A damning indictment on our anti-refugee sentiment
Maajid also defended Charlie Hebdo against new accusations of “Islamophobia” in a public Facebook post:
New Charlie Hebdo cartoons about Aylan Kurdi are causing online “Islamophobia” outrage:
Fellow Muslims, please, if you don’t get satire just *ask* someone before assuming an intelligent left-wing satirical magazine isn’t … satire.
Taste is always in the eye of the beholder. But these cartoons are a damning indictment on our anti-refugee sentiment.
The McDonald’s image is a searing critique of heartless European consumerism in the face of one of the worst human tragedies of our times.
The image about Christians walking on water while Muslims drown is (so obviously) critiquing hypocritical European Christian “love”.
Fellow Muslims, not everything and everyone are against us, every time. But if we keep assuming they are by reacting like this, they will surely become so.
Maajid linked to an article by Aziz Allilou in Morocco World News:
Eight months after the terroristic attack that hit its headquarters in Paris in January, the French satirical magazine is back to the spotlight with a new controversial set of cartoons.
Hiding behind the freedom of speech, Charilie Hebdo made fun of the death of Aylan Kurdi, who was found dead recently on a Turkish beach, in two offensive drawings.
No no no no, Charlie Hebdo did not make fun of Aylan Kurdi’s death, it mocked (to excoriate) the priorities of well-fed Europeans.
Welcome to refugees!
So close to the goal…
On the sign: Promo! 2 kids’ meals for the price of one.
I can see thinking it’s not cool to use a cartoon of Aylan Kurdi to make the point, but I have a hard time understand anyone thinking the cartoon is mocking him. It’s a very raw joke; it’s not one I would make; but it’s not a joke at Aylan Kurdi’s expense.
I think the phrase “Too soon” is relevant here. It may be meant to mock heartlessness, but it looks heartless.
That would be a legitimate criticism, and one I share to some degree. But it is not the criticism the dishonest, deliberately distorting Moroccan World News article makes.
How can anyone think that cartoon is mocking Aylan Kurdi? Isn’t the obvious target of the satire the MacDonald’s ad in the background?
I mean, obviously?
Also, the cartoon about Christians walking on water while Muslims sink is, again, a satire of Christian arrogance and indifference to the refugee crisis.
This is the cover. The other image is inside.
I actually have no idea what that cartoon is trying to get across. Is it saying if the child had survived, he would have just arrived in a consumerist society? It’s pretty obscure.
Nonsense about “too soon.”
This isn’t even a joke. It’s a biting and bitter political cartoon, and is precisely on time.
If this had appeared in English in the Washington Post drawn by Tom Toles or someone like that, nobody would have batted an eyelash.
It’s only because it was in Charlie Hebdo that it’s “offensive.”
Is it even possible to “hide behind freedom of speech”?
You can say horrible shit because freedom of speech. You can try (sometimes successfully) to evade responsibility because freedom of speech. But I’m not sure you can hide.
Jafafa @ 6 – hmm. Maybe, but I have doubts. Using the photo at all was contentious, so I think a cartoon would have been “offensive” even if by Tom Toles. Then again of course political cartoons always offend someone…
If they don’t offend someone most of the time, the cartoonist isn’t doing their job.
But to whom, specifically, is using the photo or drawing the cartoon “contentious”? This is important and it’s not unpacked enough in any conversation we have about this topic. We assume that everyone obviously agrees that using the photo is “contentious.” I don’t think we have grounds to make that assumption, to give that assent to “what everyone knows.”
Using the photo is “contentious” to people who (and I include myself as part of this) have a lot more mental room for concepts like “taste,” “propriety,” and “respect for the dead.” It *feels* “cheap” to us. But what does that actually mean? We don’t say.
Well, we are obliged to *say.*
Assume that I understand and agree that media is about a lot of exploitation. Agreed. US media depict violence graphically against marginalized people in a way that seems more pornographic often than it does illuminating. Agreed. You don’t have to be wary, you don’t have to convince me. I’m showing you I’m there with you already.
Now look at the photograph of Aylan Kurdi. It actually seemed to be at least the start of a turning point. It humanized a tragedy that we think of us Moving Pictures and not really as Dying People. It got people in their fucking guts.
GOOD. Now we have 1/1000th of a clue what Aylan’s father is suffering.
I think we need to ask ourselves:
1. Do we really, truly believe that we’re doing more net good in the world shushing up media with a pic like this in order to preserve “decorum,” or “good taste,” or “appropriate” timing? Don’t answer that unless you’re prepared to specifically detail what you mean with those words. Show the actual harm without relying on synonyms for “that makes us feel bad.”
2. Do we truly believe—think about this for a few minutes honestly, please, — that there is no value in publishing such pictures, even when we see that people are waking up to a horror in a way they didn’t yesterday?
I don’t think this is “contentious” at all, not in the way most of us seem to mean. I think it’s “contentious” for those of us with the luxury of a huge amount of psychological time and energy for parsing finer points of taste and propriety.
Every instance of “you” in my last comment should be read, please, as “You, larger society and participants in this conversation.” Not as a personal you.
Well that’s how the contention went. (The “to whom” is media people and people who comment on media from the outside, like bloggers for instance.) On the one hand there’s revulsion at tragedy porn, on the other hand there’s realization that the photo had a huge impact and seems to have made a big difference to public attitudes and thus to government policies.
In some cases, the people closest to the matter want the image public. Emmet Till’s mother insisted on an open-coffin funeral, so that everyone would see what his murderers did to him.
But in other cases they don’t. It’s fraught. That’s all I’m saying.
All the discussions I’ve seen have said just that. The waking up to the horror has been central.
I don’t think your agreement is pure enough.
I’ll run it through the purifier.
It’s just an opportunity for a lot of not terribly bright nor honest people to attempt to justify their last bit of actually entirely appalling behavior. Oooo… Look… A visceral cartoon that may upset people. Thus, somehow, we weren’t _complete_ fucking sleazeballs to wring our hands that perhaps the murdered cartoonists had, after all, been _insensitive_…
And sorry, no. And yeah, you still absolutely were…
And I can’t quite work out whether I’m disgusted or resigned. Mais je suis Charlie encore.