Je ne suis pas Charlie: I Am NOT Charlie

Like millions of others, I was horrified when I heard about the terrible tragedy at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7^th. In subsequent days, I spent hours watching the news and fearing for the people of France (a country I visited for a month at age 18 and came to love) as new gunmen took hostages and the violence threatened to grow. I even considered posting “Je suis Charlie” as a status update on Facebook.

That was until I heard a segment about the admittedly irreverent publication on the January 13^th broadcast of “All Things Considered” on NPR.

“Staff members say the magazine is not Islamophobic and is only fighting to keep religion out of public life,” they reported.

I am the first person to say that the journalists at Charlie Hebdo—or any other publication for that matter–have every right to mock whomever they want. You want to mock Christianity? Jesus? Be my guest. But what does this statement really mean for Charlie Hebdo? Does keeping religion out of public life end with mocking the beliefs of others or does it go further than that? 

While I share no sympathy with jihadist Muslims, and affirm the rights of the writers at Charlie Hedbo to speak—or in this instance, cartoon–freely, how can anyone expect to “keep religion out of public life”? How can a person, who holds a specific set of beliefs, keep them “out of” their life? While religion, by definition, usually refers to a set of beliefs and practices regarding a god or gods, it derives from the Latin religare, meaning to tie or fasten; literally, re- + ligāre means “to bind.” All of us, in one way or another, “bind” ourselves to certain beliefs, but if a publication like Charlie Hebdo is going to accomplish its desired goal, every person alive must “check their beliefs” at the door before entering the public square. Or is it just belief in a god that must be left behind? Non-belief in a god or gods can inform a life and influence the choices a person makes—or doesn't make–and the journalists at Charlie Hebdo are no exception. So how can my belief in God, that informs my life and influences the choices I make, be “left out”?

If keeping religion out of the public square equals not murdering abortion doctors or slaughtering journalists, then I'm all for it.

If it means silence, then they've got another thing coming. 

Je ne suis pas Charlie.