By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
After the brutal killing of 12 people in an attack on Charlie Hebdo on January 7, it was argued that the magazine not only caricatured Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), but Jesus Christ, Pope and leaders of other religions too. But nobody asked if it ever made any cartoon on the ‘godless’ philosophers such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels etc.
If, rightly or wrongly, the religious teachings of Prophets Mohammad, Jesus Christ and others can be held responsible for violence all over the world, by that logic one can blame Marx, Engels and others for the large scale violence all over the world in the name of Communism. The extreme form of this ideology is still taking its toll in several countries, including India, especially in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal etc.
True humanity has suffered a lot in the name of religions. Even today, religions are being misused to score political points. But why blame religions only? In the 20th century, we witnessed two World Wars in which approximately six crore people died and double the number suffered injuries or were maimed. (Courtesy: mises.ca)
In the name of imposing liberal democracy too, the United States –– and other western powers –– repeatedly indulge in a large scale massacre of people. The example of Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela and a lot of other Latin American, African and Asian countries can easily be cited. (But the same western democracies blindly back the tinpot dictators, who are ruling in the name of religions such as the Gulf Sheikhdoms).
So, should we lampoon the founding fathers of the United States or the non-religious or secular philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau etc for the crime perpetrated by these western liberal powers? No doubt, one should have full freedom of expression, and violence has no place in civilized society. But incidentally, after the Paris killings, many writers and cartoonists have themselves started accepting that Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons were sometimes in bad taste and that there should be a limit to such freedom.
If a section of experts now feel that there is no such thing as unbridled freedom of expression, the extremists in the world would claim that they are saying so only after the killings in Paris and that these liberals only understand the language of guns. The fact is, voices on the extent of freedom were not raised so strongly earlier, be it at the time of cartoons published by Danish magazine or Charlie Hebdo.
True humanity has suffered a lot in the name of religions. Even today, religions are being misused to score political points. But why blame religions only? In the 20th century, we witnessed two World Wars in which approximately six crore people died and double the number suffered injuries or were maimed. Neither Hitler, nor Mussolini, Stalin, Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and militarists of Japan did all this in the name of any religion. In fact, an overwhelming number of those killed were Christians at the hands of Christians ––and of course Jews too in the World War II. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and followers of other faiths too lost their lives in these two wars. The death toll in these two non-religious wars is much higher than all the battles fought in the preceding several centuries.
Cartoons have certain purpose and message. They are sketched not just to ridicule and poke fun on any one –– as is being generally argued –– but to reform the person caricatured or the philosophy or policy he or she preaches or adopts. They are made to warn and alert the people from the wrong steps of the rulers.
But all this is possible if the person caricatured is alive, so that he or she can mend his/her ways –– or can be exposed. But how fare is it to lampoon anyone who had died hundreds of years ago? This is a debatable moral question.
Cartoons on Prophet Mohammad, in particular, raise more questions. How can cartoon be made of a person whose photo does not exist? The best cartoons are those which are identified by the readers in the first glance without telling anyone who is the person caricatured. The very cartoon made on Prophet Mohammad are thus fictitious –– and poor in quality.
If we disagree with some of the views of anyone, we can make people aware with our own arguments. One can poke fun on the followers who have distorted the teachings of the Prophets or great personalities. The godmen and clergies who do so should be chastised and ridiculed.
The fact is that if there are fundamentalists in all religions, there are a large number of fanatic liberals too. The liberal ideas are too dear to them as religions elsewhere. They may not be allowed to question Holocaust, not to speak anything against it. It is crime even in France.
Different nations and societies have different notions of freedom and respect. For example, one cannot show disrespect to the national flag of India. It is in fact a punishable offence. In the same way, in Japan no one can even show his or her back towards the Emperor. He cannot be disrespected. Even President Obama bowed before him during his visit to that country in November 2009.
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(Soroor Ahmed is a Patna-based freelance journalist. He writes on political, social, national and international issues.)