Let us imagine for a moment that Emmanuel Macron takes the advice of many in the Anglophone world and bans the publication in France of any further caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, might praise the president of France for his courageous decision ‘to act with respect for others’ and the New York Times might no longer insinuate France was institutionally Islamophobic. The angry protests in Pakistan and Bangladesh would end, and president Erdogan of Turkey would tell the world that Macron was no longer mentally ill, but rather a man of integrity. French school teachers would go to work without fear and perhaps, too, the staff of Charlie Hebdo. But Macron’s ‘war’ on radical Islam would not be over.
The naivety, dishonesty and cowardice of so many in their reaction to this story never ceases to amaze me. Does the Associated Press honestly believe that three churchgoers – one of whom was Brazilian – were killed in Nice because of France’s ‘brutal colonial past, staunch secular policies and tough-talking president’?
In which case, how does one account for the actions of Mohamed Merah in 2012? Had the three Jewish children he shot at point-blank range in a Toulouse playground caricatured the prophet? And why did Merah also murder two French Muslim soldiers? Because of their participation in France’s brutal colonial past?
I could ask the same question about the scores of concert-goers massacred at the Bataclan five years ago this month.
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