many that Muslims are being increasingly stigma- Muslim countries do. The legal reality dif- tized. His hosts in the Maghreb declared not fers widely in terms of both the sentences only their intention of standing shoulder to passed down and the frequency with which shoulder with the German authorities in the it is applied. Nonetheless, several of the fight against Islamist terror, but also voiced Charlie Hebdo caricatures could be legally their concerns over the rise in xenophobic contested in Germany as well, since insult- and anti-Islamic protests in Germany. ing communities of faith and conviction The accusation of double standards is continues to be punishable under §166 StGB, also informed by the fear felt by many Euro- provided that it threatens to disturb the pean Muslims that, regardless of how much public peace. Muslim associations point they might distance themselves from vio- out, however, that in Europe anti-Islamic lence and extremism, they will end up racism has so far been taken noticeably less becoming a victim of the increasing hostil- seriously than, say, anti-Semitism. They ity to foreigners, especially to those of frequently cite the case of the former Charlie Islamic creed. Given the reports of a notice- Hebdo columnist as proof for what they able rise in vandalism and arson attacks on consider the double standards of Western mosques, Muslim community centres and newsrooms when dealing with the require- private individuals, this fear does not seem ment of free speech. Siné was fired in 2008 unreasonable. The Observatoire National

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5 Contre l’Islamophobie recorded almost 153 of security risks for the Federal Republic. targeted intimidation attempts and assaults In the past few months, the strong media on Muslims in France in the month follow- presence of IS and the intense domestic ing the Paris attacks – more than in the debate about German returnees from the whole of 2014. Recently, the Collectif Contre war in Syria presenting a threat to national l’Islamophobie en France has confirmed security have encouraged the association of this tendency, stating that Islamophobic Islam with threat scenarios. Such scenarios assaults had risen by 70 percent since the are reinforced by the intelligence services’ attacks compared to the previous year. regular warnings of an abstract terror threat. Moreover, populist movements on the Fears of a “foreign infiltration” of German political right have been instrumentalizing society are also encouraged by the eye- the Paris attacks to mobilize support. The catching actions of Salafist groups – such as leader of France’s far-right Front National violent clashes with the police or Kurdish party, , declared that the counter-demonstrators, distributing copies country was now at war with Islamic funda- of the Qu’ran in pedestrian zones or sending mentalism, calling for the re-introduction the “ police” to lecture passers-by – of the death penalty for terrorists. In and the growing numbers of refugees from Germany, the president of the AfD party, Muslim countries in crisis. Alexander Gauland, saw the attacks as con- Moreover, well-known media scientists firmation that PEGIDA was right to warn such as University Professor Kai Hafez from of an Islamist threat. Erfurt or the head of the Media Responsibil- Ultimately, however, PEGIDA is only the ity Institute Erlangen Sabine Schiffer, as most visible indication that anti-Islamic well as the German Islam Conference (DIK), prejudice and xenophobia are now far from lament the tendentious reporting in the marginal phenomena. This is confirmed German press, which conditions people to both by the sociologist Wilhelm Heitmey- associate Muslims with threat scenarios. er’s studies on “group-focused enmity” and Among other things, they point the finger by the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Religions- at the imagery used by various leading media monitor. According to these publications, outlets, which has long been dominated by the vast majority of Germany’s around four perceptions of danger. Thus, as long ago as million Muslims are fundamentally tolerant, March 2007, the magazine antici- liberal-democratic and strongly attached to pated the concerns about a foreign infiltra- both state and society. However, they are tion that currently boost movements such faced with an increasingly disapproving as PEGIDA under the title, “Mecca Germany: majority society. A special analysis of the the silent Islamization”. The cover of a Religionsmonitor, published the day after the recent issue of Focus magazine provocatively Paris attacks, shows that more than half of showed an image of an assault rifle – to all Germans perceive Islam as a threat, and illustrate its opposition to the German almost one in two feels “like a stranger in home secretary’s comments that the Paris his own country” because of Muslims. A attacks had nothing to do with Islam. quarter of the population even wants a This one-sided focus on Islam as threat legal ban on the immigration of Muslims. could end up creating a situation in Europe At the same time, Germans barely make a whereby the relationship between majority distinction between Islam and . society and Muslim minorities is no longer For the editors of the Religionsmonitor, this negotiated openly, but is essentially left shows that the public image of Islam in to the authorities responsible for internal Germany is largely shaped by the violent security, meaning the police, justice system acts of a radicalized minority. and intelligence services. That is so not least because the press increasingly discusses Islam in the context

