Le Monde des religions, March-April 2006 —
Can we laugh at religions? At Le Monde des Religions, where we are constantly confronted with this question, we answer yes, a hundred times yes. Religious beliefs and behaviors are not above humor, they are not above laughter and critical caricature, and so we chose from the outset, without hesitation, to include humorous cartoons in this magazine. Safeguards exist to contain the most serious transgressions: laws condemning racism and anti-Semitism, incitement to hatred, and defamation. Is it therefore appropriate to publish everything that doesn't fall under the law? I don't think so.
We have always refused to publish a stupid and malicious cartoon that conveys no thought-provoking message but aims only to wound or gratuitously distort a religious belief, or that conflates all believers of a religion, for example, through the figure of its founder or its emblematic symbol. We have published cartoons denouncing pedophile priests, but not cartoons depicting Jesus as a pedophile predator. The message would have been: all Christians are potential pedophiles. Similarly, we have caricatured fanatical imams and rabbis, but we will never publish a cartoon showing Muhammad as a bomb-maker or Moses as a murderer of Palestinian children. We refuse to imply that all Muslims are terrorists or all Jews are killers of innocents.
I would add that a newspaper editor cannot ignore contemporary issues. Their moral and political responsibility goes beyond the democratic legal framework. Being responsible is not simply about respecting the law. It is also about demonstrating understanding and political awareness. Publishing Islamophobic cartoons in the current context is to needlessly inflame tensions and play into the hands of extremists of all stripes. Certainly, violent reprisals are unacceptable. Moreover, they present a far more caricatured image of Islam than all the cartoons in question, and many Muslims are deeply saddened by this. Certainly, we can no longer accept submitting to the rules of a culture that forbids any criticism of religion. Certainly, we cannot forget, nor tolerate, the violence of the antisemitic cartoons published almost daily in most Arab countries. But all these reasons must not serve as an excuse to adopt a provocative, aggressive, or contemptuous attitude: that would be to disregard the humanist values, whether religiously or secularly inspired, that underpin the civilization we proudly claim as our own. And what if the real divide were not, contrary to what we are led to believe, between the West and the Muslim world, but rather between those in each of these two worlds who desire confrontation and fan the flames, or, on the contrary, those who, without denying or minimizing cultural differences, strive to establish a critical and respectful dialogue—that is to say, a constructive and responsible one?.
Le Monde des religions, March-April 2006.