God died.

He died about a century ago and, according to the post-mortem carried out by one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, he was killed by Man.

Many have taken offence at the (in)famous quote from The Gay Science, but Nietzsche who, being an atheist, of course did not mean that God died in the same sense that we mean when we say our great-great-great-great-grandparents died.

What the German philosopher meant by his phrase "God is dead", was, rather, that the concept of God (and religion in general) had become increasingly out of fashion, and increasingly insignificant. Naturally, it was, and still is to this very day, an extremely important concept - reality, even - to believers, but to the world at large, including the more passive believers, God was suddenly no longer deemed as important as he had once been.

Morality and ethics, for instance, ceased to refer to God, whereas previously God always featured as the central point of moral arguments. Secular morality has taken hold of many, if not all, aspects of social life in Western society, and that is only one of the jobs God lost.

God is, after all, employed by Man. On earth, men decide whether to engage God's services or not, and this is one of the few things both secular and religious people agree on, though for very different reasons: the former because they believe God to be nothing more than a fantasy, the latter because, as we all have been indoctrinated to believe in our childhood, it is we who decide whether to let God into our lives.

And yet despite God's recent vanishing act, despite his omniabsence, He is still the centre of bloody disputes and, as has become trendy in recent years, irreverent ridicule. People fight to defend His name, while others are keen to remind them that they are defending nothing more than a myth.

 

***

 

The terror threat level here in Belgium has been raised to three - the second highest. One can see increased police presence in the streets and heightened security, especially around EU buildings, which have raised their security alert level to yellow.

"Dieu est mort!" exclaims a cartoon in Marianne, "L'humour jamais!"

Charlie Hebdo in hand, I stroll around the streets of Brussels and notice that, despite the recent terrorist threat not having an effect on daily routine, there is certainly no jovial mood in the air. Opening the irresponsible newspaper, I notice that the humour is indeed still alive inside the leafy premises of the publication.

Irreverent as always, the humour is clearly present in this survivor issue: a number of cartoons, including some by the four staff cartoonists killed in the attack, feature. In one, the massacred Charlie Hebdo staff is having an orgy in heaven as the two killers enquire about the 70 virgins. In another cartoon entitled "New Friends", four representatives of the four major faiths are wearing "Je suis Charlie" placards. Another cartoon features Wolinksi, sporting a halo, wings and an erection, expressing his gratitude for the end of impotence.

Ideas cannot be killed - you can kill the medium, but the idea lives on.

 

 ***

 

Do we, in Malta, have free speech? It's a seemingly simple question until one realises the divide between the posturing and empty talk and the reality behind them. One need only step on the wrong foot to end up with a libel case. Our freedom of speech is limited, as it should be. Perhaps we limit it too much, and, for what it's worth, I do believe we do, but that's another matter for another article.

The parallel I am trying to draw here is clear. One may argue that criticising (ridiculing?) a religion is different from defaming politicians, and it is, but the question remains: who sets what is acceptable and what is not? Why decide that offending a set of beliefs is OK?

I am all for criticising: I believe everything should be scrutinised: God, Allah, Mohammed, politicians, ideologies, and even our sacrosanct values: democracy, equality, and our pc-sheltered concepts: homosexuality, transgenderism, racial and cultural differences and, in some places, the right to abortion.

I believe that everything should be scrutinised because that is the only way we can get to the truth, and the only way to confirm the truths we already [think we] have attained. A living truth can only be nourished through constant scrutiny, meaning that even received opinions should not be taken for granted: we should not accept the given, but question it constantly, if only to strengthen it. We should question the abolition of slavery, or the drive for equality of races: only thus can we actually and actively believe the truth, rather than sheepishly swallow truths we fail to really understand (how often have I heard the Maltese answer provocative questions with a dismissive" ghax hekk, hux" because that's the way it is!)

To an extent, Islamic scholars already scrutinise their religion and their sacred texts, and have done so for centuries. Of course, the scrutiny of an Islamic scholar will differ considerably from the scrutiny of an atheist. The former may seek to learn more, to come closer to his God: the latter may only be interested in busting a myth. He may only be seeking to ridicule, and that can understandably cause unnecessary strife within the community.

There has been talk that Europeans hold freedom of speech close to heart, and are keen on upholding the right to offend. But where, pray tell, is the right to offend when it comes to what we deem sensitive issues like homosexuality, the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, women or even our own offspring?

Is it OK for me to deny the Holocaust? To ridicule people of a different race? To incite ethnic hatred? Is it acceptable to say that women are not as good as men (or vice-versa, though the latter seems to be fairly tolerated in our perverse society) or to speak of homosexuality as a disease?

I would probably not be killed for trying, but there are other ways - other sanctions, other punishments - to stop me from saying whatever I want. Enjoying the right to free speech does not mean that our freedom of speech is not curtailed.

In our society, one can't even criticise the boss without fear of reprisal. What kind of freedom of speech is that?

 

*** 

 

We are merely deluded in thinking we have freedom of speech - in many ways our mouths are shut, at times for the good of the community, but mostly for the good of the few for whom silence is truly golden.

Ralph Steadman, "the sort of bastard who might draw something that would severely displease somebody because they could not see the joke" (his own words), interviewed by Newsweek after the attack, gives his own views on the recent events in Paris. He describes the killers as bullies, but, despite acknowledging the offensive nature of the blasphemous publication, he does not even go as far as hinting the possibility that the victims may well be attached with the very same label.

Steadman may be a good cartoonist, but the way he draws up the incident fails to impress.

The same magazine describes the defiance of Cabu and Wolinski, two cartoonists killed in the assault, as splenetic.

And that is the crux: without justifying the attack, one cannot compare what Hebdo did to mere ridicule. It is more akin to someone offending a child. If a parent were to murder someone for this reason, we wouldn't justify the action, but we wouldn't say it was ridicule that angered the parent: "it was offensive", we would say.

The thing is that here in the West we are more sensitive to politically correct issues and parental sanctity, than we are to religion. I am no religious fanatic, nor even an apologist. Truth is, I don't like religion very much. That does not hinder me from passing objective judgement, however.

As the Newsweek reporter opines, caricatures of Allah and Muhammad are entirely different from simple ridicule, and are just as entirely different from political satire.

Why? Because it is religious satire. Now an atheist may well fail to see the difference, but upholding that argument - that religion is merely political - means presuming a premise not everyone accepts. Believers believe in the reality of their beliefs, and though that does not affect the atheist's lack of belief, and his right to that lack, it does explain how they may find deep offence in some of the more direct forms of criticism.

The question, therefore, is whether such offence is to be tolerated. I am not so sure about the answer. We do not tolerate offence in many other cases, so why here? Is it acceptable to make fun of the killings? It's not the same thing, one may argue. That may well be true, but the reason why we frown upon it is the same: it ridicules (and offends) something we hold sacred.

 

***

 

Everyone is quoting Voltaire, while forgetting another great philosopher who had as much, if not more, to say about the subject of freedom of thought and expression. This I believe to be a great disservice to him, to philosophy, as well as to humanity in general, so I will conclude by quoting a short but brilliant paragraph from Mill's On Liberty:

"[T]he peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

 

***

 

Striking a balance between freedom of speech and respect is not an easy task. Certainly, overreacting to material one finds offensive is never a good idea and does more harm than good to everyone involved. Ill-thought actions spurred by anger may well have the opposite of the intended result.

The last cartoon on the back page of the new issue of Charlie Hebdo features a laughing grim reaper - drawn against a blood-red background - reading a copy of the satirical magazine.

"Je m'abonne!" it says.