Many people around the world are sinking in illusions these days while they are supposed to be ahead in all perspectives even though others have bypassed them in knowledge and effort.
What saddens me is that these people call themselves sophisticated and modern under the pretext of freedom of speech without taking into consideration others’ rights — sensual or moral.
Harming people by degrading their ethics has greater impact and is worse than physical injury as one poet said: “Injuries heal but there is no cure for what the tongue could harm.”
We may understand the attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo which publishes caricatures, mockeries and jokes about religions without caring about people’s feelings.
It has published on several occasions images that misrepresent Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), causing anger in the Muslim world.
Even though common sense tells us to stay away from what triggers public ill-feeling, the magazine has kept on using same tactics and has not been warned by the French government, under the pretext of freedom of speech as if it is one person’s right and people being harmed have no rights.
We may react to harmful speeches in the same manner rather than through violence. This should be applied on everyone who uses oppression under any pretext. It is unacceptable that protesters in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Yemen were killed by ammunition. The international community didn’t take action to counter the massacres. Arab and Muslim’s blood is shed and is cheap in the eyes of their regimes as it is not the precious Western blood they respect and protect!
Michael Vido, the French left-wing writer and grandson of famous writer George Vido, wrote: “We are just if we are really against terrorism, not against Islam.” So what is the meaning behind defaming the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (PBUH)? I ask the editors of Charlie Hebdo: Was the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) a terrorist? I ask the French President François Holland: Who started this?
The reply should be: “Aren’t we the ones who started this conflict using the media and the military?
It was first by publishing offensive cartoons of the prophet, and then sending aircraft to kill their sons in Iraq. They did not come to us, dear president. We are the ones who provoked them. Now we should expect their reaction and take responsibility. They want to teach the French people the meaning of freedom of expression in their way and we should deal with that carefully!
We don’t know whether it is freedom of speech or the freedom to accuse others of disbelief we are facing! If a person doesn’t know his limits to act justly and fairly during disagreements, he will become inhumane and tyrant and bring disasters to himself and others. Because of that, Islam prohibits oppression and illustrates to us that the patriotic and the true fighter is not repressive. Abdal Rahman Al Kawakibi, the Syrian author and supporter of Pan-Islamic Arab solidarity, says in his book The Natures of Repression: “Indeed, arrogance is inferiority in disguise as no one has the right to repress any human being.
