Decapitating freedom of expression
France has once again been shaken by a particularly bloody and odious terrorist attack, the beheading of Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher in the town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the nearby Parisian department of Yvelines. The pretext for a young Muslim of Chechen origin to cut off the teacher's head was that he had shown his pupils in class caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Samuel Paty used this example to lecture, teach and train his young disciples on the immense value of freedom of expression, as a fundamental pillar on which to base a society free to learn, to think, to reflect on its own and, in short, to integrate all its individuals with the utmost respect for each person's beliefs, but with the freedom to criticise intolerance and fanaticism.
He paid for this with his life, his head rolled, which this time was displayed on the social networks by the Jihadist-like media, which justified his atrocities as always. At the same time, the shivers of horror were once again shaking a France that has still not recovered from the slaughter of the journalists and cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo (January 2015), nor from the massacres in the Bataclan discotheque and neighbouring terraces in Paris (13 November 2015), nor from the trail of death sown in Nice while hundreds of families celebrated the bank holiday (14 July 2016).
The first common root of all these attacks is the attempt to curtail freedom: that of expression in the case of Charlie Hebdo and the beheading of the teacher; that of living together in a mixed and multicultural society in that of Paris; and that of assembly in the tragic massacre of the capital of the Côte d'Azur. This concept of freedom, the flag and the ensign of advanced and democratic societies after centuries of struggle to achieve it, irritates and repulses those who do not accept the reason of the other, do not tolerate the possible superiority of his intellectual arguments, have banished persuasion in their social exchanges and rely on force to impose their totalitarian drives on the rest.
It so happens, once again, that the fanatical killer of the moment invoked the sacred name of Allah as a support for his actions. Of course, this terrorist does not represent the Muslim religion, just as ETA terrorists did not represent Basque society. But in the case of France, Jihadist attacks occur too often and should strengthen the convictions of its society, and therefore those of Europe, in the immense value of the freedoms they seek to take away from it, and therefore defend them above all.
For those who have come to a world in which the rule of law can fully develop all its capabilities, there is a temptation to believe that this has always been the case. The wars and tears that our ancestors had to endure for centuries to achieve this are increasingly far removed in historical perspective. Right now, the debate in France over President Emmanuel Macron's bill to halt the advance of Islamic separatism is yet another factor of division and polarisation. Macron is once again calling for the country to be united and to address both the coronavirus pandemic and the Islamist terrorism that is entrenched in the country through fanatical citizens.
What happens in France will require the attention, assistance and cooperation of the rest of the European Union, because deep down attacks on freedom are the shortest route to undermining and destroying the morale of a transverse society capable of showing the way to building a society of free and equal men and women, though much remains to be done to achieve these goals fully. Besides France, this is Europe, in whose construction or disintegration we are all involved.