The perpetrators of the unconscionable massacre of Charlie Hebdos journalists, and the gratuitous killing of French Jews at a supermarket, were the sort of young men who might have been little more than petty criminals in another era disaffected drifters who are now susceptible to the pied-pipers of jihad. They preen in the costume of the pious for their propaganda videos, and betray easily their very modern brand of criminality. The Paris murderers claimed to be redeeming the honour of the Prophet Muhammad, but they made the most venerated figure in Islam seem like a small-time mafia boss.
Yet many commentators on the attacks have revived the very broad discourse of the clash of civilisations, which was fatefully deployed after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to justify the war on terror, and resulted in the latters catastrophic imprecisions. Once again the secular and democratic west, identified with the legacy of the Enlightenment reason, individual autonomy, freedom of speech has been called upon to subdue its perennially backward other: Islam.
Describing the murderers as soldiers in a war against freedom of thought and speech, against tolerance, pluralism, and the right to offend, the New Yorkers George Packer called for higher levels of counter-violence. Salman Rushdie claimed that religion, a medieval form of unreason, deserves our fearless disrespect. However, many other writers have rejected a binary of us-versus-them that elevates a vicious crime into a cosmic war between secular Enlightenment and religious barbarism. There is a specific context to the rise of jihadism in Europe, which involves Muslims from Europes former colonies making an arduous transition to secular modernity, and often colliding with its entrenched intellectual as well as political hierarchies: the opposition, for instance, between secularism and religion which was actually invented in Enlightenment Europe. Writers such as Hari Kunzru, Laila Lalami, and Teju Cole who have ancestral links to Europes former colonies have argued that the simplistic commentary on the attacks is another reminder that we must urgently re-examine these evidently self-sufficient notions from Europes past.
In many ways, it is this intellectual standoff rather than the terrorist attack that reveals a profound clash not between civilisations, or the left and the right, but a clash of old and new visions of the world in the space we call the west, which is increasingly diverse, unequal and volatile. It is not just secular, second-generation immigrant novelists who express unease over the unprecedented, quasi-ideological nature of the consensus glorifying Charlie Hebdos mockery of Islam and Muslims. Some Muslim schoolchildren in France refused to observe the minute-long silence for the victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo mandated by French authorities.
It seems worthwhile to reflect, without recourse to the clash of civilisations discourse, on the reasons behind these striking harmonies and discords. Hannah Arendt anticipated them when she wrote that for the first time in history, all peoples on earth have a common present Every country has become the almost immediate neighbour of every other country, and every man feels the shock of events which take place at the other end of the globe. Indeed, it may be imperative to explore this negative solidarity of mankind a state of global existence in which people from different pasts find themselves thrown together in a common present. For Arendt feared, correctly as it turns out, that this inescapable unity of the world might result in a tremendous increase in mutual hatred and a somewhat universal irritability of everybody against everybody else.
Differences of opinion are particularly stark between people whose lives are marked by Europes still largely unacknowledged past of colonialism and slavery, and those who see metropolitan Europe as the apotheosis of modernity: the place that made the crucial breakthroughs in politics, science, philosophy and the arts. Such divergent experiences have long coexisted but they make for greater public discordance today. Europe no longer confidently produces, as it did for two centuries, the surplus of global history; and the people Europe once dominated now chafe against the norms produced by that history.
For many Anglophones, Paris has long evoked, from Henry Jamess The Ambassadors to a gamine Jean Seberg vending the Herald-Tribune in Godards Breathless, a dream of sensuous pleasure and intellectual freedom. But an indigent immigrant or asylum-seeker in Europe today might find himself echoing the Austrian-Jewish novelist Joseph Roth, whose encounters in the 1930s with Europes antisemitic bourgeoisie provoked him into angry generalisations about the habitual bias that governs the actions, decisions, and opinions of the average western European. Roths sense of ostracism was echoed by those who came to Europe from its colonies. Jacques Derrida, who grew up poor and Jewish in French Algeria in the 1930s, said that he was exposed at school to a history of France that was a fable and a bible, but a semipermanent indoctrination for the children of my generation: it contained not a word about Algeria. Today, many of those naturalised Europeans who originally arrived in the continent as cheap labour mostly from countries Europe once ruled or dominated still cannot recognise themselves in their host countrys self-image.
Even in 2008, it was possible for the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, to announce in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, that Africans have remained close to nature and never really entered history. Many people so excluded from the history, politics, and economy of the modern world have manufactured their own partial or distorted historical views of Europe and the west. The righteous feeling of humiliation by foreigners has grown especially potent among many Muslims since the counter-violence after 9/11, which resulted in the murder and displacement of millions of people. The denizens of Parisian banlieues and Asian and African shantytowns, the ill-adjusted graduates of technical institutes, as well as the rote-learners of the Quran at madrassas, can now nurture an exalted grudge against the world that denies them dignity.
