Always re-read Salman Rushdie. In L’Express of July 22, 2015, the writer deplored the “bad lessons” of the affair of the satanic verses in the Western world: “Instead of deducing that it is necessary to oppose these attacks on the freedom of expression, we believed that it was necessary to calm them by compromises and renunciations.” After his stabbing on August 12, 2022, by a fanatic Lebanese Islamist of the Iranian regime, the whole world expressed its horror. But will we learn any lessons from it? Even. The thirty-three years that separate the fatwa of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini from its implementation have seen the controversies become ever more tense, to the detriment of those who want to uphold the freedom to express themselves, to create, to shock, on personal beliefs. Even if it means rejecting them on principle in the camp of hatred and rejection. The state of mind in vogue, Salman Rushdie summed it up with an expression: “I am for freedom of expression, but…”
In France, two protagonists in the affair of the Verses could embody the decay of the debate. On March 4, 1989, at the Théâtre de l’Empire, in Paris, Isabelle Adjani has just won the César for best actress, for Camille Claudel. The actress “wants to say tragic things”. She recites a few lines from satanic verses “Question: what is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too categorical, certain, closed, in itself a kind of faith, doubt. The human condition. But what is the condition of the angel? A mi -way between God and homo sapiens, have they ever doubted? Yes. (…)”. The left then supports the writer. Pierre Bourdieu, Paul Ricoeur or Régis Debray sign petitions, Jack Lang, the Minister of Culture, worries about the “return of the Inquisition”.
Abdelaziz Chaambi has little to do with the actress. In 1983, the spokesperson for the Union of Young Muslims, born in 1957, took part in the so-called Beur march for equality. On March 18, 1989, he stormed against the banning of the anti-Rushdie demonstration in Lyon. “What do we want? Nothing other than what others have achieved, namely the banning of a novel that insults Islam,” he said.
Twenty-five years later, in the course of an interview at Pointin December 2014, Isabelle Adjani estimated that she could no longer cite the Verses : “Unless I voluntarily put my head on the block, I could no longer make this kind of symbolic provocation today. We are condemned to a form of reserve, it is a terrible admission of powerlessness.” Reserve, Abdelaziz Chaambi, he does not know. This August 14, 2022, he shared on Facebook a virulent message against Rushdie, described as “sold”: “Salman Rushdie waged a class war against hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world. The popular classes have understood that The satanic verses were an additional contribution in this struggle of the hegemonic West against the countries of the South.” One continues his war while the other has given up debating.
“I’m Charlie, but…”
What happened in the meantime? Bullying. In July 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, Rushdie’s Japanese translator, was murdered. Its Italian translator, its Norwegian publisher and its Turkish translator have suffered attempted murders, with knives, bullets or arson. The writer himself lives under protection. It’s not just the Verses. Véronique Sanson, threatened with death, had to give up playing her song Allah. In 2006, the Italian priest Andrea Santoro was assassinated in Turkey. The author of the murder justifies his act by the cartoons of Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. A declaration of war from Christianity to Islam, according to him. In November 2011, the premises of Charlie Hebdo, who took over these drawings, are set on fire. And then the attacks of January 2015, and the following ones.
The left, once so quick to defend freedom of expression, while the right sometimes wavered – Jacques Chirac had very harsh words for Rushdie, accused of “using blasphemy to make money” – is suddenly seized with a doubt: what if defending the free criticism of religions risked encouraging discrimination against Muslims? The “I am Charlie” sometimes become “I am Charlie, but…” We denounce jihadism, but no more.
In November 2019, La France insoumise went to the “demonstration against Islamophobia”, in Paris, at the call of the CCIF, dissolved at the end of 2020 for “Islamist propaganda”, according to Gérald Darmanin. In January 2020, when Mila, a 16-year-old teenager, insults Islam in a vulgar way – “your God, I put a finger in her asshole” – the left mobilizes little against the death threats of which she is the object. This same year, which saw the teacher Samuel Paty be beheaded after a false accusation of “Islamophobia” on social networks, Jean-Luc Mélenchon still affirms that the journalists of Charlie Hebdo “facilitate zemmourist climbing”. So many positions that will lead Houria Bouteldja, co-founder of the Indigènes de la République, a far-left party that virulently defends the thesis of “state racism” in France, to qualify the Insoumis as “spoils of war”. .
Abdelaziz Chaambi gravitates precisely in these networks. In October 2021, his association, Coordination against racism and Islamophobia (CRI), was dissolved, for calls “to hatred, violence and discrimination”, according to Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior. – facts that he disputes. This did not prevent this other co-founder of the Indigènes de la République from being among the first signatories of the forum “We get involved”, a call to vote Jean-Luc Mélenchon carried by a “national network of actors from the districts popular”, in March 2022. With the World, on April 27, the activist claimed to have made “interesting contacts with rebellious officials, to consider the future of the neighborhoods differently”, a quote later withdrawn at his request. How to envisage the future, that is the question. French readers have apparently chosen to begin with the study of the texts: since the aggression, The satanic verses top sellers on Amazon. Perhaps the strongest response to the Islamists.