On being and not being Charlie.

I am Charlie; I am not Charlie, and all that. Sounds a little childish; like the “Bring back our Chibock girls” of some months ago in which even America’s First Lady participated. A march for freedom of expression makes sense. Were I in Paris, I would join a march for freedom of expression any day. Provided it is agreed what we are marching about. Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. It is connected with freedom of thought, the right to think your own thoughts and then to express such thoughts in any of the myriad ways in which human thoughts can be expressed. But neither freedom of thought nor freedom of expression of thoughts or feelings implies that all expression of thoughts or feelings is right. Some thoughts are immoral and wrong and expressing some thoughts which are not in themselves immoral may be wrong. If I meet someone with a big head and think “what an awfully big head” my thought is not necessarily immoral; but if I express this thought I am doing something wrong.

The “I am Charlie” people seem to be defending freedom of expression without any restrictions, as one of the sacred pillars of Western civilization. There cannot be freedom without restrictions and Western freedoms have usually functioned within reasonable limits. The slogan of the French Revolution “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” is a timeless procedural maxim, provided it is understood as applicable under reasonable limits. Artistic expression is a value in all cultures but it should be subject to the restriction of internal rational control. Rationality is one thing that all human beings have in common.

If you are a cartoonist or caricaturist, what you cartoon or caricature is up to you. Why choose to cartoon Muhammad when you are not a Muhammadan? Why not cartoon, say, your grandfather and/or grandmother; or do you think your readers will not find such cartoons delightful? I remember a Yoruba sculptor who once sculpted Jesus Christ in stone and in wood. He was a Christian and some other Christians did not like his works of art whereas others liked them. Some people said “Your Jesus looks like a Yoruba man!” Others retorted “Yes, Jesus must take Yoruba form for Christianity to take firm roots in Yoruba land!” This was a healthy debate on artistic self-expression among adherents of the same religion.

By choosing that your artistic self-expression is for caricaturing Muhammad, whereas you are neither a Moslem nor an admirer of the Islamic religion, you are choosing to provoke some people and perhaps to delight those who are happy to see those people provoked. The people provoked, however, are not justified in reacting anyhow. Action and reaction ought always to be proportionate to each other. Like the kids would say here in Cameroon “Cosh my mami I cosh your mami, God no go vex”. Shooting someone with a gun for artistically expressing himself, albeit in a provocative manner, cannot be justified. Lack of a sense of proportion is one of the serious maladies of the modern world. It engenders double standards, the commonest moral fault of the contemporary world. This recalls the African heads of state that flew to Paris to join the “I am Charlie” demonstrations. This is like leaving one’s house burning to go and assist in the ceremonial mudding of a neigbour’s house.

Terrorism is the name of a deadly epidemic ravaging our world today and no one has seen anything comparable in that regard to what has been witnessed in Africa, with heads of state behaving as if nothing was happening.  Take Boko Haram alone and leave aside for the moment Al Shabab, the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Moslem Brotherhood, etc. When Boko Haram first emerged, it appeared that it had a cause or objectives, no matter how incoherent and unreasonable they sounded. Abolishing Western education or establishing a Caliphate are putative objectives that could conceivably be discussed and negotiated within existing realities in Nigeria and elsewhere.  But the modus operandi of Boko Haram has proved beyond all doubt that the group has no ideology, let alone objectives, guiding its actions. They kill completely indiscriminately in Churches, Mosques, Markets and Schools. Throwing a bomb in an open African market is the worst type of terrorism imaginable. The target is human beings as such indiscriminately, including those who, per impossibile, may be supporters of your mad cause. This is nihilistic terrorism, a paradigm of a crime against Humanity.

The victims of the recent terrorism in Paris could at least be charged with cartooning the holy Prophet of Islam, even though the terrorism unleashed on them for such a minor misdemeanor was out of all proportion with the act. What putative fault, be it ever so pretentious, can the hundreds of Boko Haram victims be charged with? This fact alone, as soon as it became clear, should have helped to mobilize all human beings against the terrorist group. Anywhere in the world that innocent children happily playing, ordinary people going about their daily chores, oblivious of any danger, can suddenly meet a violent death, there we have this brand of terrorism, a crime against Humanity, crying for redress. It is an unimaginably heinous crime crying for total eradication, without any room for double standards. But eradication will not be possible unless and until the problem of the manufacture and distribution of fire arms around the world today is robustly addressed, as I have argued earlier and will argue again later on these pages.

Gobata

Yaounde, 01/02/2015