Globalisation, while promoting economic integration among elites, has exacerbated sectarianism everywhere else
In a typically contradictory move, globalisation, while promoting economic integration among elites, has exacerbated sectarianism everywhere else. The sense of besiegement by foreigners with hostile values has also intensified in Europe as globalised financial markets restrict nation-states autonomy of action; globalised labour challenges dominant ideas of citizenship, national culture and tradition, and globalised terrorism provokes the curtailment of civil liberties and a draconian regime of surveillance. Economic stagnation not only stokes anti-EU sentiment; it also boosts far-right parties in Europe, some of which, such as the Front National, have repackaged their foundational antisemitism, and now feed on fears of a continent overrun by Muslims. This paranoid fantasy, novelised most recently by the French writer Michel Houellebecq, who was featured on the cover of Charlie Hebdo days before the attack, has found many German believers, who in recent weeks have held massive protests in Dresden against the Islamisation of the west. Demagogues such as the Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who has proposed expelling millions of Muslims from Europe, have gone mainstream.
Read more:
After Paris: Its time for a new Enlightenment
- The Lives of Others - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Aliens and Spiritual Enlightenment - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Dreams - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Open Your Eyes - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Spiritual Enlightenment and Grizzly Bears - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- I’m Alive! - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Seeing the World - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- First Taste of Spiritual Enlightenment - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pause - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Welcome - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Resurrection Needed for the Catholic Church, not Jesus. Christianity, Islam ... - American Chronicle - April 5th, 2010 [April 5th, 2010]
- The Secret of Kells - Harvard Crimson - April 6th, 2010 [April 6th, 2010]
- Taylor: The true Easter within - Lake County News - April 6th, 2010 [April 6th, 2010]
- CHOICES! Your Go To Source for Enlightenment! / Spiritual Movie Morning - WCNC (subscription) - April 6th, 2010 [April 6th, 2010]
- Sex Swami duped firangs in the US - NDTV.com - April 6th, 2010 [April 6th, 2010]
- Girls' school defies Taliban terror - Times Online - April 6th, 2010 [April 6th, 2010]
- Shen Yun Performers Present Spiritual Connotation with Life - The Epoch Times - April 6th, 2010 [April 6th, 2010]
- Yoga Draws Criticism - TopNews United States - April 6th, 2010 [April 6th, 2010]
- Banjamin Bratt: 'I Wanted to Be Anything But an Actor' - Palm Beach Post - April 6th, 2010 [April 6th, 2010]
- The History of Buddhism - MPBN News - April 6th, 2010 [April 6th, 2010]
- Secrets of the Catholic Church - The National Law Journal - April 9th, 2010 [April 9th, 2010]
- U-Theatre of Taiwan dance troupe's West Coast debut spotlights its virtuosity - OregonLive.com - April 9th, 2010 [April 9th, 2010]
- Religion Calendar - Montreal Gazette - April 10th, 2010 [April 10th, 2010]
- Siquijor conducts recollection for parolees - Philippine Information Agency - April 10th, 2010 [April 10th, 2010]
- Prayer for guidance - Inquirer.net - April 10th, 2010 [April 10th, 2010]
- East Bay Buddhist temple strives to maintain relevance in new land - San Jose Mercury News - April 10th, 2010 [April 10th, 2010]
- Spiritual Journey: Stay-home mom Melody Melvin - The Huntsville Times - al.com (blog) - April 10th, 2010 [April 10th, 2010]
- What Does The Buddha Have To Do With Jesus? - Huffington Post (blog) - April 10th, 2010 [April 10th, 2010]
- Laura Dern and William H. Macy Heading to Cable - Inside TV (blog) - April 10th, 2010 [April 10th, 2010]
- American Guru Steven S. Sadleir brings Shaktipat to Spain and Italy - PR Web (press release) - April 11th, 2010 [April 11th, 2010]
- Who and What Is Buddha, Really? - Huffington Post (blog) - April 12th, 2010 [April 12th, 2010]
- The ACLU works to sap our spiritual strength - The Free Lance-Star - April 13th, 2010 [April 13th, 2010]
- Christ Enlightened, The Lost Teachings of Jesus Unveiled by Best-Selling ... - PR Web (press release) - April 13th, 2010 [April 13th, 2010]
- All About Kundalini Yoga - EmpowHer (blog) - April 14th, 2010 [April 14th, 2010]
- Catholic leadership's image tarnished by recurring scandal - Staunton News Leader - April 16th, 2010 [April 16th, 2010]