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6 Taking alienation seriously ing to defend what prime minister Helle While Europe’s response cannot be to cen- Thorning-Schmidt described as “a united sure publications that criticize Islam, it is Danish society”, they strictly avoided refer- nonetheless worth debating whether – even ences to religion, and did not make the con- in a free society – journalists should not nection between the attacks and Islam. be asked to take more responsibility for the After all, previous efforts of policy- impact of their work in a social context makers to differentiate between Muslims that is already rife with Islamophobia. and Islamists may have been well-meant, Satire – traditionally a means of giving the but have proven counterproductive in politically marginalized a critical voice, too several ways. First, attempts by Western – runs the risk of degenerating into mere politicians to interpret what is the correct manipulation of public opinion and agita- Islam are almost guaranteed to annoy Mus- tion when it takes aim at those very same lims, who rightly question the politicians’ marginal groups. theological competence. Second, the major- Yet, there is more at issue here than a ity of Islamist movements also reject vio- lack of tact in dealing with other faith com- lence. It would therefore make more sense munities. What is needed in particular is an to refer not to Islamists, but to jihadists or end to assigning collective identities because to Islamists prepared to use violence. Third, it polarizes societies in the West into a non- referring to the religion of Muslim co- Muslim majority and a Muslim minority, citizens makes them members of a quasi- and contributes to the mutual alienation endogamous ethnic group because even of Europe from countries in the Islamic non-religious Muslims are thus reduced to cultural area. Yet, as the solidarity shown their identity as representatives of Islam. jointly by Christians, Muslims, Jews and Instead, Muslims in Europe should be per- non-religious citizens after the Paris attacks ceived and treated above all in their identity demonstrated, there is the collective will to as citizens – citizens who, as such, bear work against this polarization of Europe. no more responsibility for jihadist acts of Political initiatives are urgently needed violence than their non-religious, Jewish or to reinforce this unity, not least to counter- Christian fellow citizens. At the same time, act the alienation of parts of the Muslim attempts to conceal the religious back- community in Europe from the majority ground to attacks are also wide of the mark, society – an alienation that creates fertile since the perpetrators claim that Islam con- breeding grounds for extremist ideologies. fers legitimacy on their deeds. For if the Paris attacks have “succeeded”, It would be more useful to look at the their “success” lies partly in the knee-jerk socio-economic and political context in stigmatization of Muslims in Europe, which which extremist readings of Islam flourish, creates new recruitment potential for the rather than debating whether Islam itself jihadists. Given this background, academics has a violence problem. In many parts and politicians in particular, but also key of the Arab world, Muslims have been media outlets, must be urged to be more subjected to authoritarian repression for scrupulous in their use of terms, so as to decades. The majority of the states con- guard against blaming Muslims collectively cerned rank among the lowest in the world for the crimes of individual perpetrators. for levels of free speech and press freedom. However, that will not be easy. A promising In many countries where the upheavals of approach might be the one taken by Danish the “Arab Spring” failed to effect a regime officials in reaction to the deadly Copen- change, state repression has only intensi- hagen shootings on 14 February 2015, which fied. Only a few days after the Saudi and have been widely interpreted as copycat Egyptian foreign ministers marched through acts of the Paris attacks. While announcing Paris for freedom of expression, a young new counter-terrorism measures and vow- woman activist was killed by shotgun

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7 pellets during a demonstration in Egypt, and a young blogger in Saudi-Arabia received his first 50 lashes of the whip for blasphemy. To prevent renewed challenges to the status quo, autocrats especially in Egypt and the Arab States of the Gulf are taking increasingly harsh action against the opposition, rather than trying to in- clude it in the political process. Paradoxi- cally, this attitude creates a fertile breeding ground for extremism, which gains traction particularly where central state control is collapsing and violent conflicts abound. Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen provide strik-

© Stiftung Wissenschaft und ing examples of this. Politik, 2015 Against this backdrop, it is in Germany’s All rights reserved as well as its European partners’ interest not These Comments reflect only to take equally decisive action against solely the author’s views. racism and Islamophobia as against anti- SWP Semitism, but also to be more resolute vis- Stiftung Wissenschaft und à-vis their partners in the Arab world in Politik German Institute for speaking up for inclusiveness and respect International and for human rights – including those of Security Affairs Islamist citizens. Ludwigkirchplatz 3­4 10719 Telephone +49 30 880 07-0 Fax +49 30 880 07-100 www.swp-berlin.org [email protected]

ISSN 1861-1761

Translation by Tom Genrich

(English version of SWP-Aktuell 15/2015)

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