M Anique Waseem
MR Gerard Biard (I am not writing “my dear” because you don’t deserve that). I just wanted to congratulate you on your efforts to bring chaos and security threat to France and bringing emotional pain to the whole Muslim world and for what? In the name of satire, which is sarcasm or ridiculing some one. Your so-called literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule, must be so important to you and you culture that even killing of innocent French citizens thrice, does not bother you. How can you be so cruel to you own people or your own society? You are supposed to be a well read and learned person with more intelligence quotient than an average citizen or an average employee of the magazine. These satirical issues are so important that you or your magazine did not learn any lesson from the 2015 attack on your magazine, in which three people died. So, what changes did it bring to your society or the European society as a whole.
What revolutionary ideas has it brought to anybody? However, it has brought disastrous consequences to you own country. A teacher got beheaded, three people died in Nice, out of which an elderly woman was almost beheaded. You are directly responsible for their deaths and their blood is your hands, whether you accept it or not. So, to maintain security in the city, 4000 French troops were deployed. A Saudi guard attacked, a security guard at the French consulate injuring him. Then the protests started in the whole all the Muslim countries including Pakistan. Here, your embassy was in extreme danger, but thanks to our capital police, they managed to contain the protesters and your embassy or its staff remained unharmed. Everyone at the French embassy must be thinking, what’s their fault. Well, they must ask you this question. I know, that this letter may never reach you, nor this letter will do any miracle. Because, if the statement of pope Francis, who is the most revered and well-respected personality in the whole Christian world, did not do any damage to your egoistic and conceited attitude, my letter certainly go unheeded. After 2015, Charlie Hebdo attack, the Pope said “If [a close friend] says a swear word against my mother, he’s going to get a punch in the nose,” he explained. “One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith. “You are insulting the whole Muslim world, Gerard.
I have always admired journalists for their intellect, courage and have always wanted to contribute to the newspapers and magazines. I have not been able to get a break till now, but then while reading about you, I saw your interview with MSNBC, after the 2015 attack. In ‘Meet The Press’ you reply to the questions, it dawned upon me that you are a very average and mediocre person with very little or no intellect. Your response to one question was that those who escaped unharmed (which includes you also) had relief with a sense of guilt. I think that it’s a big fat lie, because if you had any feeling of guilt, you would think about 2015, before republishing it again and harming many innocent citizens. There is yet another absurd quote from you, “Every time we draw a cartoon of Muhammad, we defend freedom of religion”. This is the most illogical and irrational argument that I have heard. You are directly hurting the feeling of millions of Muslims and you are defending their religion. This is the problem with the west, that you people are obsessed with animals right and rights of similar species but human lives or human feelings mean nothing to you. I will quote something from Bible “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea”, Matthew Verse 18:6. “Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God “;Doctrine and Covenants 18:10.
Let me also talk about the secularism of the west, since you are the biggest advocate of secularism. A movie with a historical perspective “Kingdom of Heavens” was released by Ridley Scott and it made waves in the West. Some people saw in the perspective of post 9/11 politics, Others called it neo-colonialism and orientalism. I would especially like to quote Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith, “Dangerous to Arab relations”, calling the movie “Osama bin Laden’s version of history” which would “fuel the Islamic fundamentalists want to believe. At a time of inter-faith tension, nonsense like this will only reinforce existing myths””. Here, I would like to quote another historian and educationist. Thomas F. Madden, Director of Saint Louis University’s Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He criticized the film’s presentation of the Crusades: “Given events in the modern world it is lamentable that there is so large a gulf between what professional historians know about the Crusades and what the general population believes. This movie only widens that gulf. The shame of it is that dozens of distinguished historians across the globe would have been only too happy to help Scott and Monahan get it right”. Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright, and historian. Many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. But he is discredited now by academics because they believe that it’s a movie, “which depicts the Muslims as sophisticated and civilized, and the Crusaders are all brutes and barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality”. It was just a movie but the whole Western academia seemed so perturbed by the movie that it became a major issue for the West.
If France is such a secular country, why movies like “Paths of Glory” and “The Battle of Algiers” were banned for eight and six years, respectively. Germany banned a movie in 1929, because Mickey Mouse wore a helmet that resembles Pickelhaube. There are hundreds of movies, which I can name but I think you got the point. In your satirical cartoons, please do include, the French Revolution and French colonialism which was based on mission civilisatrice (or ‘civilizing mission’). Whereas, actually, it was based on profit and economic exploitation. You should go into the details of French mission and it will make you think that why, none of these colonies look like Paris today and how come in the process of civilizing these colonies, hundreds of thousand people lost their lives by their French masters. Please do some soul searching and if you succeed, you will realize that how wrong you have been, all along.
—The writer is freelance columnist.
