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Charlie Hebdo, the controversial French satirical publication, has come under harsh criticism for an English-language editorial it published last week that blames ordinary Muslims for terrorist attacks such as those in Brussels and Paris.
Just a week after suicide bombers left 31 people dead and 300 injured in the Belgian capital, the newspaper published a piece titled "How Did We End Up Here?" in which peaceful, practising Muslims are lumped together with extremist terrorists.
The piece gives three examples of how ordinary Muslims supposedly contribute to events such as the attacks in Brussels.
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The first of the three is Tariq Ramadan, an influentual public intellectual and academic who teaches Islamic studies and often speaks publicly about the faith, in an attempt to "dissuade people from criticizing his religion in any way."
The second example provided by the editorial is that of a Muslim baker selling sandwiches without pork, who the magazine accuses of policing society from eating the kind of foods citizens have a right to eat.
The last example provided is that of the Muslim woman who wears the veil, "guilty" because of the aversion people have toward criticizing her choice of headwear.
"From the bakery that forbids you to eat what you like, to the woman who forbids you to admit that you are troubled by her veil, we are submerged in guilt for permitting ourselves such thoughts,“ according to the French publication.
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“It's not easy to get some proper terrorism going without a preceding atmosphere of mute and general apprehension."
All three, the publication concludes, form part of “a very large iceberg” as terror attacks cannot happen “without everyone’s contribution."
Unsurprisingly, Charlie Hebdo has come in for some scathing criticism since the piece was published.
Writer Teju Cole has written an extensive critique of the editorial in which he concludes that Charlie Hebdo “finally steps away from the mask of ‘it's satire and you don't get it’ to state clearly that Muslims, all of them, no matter how integrated, are the enemy.”
Charlie Hebdo, to be fair, also blames terrorism on Muslim bakers who don’t include ham in their sandwiches. Wish I were joking.
— Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) April 2, 2016
"The wish to discriminate freely against Muslims without having to be called out on it. The freedom to draw everyone who is Muslim, or 'looks' Arab, into one big universal blood guilt that makes them literally responsible for the horrors perpetrated by a few maniacs," adds Cole, is a mask in which Charlie Hebdo is calling on people to openly conceal hatefulness as "courage."
#CharlieHebdo has completely lost its mission. No words for this disgraceful cover of #BrusselsAttacks victims. pic.twitter.com/15ATnRZwZS
— Dim Rapidis (@rapidis) March 30, 2016
“This is precisely the logic also of the masses who praise Trump for his ‘honesty,‘ as though only ugliness could be honest, as though moral incontinence were any more noble than physical incontinence,” writes Cole.
The Nigerian-American writer compares the editorial with the vicious development of "the Jewish question" in Europe, claiming that “Charlie's logic is frighteningly similar: that there are no innocent Muslims, that 'something must be done' about these people, regardless of their likeability, their peacefulness, or their personal repudiation of violence.”
Charlie Hebdo was given the PEN/James and Toni C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award last year despite the fact that hundreds of members of PEN protested the decision.
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