ANTI-SEMITISM AND ISLAMOPHOBIA - WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

Crudely anti-Semitic - Mear One's cartoon...

  

 yet Charlie Hebdo was a hero

For people who just want to raise a quick laugh, cartoonists get into a lot of trouble. Mear One is a Californian street artist who drew a satirical anti-banker mural in Brick Lane in 2012. Many Jewish people found it offensive because it portrayed at least two of the bankers as Jewish and would not have looked out of place in Nazi Germany. The mural was defended by Jeremy Corbyn (who later removed his support for it) and taken down – not because it was considered offensive but because another artist was due to fill the spot. 

Three years later the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris was attacked by two heavily-armed Moslem terrorists who took offence at the depictions of the prophet Mohammed in the magazine and randomly killed twelve people and injured eleven others working there. The two killers, who were brothers, were killed by the police but not until after another piece of random anti-Semitism – the shooting of four innocent Jewish people in a supermarket.

 

Even the use of the word ‘innocent’ in this context causes problems because it implies that those who are active in producing images that some people find offensive are somehow ‘guilty’ of racist or offensive behaviour. The so-called crime of the French cartoonists was to show images of Mohammed which depicted him in a particularly offensive light. I have not seen them but understand that one showed him having sex with a thirteen year old girl.

 

Where do you draw the line between freedom of speech and religious hatred? Our society does not permit virulently racists to hide behind a freedom of speech defence. You are simply not allowed to stir up hatred against ethnic groups and then claim that you were exercising this right, just as you are not allowed to slander or libel someone and claim free speech protection. You have to justify your words by saying they were necessary - or true.

 

Although Mear One was not prosecuted for his alleged anti-Semitism (which he denied) he was heavily criticised and I think that he overstepped the mark by showing the bankers with obvious and unnecessary Jewish features like hooked noses. He was right to be challenged in this way and may have lost a case in court if it had been brought. Yet if Mear One was guilty of anti-Semitism were the Hebdo cartoonists also guilty - of Islamophobia?

 

Instead they were shot. Obviously, you cannot support those who use guns against writers. Being Moslem does not in itself give you a right to censor work you find offensive. If we went that way, then it is a power we would have to extend to all religions and even noted atheists might find themselves silenced. Then would come liberals and free-thinkers of all hues. Questioning religion is part of our civic right, even duty, and one we should preserve.

 

Where the line should be drawn between freedom of expression and inciting religious or ethnic hatred is a tricky question. However, one thing I have learned about discrimination is that the attitude of the person subject to prejudice is important. When someone says that he ‘does not have a racist bone in his body’ and is therefore entitled to make jokes about people from ethnic minorities, my immediate attitude is one of extreme scepticism.

 

You are judging (and acquitting) yourself with a phrase like that but it is the person with a darker skin colour who is the victim, not the one who is white, and it is he or she who gets to say whether he has been discriminated against. France is a secular country and has tried to ban head coverings burkinis (a kind of modest bikini) that Moslems regard as important. Surely it is they who should have the final say on whether a law or an image is insulting.

 

However, we do not promise in a western society to protect everyone from perceived insult. You have to roll with the punches sometimes and fighting back by killing unarmed people is obviously not acceptable in a law-abiding society. The action of the gunmen was counter- productive in any case as millions of people supported the cartoonists by wearing ‘Je suis Charlie’ t-shirts after the massacre and by buying future copies of the magazine.

 

Would they have worn those shirts if the cartoons had been perceived as anti-Semitic as Mear One’s mural was? Jewish people are good at spotting anti-Semitism, which is sometimes hidden behind innocent sounding notions such as ‘clubbability’. The person who does not suffer from discrimination is often the worst at spotting it. They think that if they help the child of a friend or mix with their own sort then they are not being discriminatory.

Sometimes they are, however, and are exercising their privileges by subtly excluding people from a different ethnic or religious background from their circle. It is often hard for the discriminator to spot this and he sometimes needs the help of the discriminated to do so. 

 

Jews tend to be more successful than Moslems in our society because they work hard and know how to open doors, while Moslems might go to the mosque and lick their wounds. This, incidentally, is why anti-Semitism is considered an acceptable discrimination by some on the left. It is looked on as punching up rather than punching down – although it is hard to be much farther down than if you are in a gas chamber with the taps about to be turned on.

 

I am still troubled by the lionisation of people who are perceived to be Islamophobic and the demonisation of those seen to be anti-Semitic. I know there is a difference between satirising obvious Jewish bankers and making fun of Mohammed. Yet Moslems say that, if you insult my prophet, you insult me. And one thing that I have learned about prejudice is that it is the person who is discriminated against who should have the final say.

My other blog is diaryofatouristguideblogspot.com - with lots of posts about royalty.

Edwin Lerner