The horror of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine \u2013 the murder of 17 people \u2013 journalists, policemen, and ordinary shoppers \u2013 by Wahhabist<\/span><\/a> Islamist fanatics in Paris on January 7-9, 2015, highlights the stark threat that religious fanaticism poses to Western civilization. The perpetrators of this barbarism have thankfully been eliminated due to the concerted, decisive, and careful work of French police, who managed to destroy the murderers and hostage-takers without harming or terrorizing innocent, peaceful civilians in the process. But unless the Western world resolutely affirms the untrammeled right of free expression of ideas, the already commonplace heckler\u2019s veto over speech will turn into the murderer\u2019s veto.<\/p>\n Anything but complete, unconditional condemnation of this attack allows the murderers and thugs to win. Anyone who claims, \u201cI condemn the attack, but\u2026\u201d is blaming the victims and suggesting that any provocation, any motivation is capable of forming an acceptable causal connection between peaceful expression of ideas and murder. For those who resolutely defend the Western values of individual rights and secularism, the only question should be, \u201cDoes the expression of a viewpoint ever, under any circumstances, justify the death penalty?\u201d If the answer is a resounding \u201cNo!\u201d \u2013 as it should be \u2013 then there can be no \u201cbut\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n The Western values that developed over millennia of philosophical evolution and finally emerged brilliantly during the 18th<\/sup>-century Age of Enlightenment are universal human values \u2013 affirming human dignity and decency, the potential for peaceful cooperation among diverse viewpoints, the superiority of the creative mind over brute force, the potential for the human condition to be elevated through reason and persuasion, not intimidation. The Age of Enlightenment tamed Christianity in the West, turning it from a religion of bloodthirsty Crusaders, superstitious witch-hunters, and intolerant inquisitors, into a relatively soft cultural force that, at any given time, largely echoes the prevailing moral climate some thirty years prior. Christians who have been influenced by the Enlightenment \u2013 and even those who reject it, who have nonetheless found it necessary to adapt to the world it shaped for over two centuries \u2013 accept, with the exception of a fringe of fundamentalist fanatics, the basic preconditions for life in a civilized society, including the respect for the political, economic, and philosophical freedoms of those who think differently from them.<\/p>\n The Islamic world still awaits its own Age of Enlightenment, though some Muslims have, to their credit, accepted the Western Enlightenment as their own or attempted a courageous modernization<\/span><\/a> of Islamic theology. Those Muslims who say \u201cJe suis Charlie\u201d <\/em>are my allies, and I wish to see more Muslims embrace this attitude. But they have an uphill battle to fight \u2013 not just against their fanatical co-religionists, for whom no human life is sacred, but against the purveyors of postmodernist political correctness in the West, for whom the avoidance of giving offense trumps the necessity of standing on principle when the stakes are high. And the stakes are high indeed: if the murderer\u2019s veto can result in any<\/em> idea becoming inexpressible due to self-censorship and pressure from the \u201creputable\u201d elements of society, then it does not matter what laws or constitutions say. If a sufficiently large element of society exists, whose members have a hair-trigger for offense and will kill you if you infringe upon their arbitrary taboos, then freedom of speech becomes a legal fiction, and de facto <\/em>blasphemy law is the reality.<\/p>\n The best protection for freedom of thought is its frequent and prominent exercise by as many people as possible. Had prominent newspapers and magazines given frequent circulation to the wittily and refreshingly irreverent cartoons that Charlie Hebdo produced \u2013 which does not, by the way, rule out also publishing critiques or rebuttals from any other peaceful perspectives \u2013 then the murderous quartet that planned the Paris attacks would have had trouble choosing a target. Indeed, much about Western culture and lifestyles \u201coffends\u201d Wahhabist Muslims today, yet we do not see Westerners being routinely shot for failing to pray five times per day, facing Mecca. Almost everything about Western science, representational art, music, and clothing is inimical to Wahhabist Islam, yet the purveyors of these ubiquitous aspects of Western life \u2013 many Muslims among them, too \u2013 go unharmed by the fanatics. If politically correct fears are allowed to marginalize any<\/em> form of expression for fear that it might \u201coffend\u201d, then any person who dares stand up for that expression \u2013 as is that person\u2019s inalienable right <\/em>\u2013 becomes a target for those who would relinquish even their own lives in order to cow a society into submission to their twisted, progress-stifling ideology. Political correctness accelerates the transformation of rights into taboos, until nothing of importance can be said, and any act of substance, any design to improve the human condition, would involve maneuvering through a minefield of hysterical, volatile, contradictory, and irrational \u201csensibilities\u201d of the offended parties du jour. <\/em><\/p>\n So what is the solution? The elimination of the murderers themselves does not guarantee that similar murders will not recur. Indeed, the few courageous newspapers that reprinted the Charlie Hebdo cartoons have themselves become victims of threats and even an actual attack on the Hamburger Morgenpost<\/span><\/a> in Germany. The solution is to resolutely reject victim-blaming, and for the prominent political, journalistic, and cultural figures of the Western world to themselves espouse the sentiments that the murderous fanatics considered so enraging. \u201cJe suis Charlie\u201d <\/em>is a decent start, but a reiteration of the messages of particular cartoons would be far more effective. If the cartoons were republished on whitehouse.gov, parliament.uk, and elysee.fr, as well as the websites of all other national governments and publications with large readership, then a strong signal would be sent that Western societies still <\/em>stand for the complete ability of any <\/em>intellectual expression to occur, without its author receiving the death penalty or the kind of politically correct condemnation that invites the executioners to try. While it is not the role of governments to opine on matters of religion, it is<\/em> their role to protect the rights of their constituents against infringement. Standing by the Charlie Hebdo cartoons \u2013 and similar critiques of any religion \u2013 would be a stand for the safety <\/em>of anyone who would express a controversial or unpopular idea. Without a clear promise that such safety will be pursued, free speech means nothing in practice, since the expression solely of bland, prevailing, or popular ideas can occur in any society, with or without legal protections. We should be thankful to the few publications that did re-post the Charlie Hebdo cartoons \u2013 such as the Huffington Post, which presented a prominent sample here<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n To encourage the expeditious arrival of an Islamic Enlightenment, a clear distinction between \u201cmoderate\u201d and \u201cradical\u201d Muslims should be made. Every cultural figure of prominence should emphasize the following minimal <\/em>criteria to be considered a \u201cmoderate\u201d Muslim:<\/p>\n Finally, the alarming tendency of many long-time residents of European societies to drift toward fundamentalist Islam should be culturally combated by means of a New Renaissance of Western culture. For those who consider, rightly or wrongly, contemporary Western life to lack a sense of purpose or direction, there are far better antidotes than a murderous creed of militant fanaticism, whose spread is explained by its function as a \u201cmind-virus\u201d that short-circuits logical thinking and renders its carrier impervious to empirical evidence. Here, the damage done by the postmodernist critics of Western culture and its universal human values should also be reversed. In particular, the idea of progress \u2013 of the ability of humans to dramatically improve their condition through the application of reason, science, and technology \u2013 should be revived and asserted with renewed vigor in all areas of life. Beyond survival, what is the purpose of life? To achieve progress, to uplift human lives by harnessing the laws of nature to solve previously insoluble problems.<\/p>\n![\"je_suis_charlie_fist_and_pencil\"](\"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/je_suis_charlie_fist_and_pencil.png\")
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