Vigorous public outrage has followed the 7 January attacks on the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. And rightly so. Whenever a piece of writing, a drawing or an opinion leads to a violent retribution, it is a sad day for human rights.
However, the popular narrative that has emerged in the aftermath of the attack is problematic to say the least. 'Je suis Charlie' or 'I am Charlie' has become the new mantra of the self-described 'liberal West', while Muslims from all walks of life are expected to condemn and apologise for the attacks, as if failing to accept collective guilt for the actions of a few somehow means condoning the horrendous violence. Going a step further, American television personality Bill Maher declared on Twitter that mere condemnation is not enough – Muslims must all "strongly endorse the right of anyone to make fun of any religion/prophet" and refusing to do so means they are not "a moderate Muslim". In other words, if you don't do exactly as you are told, you are my enemy. This is similar to what we have heard before: if you are not with us, you are against us.
A wide range of Muslims and Muslim leaders have issued condemnations, which are easily available through a quick online search. Or one could simply consider the Pakistani reaction to the Peshawar attacks on 16 December. Why are many, particularly in the West, so eager to turn a blind eye and forgo consideration of such things? And why is it that when terror strikes in the West, we see world leaders flying in to attend memorial services, and find expressions of solidarity pouring in from all over the world, but hundreds of Muslims dying as victims of terrorism gets treated as if it is normal?
When 134 Pakistani school children die in a Taliban attack and the entire country goes into mourning, somehow the narrative about Muslims supposedly condoning all this with their silence remains unchanged. Why must reporters run around the suburbs of Paris asking for condemnations from Muslims as a way to calm us down and make us feel more secure from the threat of violence? This presupposes that most Muslims don't condemn the use of violence, and that we should be afraid of them. At the same time, however, the children who were slaughtered in Peshawar were also Muslims. The vast majority of the victims of terrorism all over the world are Muslims, but it is almost as if this doesn't matter. The fact that the story of Ahmed Merabet, the Muslim policeman who was killed by the Charlie Hebdo attackers, needs to be highlighted by Western media also speaks of an underlying societal attitude that assumes Muslims are inherently 'bad', and cases like these are out of the ordinary.