Charlie Hebdo: A Wake-Up Call for Iranian Elites

The attack in Paris targeting cartoonists of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo sparked reactions from many Iranian elites and political and civil activists. The Iranian intellectual community is not unfamiliar with being targeted by extremist and radical groups. Several decades ago, in a somewhat similar act, Navab Safavi and the Fadaiyan-e Islam group assassinated Ahmad Kasravi and ultimately responded to his ideas in the judiciary with knife blows. This act not only failed to lead to truth-seeking and finding the roots of violence among fanatic and radical religious groups but was also supported and endorsed by some of the religious authorities of the time. The factory of violence that the Fadaiyan-e Islam established with the help of some religious authorities and merchants, alongside the silence and passivity of intellectuals, ultimately created a Frankenstein that still grips Iranian society today. The names of the criminals who killed Kasravi are still imposed on the streets of the capital, which itself is evidence of the awakening and life of the machine of violence. The expansion of the scope of sacredness into the realm of politics and governance provides an excuse to close the window of critique and serves as a prelude to oppression and tyranny. Given the long history of tyranny in our country, civil activists must be extremely sensitive to the sanctification of what affects people's lives, from social contracts and historical events to individuals. People's beliefs are not sacred matters that cannot be criticized or turned into subjects of humor. On this basis, clerics cannot consider what they promote and the institutions they have created as sacred and exempt from critique and humor. Joking about beliefs, in its appropriate form, is rooted in magnifying contradictions and anomalies and is a process that reveals the absurdity and triviality of traditions and behaviors in the process of progress and change in the world. A society that closes its doors to laughing at and mocking its beliefs deprives itself of one of the greatest drivers of change and refinement. In this context, insulting beliefs and sacred matters serves as a very suitable excuse to close the space for dialogue and critique. Censorship and breaking the pens of those who insult cause much greater harm to the space for dialogue than the distortion of public minds. Maintaining societal calm should not be an excuse to silence critics. Narrowing the circle of sacredness and removing the public sphere and politics from the monopoly of self-proclaimed representatives of God and religion is one of humanity's greatest achievements. Throughout the history of the country, tyrants have always hidden the monster of tyranny under the veil of sanctity, keeping it away from critique and enlightenment. Therefore, the responsibility of elites in the constant challenge of the thoughts and beliefs of society and preventing the powerful from cloaking the structure of power with beliefs and values is evident. The victims of ideological violence in Iran are countless, with the elite and intellectual community bearing a significant share of these victims. The ultimate goal of the violent is to suffocate and ultimately completely silence intellectuals. Now our intellectual community, especially the religious, faces a significant question: where are the boundaries of critique and freedom of expression? Can one consider a writer deserving of death, imprisonment, or flogging on the pretext of a piece of writing or a cartoon? Can one silence critics, humorists, or even those who insult on the pretext of challenging the traditions, customs, and religious beliefs of a society? There is no doubt that stepping onto the path of arrests and crackdowns leads to sliding into the quagmire of oppression and tyranny. How is it that some civil activists, especially those concerned about religion, are either silent in the face of this crime or condition their condemnation of it on the condemnation of the writers? How can this duality be explained? Extreme relativism without considering the context of time and place is the greatest plague of thought. Understanding and producing thought is vastly different from philosophical and intellectual marginalization and expressing 140-character opinions that only serve to create traffic for social networks. For some civil activists, seizing the public sphere and the number of followers on social networks has become more important than constantly challenging their own and society's thoughts and beliefs. Adherence to universal values that respect the right to life and the speech of others, alongside active participation in the realm of thought, guarantees the dynamism of civil society. Beating in ideological cocoons and being pleased with the flattery of virtual social media followers have distracted some social activists from their true mission. Let us remember that if in Paris, extremist Islamists shot the writers of a publication on the pretext of drawing a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, in Iran, the judiciary of the Islamic Republic condemned Soheil Arabi to death for insulting sacred matters. In the wake of the recent crime in Paris, instead of ambiguous and dualistic positions that sometimes make the actions of writers a prelude to their murder, we must defend their right to write and draw, regardless of what they produced.