Mick Hartley

Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief Gérard Biard, interviewed at Spiked:

Because Charlie Hebdo is an atheist newspaper, we also defend secularism, which means the right to criticise and to mock religious dogmas and religious representatives, and having the right to blaspheme. The right to blaspheme is a right that has existed since the French Revolution.

During the French Revolution, we killed the monarchy, we decapitated the king. But the king held his power by divine right. So, in a way, we decapitated God. We expelled God from the realm of civil power, from earthly power. That’s secularism: it’s to say that God is an idea, an idea like any other. It has no more value, nor less either. We can, and we must, subject it to the same treatment as all other ideas. We can mock it, we can say, ‘No, you’re wrong’.

This is not about insulting believers. It’s simply saying, ‘I do not accept the power of God’. This is something that, in my view, is essential for democracy to function. The principle of democracy is that all laws should be debatable, that we should be able to oppose them, that we should be able to go into the streets to say we don’t agree, and we should be able to change them. But then if you apply a law or base a law on the word of God, you can’t do any of that, because God has spoken, end of story. He is right. So, you cannot contest God’s word. A law based on God’s word is not a democratic law.

What are the Iranian people asking for today? They’re not asking for the mullahs to disappear entirely – they’re asking for them to leave power. They want non-religious leaders and civil laws. Secularism is that. And that’s what we defend. […]

It’s important to understand one thing: every time we publish a cartoon, whether it’s about politics, religion or society, it’s because something relevant has happened. If we draw Muhammad, it’s not because we just want to draw Muhammad; it’s because Muhammad is in the news. We are a newspaper that comments on current affairs. To be honest, we’re not really interested in Muhammad. It’s not our problem. We’re not interested in God. We don’t give a damn. But unfortunately, God matters a lot to people in the world, and some use God to exercise a toxic, totalitarian power over others. That’s what we’re fighting against. […]

We’ve now become aware that Islamism is a political ideology, a totalitarian ideology. This is what we need to take a stand against. It’s not against believers. We don’t give a shit about the believers. The believers aren’t the problem. Believers can believe what they like. The problem is the use of these beliefs to control society. That’s what religion does. It’s about how worship, belief and faith are used to exercise control over society and individuals. That’s where the danger lies. […]

Terrorist attacks work like this: if we give in to fear, we will lose more freedoms. We no longer publish what we want to. We reinstate laws to ban blasphemy, as Denmark has just done. But that doesn’t change anything. The terrorism is still there. It still wants to kill. It still wants to kill people who gather to drink, to talk to each other, to make newspapers, to listen to music, even to pray, too. The terrorism doesn’t go away.

So we must fight against it, physically, but we must also fight against it ideologically. And the only way to combat it is by continuing to be who we are, by continuing to exercise our freedoms – and to exercise them with the strongest conviction possible.