Yes, We Are All Charlie.

 Translation Louise Thunin

Yes, we are all Charlie. More than ever before we must claim the right to think, the right to believe or not to believe, to exercise our critical minds. As people who read the Gospel know, Christianity was born from Jesus whose main characteristic was having been accused of blasphemy. He is the only « founder » of a religion to be thus accused. He died because of that. Those who nailed him to the cross could not stand his combat for freedom, his refusal to submit to those in power, to the right-thinkers, the lesson-givers. There is always a distance between God, ultimate reality itself, and the way we refer to it, think of it, believe it, confess it, criticize it. The Gospels were specifically born of this distance which allows for interpretation, criticism, imagination, creativity. It was within this distance that the cartoonists of Charlie expressed their talent. So blissfully irresponsible ! And it’s in the very space of that distance that criticism operates within religions to protect them from the danger that constanty threatens: fantacism. We were perhaps surprised that the murderers of January 7th didn’t target islamophobes and their nauseating and very lucrative way of thinking. We understand now : they are dependent on each other. By cultivating the fear of Islam, they give arms to the Islamic fundamentalists who lend wind to the sails of those who, in turn, revive fear. On the other hand, by breaking forever the pencils of a few joyful jokers for whom, and rightly so, nothing is sacred, the fanatics deny liberty. They impose a humorless « religious » model. So sad that it makes us weep. Lifeless, rigid, tyrannical. We too must be like Charlie Hebdo and remind ourselves that God alone is God and that all our words about God, either for or against belief, are only attempts at truth, stammering interpretations, caricatures.

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