- Iowa Swami Who Beguiled the Jazz Age - New York Times - April 16th, 2010 [April 16th, 2010]
- More than a spiritual exercise - Nagaland Post - April 18th, 2010 [April 18th, 2010]
- Despite media smears, world and faithful have warmed to Benedict - Irish Times - April 18th, 2010 [April 18th, 2010]
- The Fool's Story in the Major Arcana - I-Newswire.com (press release) - April 19th, 2010 [April 19th, 2010]
- Pakistan's pre-Islamic art goes on show in Paris - DAWN.com - April 20th, 2010 [April 20th, 2010]
- New author shares emotional enlightenment - The Trinidad Guardian - April 20th, 2010 [April 20th, 2010]
- The theft of yoga - Washington Post (blog) - April 20th, 2010 [April 20th, 2010]
- Enter the Realm of the Buddha - Georgetown University The Hoya - April 22nd, 2010 [April 22nd, 2010]
- Indian guru arrested over sex scandal: Police - Montreal Gazette - April 22nd, 2010 [April 22nd, 2010]
- Life Out Here: Tea Party with a twist - Imperial Valley Press (subscription) - April 22nd, 2010 [April 22nd, 2010]
- April 25: A Turning Point for Today's China - The Epoch Times - April 22nd, 2010 [April 22nd, 2010]
- Nityananda bound devotees with non-disclosure agreements - Sify - April 24th, 2010 [April 24th, 2010]
- Buddhist Extremists in Bangladesh Beat, Take Christians Captive - Pakistan Christian TV - April 24th, 2010 [April 24th, 2010]
- Liberty and the Death of God - American Thinker - April 24th, 2010 [April 24th, 2010]
- A Commentary on Religious Intolerance & the Dalai Lama - Subversify (blog) - April 24th, 2010 [April 24th, 2010]
- The Fool's Story in the Major Arcana - BigNews.biz (press release) - April 24th, 2010 [April 24th, 2010]
- Review: Seeking Life's Meaning - New York Times (blog) - April 24th, 2010 [April 24th, 2010]
- An Analysis Of I Corinthians 15 - Blogger News Network (blog) - April 24th, 2010 [April 24th, 2010]
- Luxury in spiritual Ladakh, India - Times Online - April 24th, 2010 [April 24th, 2010]
- JD Salinger: A 'Selfish Old Goat,' But Not a Perv - Politics Daily (blog) - April 24th, 2010 [April 24th, 2010]
- Sorry, your patent on yoga has run out - Washington Post (blog) - April 25th, 2010 [April 25th, 2010]
- Leggo my ego - Winnipeg Free Press - April 25th, 2010 [April 25th, 2010]
- Church Set to Regain Museum Treasures - The Moscow Times - April 28th, 2010 [April 28th, 2010]
- The multiple sides of Ricky Williams - San Diego Union Tribune - April 28th, 2010 [April 28th, 2010]
- The Dalai Lama, Buddhism, and Tibet: Reflecting on a Half-Century of Change - Student Pulse - April 28th, 2010 [April 28th, 2010]
- The Kumbh Mela: what can it teach us about mental health, consciousness and ... - Psychology Today (blog) - April 28th, 2010 [April 28th, 2010]
- THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS (DVD) - Film Threat - April 28th, 2010 [April 28th, 2010]
- A Leg Up on “THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE” - FANGORIA (blog) - April 28th, 2010 [April 28th, 2010]
- The hottest docs at Hot Docs - Globe and Mail - April 29th, 2010 [April 29th, 2010]
- Florida Dems shut down state House - Politico - April 29th, 2010 [April 29th, 2010]
- Reading Energy Fields with Tanis Day - The Barrie Examiner - April 30th, 2010 [April 30th, 2010]
- Book flights to India for a luxury mountain retreat - Southall Travel - April 30th, 2010 [April 30th, 2010]
- In death, mass murderer sees freedom - Citizens Voice - April 30th, 2010 [April 30th, 2010]
- Author Becky Walsh on enlightenment through sex - Dscriber - April 30th, 2010 [April 30th, 2010]
- Is Western Christianity Suffering From Spiritual Amnesia? - Huffington Post (blog) - April 30th, 2010 [April 30th, 2010]
- The Road That Leads to Nowhere - The Road That Leads to You - New York News Today - May 2nd, 2010 [May 2nd, 2010]
- In Their Words: Her path to inner peace - Times Herald-Record - May 2nd, 2010 [May 2nd, 2010]
- Rielle, Oprah, and Zen America's Truth-Off - Politics Daily (blog) - May 3rd, 2010 [May 3rd, 2010]
- CathBlog - Newman's reasoned faith outshines postmodernism's dark stars - CathNews - May 13th, 2010 [May 13th, 2010]
- Light of the Sufis exhibit explores Islam's mystical side - Houston Chronicle - May 13th, 2010 [May 13th, 2010]
- The last word: In search of enlightenment, mindfulness and nirvana in Silicon ... - Financial Times - May 14th, 2010 [May 14th, 2010]
- 'Light in the Wilderness,' by M. Catherine Thomas - Mormon Times - May 14th, 2010 [May 14th, 2010]
- Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive-Fascist Distinction - U.S. News & World Report (blog) - May 14th, 2010 [May 14th, 2010]
- Are You Praying to the Only True God? - WEBCommentary - May 14th, 2010 [May 14th, 2010]
- Haunting 'Lourdes' Revels in the Poetry of Ambiguity - HollywoodChicago.com - May 14th, 2010 [May 14th, 2010]