“Charlie Hebdo” supports Salman Rushdie: “Nothing is sacred”

Lhe attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie reminds those who seemed to forget that the fundamental freedoms of a modern society, such as those to create and express themselves, are constantly threatened throughout the world by totalitarian ideologies .

These hateful and contemptuous ideologies with regard to these freedoms are based on political or religious theories whose self-proclaimed legitimacy raises questions. The case of Salman Rushdie forces us to question the place of religion and the sacred in our modern world.

If freedom of conscience gives everyone the right to think what they want about the origin of the world and its creation, the revealed truths of religions cannot impose their precepts on society as a whole. However, we have observed for several years that religious practices have become more and more intrusive, authoritarian, when they are not threatening. This drift seriously undermines the subtle balance of democratic societies and installs a climate of insecurity, intimidation and violence that is no longer acceptable.

Any discourse critical of religious dogma, even the most tenuous, is immediately met with death threats, and citizens, fearing for their lives, prefer to give up their freedom to express their disagreement. This renunciation also affects the world of the arts and creation, which has integrated this violence and prefers to tackle other, less deadly subjects. “No one would dare today to publish The Satanic Verses »we hear for a long time about the work of Salman Rushdie.

Limitless creativity and relentless insolence

This is indeed the goal of religious fanatics: to dissuade, through terror, the creation of works that challenge their dogmas, which are nevertheless based on very little, namely a few visions of great mystics.

Can our modern societies be built around texts written by exalted spirits? Nothing is sacred. The paradox is that today the mobilization to condemn the attack on Salman Rushdie seems stronger than that of the artists to continue to produce works that will perpetuate the vision of the author of the Satanic verses. Because after all those who have already been murdered, like Theo Van Goghand those who get stabbed during conferences, like Salman Rushdie, who will be left to continue their reflection and their fight?

Read the editorial: Attack against Salman Rushdie: standing up against obscurantism

If global warming endangers living organisms on Earth, religious intolerance and unbridled mysticism threaten minds by suffocating them under taboos and irrevocable sentences.

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