Vile stabbing not part of ‘war’ between Islam and Charlie Hebdo

There are all kinds of legitimate ways to react to vile assaults involving blades, and a sense of outrage should underpin them all.
This was certainly the case last month, when a man born in Pakistan and initially identified solely as Ali went on the rampage outside a Paris address infamously associated with Charlie Hebdo magazine. He used a meat cleaver to stab and slash two victims, and later admitted the bottle of white spirit he was carrying was meant to have helped burn the building down.
The assailant was thus not only vicious in the extreme, but also very stupid. Charlie Hebdo staff have not used the offices in Rue Nicolas-Appert ever since two gunmen linked to Al-Qaeda murdered 12 and wounded 11 around them in January 2015. Following the atrocity, there was a well-publicized move to new premises in a secret location, which are regularly described as being like “Fort Knox” because they are so secure.
The clueless Ali ended up sprawled on a pavement by the Bastille Opera, from where police brought him into custody. He said he had been drawn to criminality by Charlie Hebdo reprinting coarse cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad — the exact same motivation for the inexcusable violence of five years ago.
Thus, a successful arrest took place after a wicked street attack by a coward who liked his victims to be unarmed. People from all backgrounds were appalled, but there was no possibility of a Charlie Hebdo-related incident ending there.
On the contrary, what seemed like France’s entire state security, together with the ruthless politicians and other commentators who support it, were soon elevating Ali into the personification of an existential threat to the very future of the republic.
“Collective guilt” are the watchwords at times like this, hence an innocent Algerian, who had actually tried to perform a citizen’s arrest on Ali, was handcuffed and placed in a cell. The “crimes” of the man, who was identified only as Youssef, were undoubtedly that he had brown skin and looked Muslim. He later stated: “I wanted to be a hero and ended up behind bars.”
Youssef said that some of the proud officers who dealt with him had been actively looking for journalists to snap images of their triumphant capture. These pictures would have ideally been used around the world as an example of respectable France sorting out its domestic enemies.
Casual friends and other associates of Ali — an immigrant who had arrived in the country as an alleged child refugee — were also brought into custody. This further allowed the authorities to project the impression of a determined round-up of the enemy within.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, a notoriously reactionary member of the government with a particular antipathy toward Muslims, of course broke into a “war” narrative. It united fellow armchair generals, including former Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who used the attack to describe “Islamism” as “the enemy and great challenge of the beginning of the century.”

The magazine simply illegally humiliates and demeans the sections of society that it detests.

Nabila Ramdani

Valls was careful not to use the word “Islam,” but everybody knew what he was getting at. It is by no means just the far-right National Rally (formerly the National Front) that views former colonial subjects from countries such as Algeria as potential terrorists supported by a vast network of radicalized French citizens from the same background.
There are more than 5 million Muslims in France and the routinely hateful depiction of them in Charlie Hebdo is symptomatic of this never-ending war narrative. Democratic “free speech” just about allows us to describe the publication as miserably amateur — full of unfunny drawings and desperately childish failed attempts at intelligent satire — but this has not prevented it achieving quasi-religious sanctity among its establishment allies.
Beyond reprinting cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad that are not even theirs (the ones that provoked riots in the Muslim world before 2015 were originally published in Denmark), Charlie Hebdo gets away with all kinds of other Islamophobic and racist material that would, in any other circumstances, trigger hate crime investigations.
While ostensibly championing free expression, Charlie Hebdo is in fact simply illegally humiliating and demeaning the sections of society that it detests. These tend to be religious communities — Jews and Christians are also pilloried, but there is no such thing as egalitarian bigotry, and Islam is their No. 1 target.
Since moving into its government-backed secret address — one that is apparently surrounded by armed guards and sounding every inch like a warzone headquarters — Charlie Hebdo has effectively been given carte blanche to keep on attacking.
If anyone objects to this, they are immediately, and pathetically, accused of being pro-terrorist, pro-violence and of endorsing the wrong side. Charlie Hebdo has done more to bolster cancel culture in France than any other media outlet: If you dare to criticize its output, then you are vilified and told to shut up.
There is currently a trial going on in Paris that is focused on 14 alleged accomplices to the terrorists of 2015. Richard Malka, a lawyer representing Charlie Hebdo, has used the process to accuse anyone who stands up for ordinary Muslims of being “intellectual accomplices who have blood on their hands.”
This is a despicable manipulation of a complex debate, and exactly the kind that will appeal to feeble-minded thugs like Ali. It is perfectly reasonable to abhor violence, while also being utterly opposed to the grotesque role Charlie Hebdo has now created for itself in rousing radicalized adversaries.
The extent of the problem was neatly summed up when Anne Giudicelli, the security consultant, suggested that Ali’s attack could have been avoided by Charlie Hebdo “not republishing the cartoons” of the Prophet Muhammad on its front page at the start of the Paris trial in early September.
Giudicelli’s logic was that hate laws — not blasphemy laws — are there to prevent depictions of the Prophet Muhammad and other vile material being used to spread blanket prejudice against entire Muslim communities, so why not simply implement them?
In turn, Giudicelli came under a furious onslaught from bigoted secularists. Particularly pugilistic commentators even compared her to French collaborators who had sided with the Nazis during the Occupation. Such absurd war rhetoric would appeal to only the most extreme, but there are plenty around, including wretched street criminals like Ali.

• Nabila Ramdani is a multi-award-winning French-Algerian journalist, columnist and broadcaster who specializes in French politics, Islamic affairs and the Arab world. Twitter: @NabilaRamdani