No More Liberal Excuses  

All members of the Harvard community—particularly those with a close connection to France—will have been deeply shocked by the shooting at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris two weeks ago, as well as the attack on a kosher supermarket the next day. Across the world, reactions have ranged from sympathy for the victims to horror that such a thing could take place in a country so associated with trailblazing free speech.

Unfortunately, it is the nature of the Harvard community that such feelings will give way in the fullness of time to something else: excuses.

The political leanings of the campus are obvious when it comes to matters of security and confronting religious extremism. Bill Maher called it “liberal bullshit,” and while such a label lacks a certain subtlety, any honest member of the Harvard community will know that Cambridge is one of the great bastions of this pernicious moral failing.

In the aftermath of this attack, we do not know all of the details and motivations that came into play, but the broad strokes are evident. A newspaper famed for taking on religious and political ideas in a provocative—and at times insulting—manner has been targeted by extremists seeking to “avenge the Prophet Mohammad.” The extremists’ method of demanding religious respect was to brutally murder unarmed journalists and cartoonists as they held an editorial meeting. In the secondary attack unarmed civilians were shot for, it seems, the crime of being Jewish. Once again, home-grown jihadists have viciously attacked civilians as part of some warped understanding of the West and Islam being at war with one another.

The West is not at war with Islam.

The problem with Harvard groupthink (and that of the Left more generally on this issue) is that it does not realize that while the West is not at war with an entire religion, we should be at war with its extremist forms.

What this tragic episode should bring about is a renewed commitment from the Left to the idea that it is possible to defend the civil and political rights of Muslims, to fight against discrimination, and to concurrently advocate the strongest possible response to the barbarism represented by this attack and others like it.

The ideology that these murderous Islamist killers acted on is not a product of our foreign policy; it was a response to the publication of cartoons. It is not a reasonable or rational response to sensitivity regarding the depiction of the Prophet, the justification these murderers employed themselves.

There must be absolute moral clarity on this issue: Under no circumstances should there be a death sentence for a journalist insulting or offending someone.

On the Harvard campus, however, it is likely only a few short weeks will go by before panel discussions are advertised in which students will be invited to consider the perspective of these allegedly oppressed criminals. In classes and over coffee, undergrads will pontificate about how insulting the Prophet is the greatest possible insult for a Muslim, as if an insult of any kind could ever reasonably be offered as a rationalization for violence. The traditional apologists for terror such as Glen Greenwald at The Guardian will try and explain this away as if there is no cause for concern and no need for an adjustment in the liberal conscience.

Caught up in the cacophony of faux-experts and contrarians, the Left will slowly lose sight of what happened in Paris, and as a result offer no sensible next steps.

A number of religious fanatics decided to butcher journalists because they disagreed with them. These extremists were few in number, but if one considers the thousands that marched in Paris, Copenhagen, and other cities after the Danish cartoon scandal in 2005, or if one takes a look at a poll of their coreligionists, they have concerning levels of support. Indeed, in Europe where the problem appears most acute (at least in the West), the Muslim Council of Britain felt compelled to urge British Muslims not to react with violence to the release of the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo.

One must not impugn all Muslims as violent or potential terrorists (a proposition that is patently absurd), but one should recognize that there is a significant population that subscribes to the most distasteful and morally repugnant form of Islamism, and that ignoring the problem is not “checking your privilege” but rather signing the death warrant of a free society.

There is so much about terrorism, religious extremism, and the appropriate response to these phenomena that demands careful study. The attack in Paris does not. Now is the time for moral clarity: There is nothing that anyone can write anywhere that should excuse these attacks. Killing people for ideas they write down or draw is an outrage. The same goes for executing grocery shoppers simply because they happen to be Jewish. Anyone who equivocates with regard to this tragic episode is clearly lacking in moral direction.

It is time to call Islamist extremism what it is: religious fascism. Anyone who truly proclaims the values of the Left will side with the West against this extremism, and do so unapologetically.

Philip A. Gardner is a Masters student at the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies.