Charlie Hebdo and what follows
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#QuiSommesNous? A Socratic dialogue on “L’Affaire Charlie Hebdo”
UMUT OZKIRIMLI and SPYROS A. SOFOS Appeared in openDemocracy.com on 13 January 2015 Freedoms are not unlimited but who, when and how can we limit them? Two colleagues agree to disagree. Content warning: graphic and potentially offensive imagery, including torture. Umut – This time it was different. I could not put a finger on how I felt on the morning of January 7, as I was refreshing my Twitter feed every ten seconds, hypnotized by the cold-blooded execution of Ahmed Merabet at the scene of the massacre. I was horrified of course, and angry like everybody else, at the perpetrators, at the structural conditions that have produced them, at the way in which religion had become a cloak for what was essentially a politically motivated act of barbarism. But there was more to it. I was also numbed by disbelief, a profound sense of desperation, even defeatism. In a way, I felt like the Knight in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, seeking answers to existential questi...
Charlie Hebdo or the loss of our innocence
This is still a draft text, a repository of some thoughts to which I will return soon ... Last night Channel 4 news reported from La Place de la République where thousands of people stayed up late to protest against the brutal murders of the Charlie Hebdo staff and the policemen who got on the way of the perpetrators. The square was packed, with some people in shock, many angry at what had happened, most determined to send a message of defiance. Banners and posters featuring #jesuisCharlie , the hashtag devised to express solidarity to the satirical magazine staff were everywhere and, later on, the same hashtag was projected on the statue of the Republic in the centre of the square, superimposed over the crowd that had gathered. Matthieu Ecoiffier, journalist with the French newspaper Libération , talking to the Channel 4 reporter, was shocked, surprised that Charlie Hebdo could have caused offence. He mentioned the 'innocent' cover of the magazine issue with the title...
Headscarf ceremonies for Muslim girls in Istanbul
BELGİN AKALTAN - belgin.akaltan@hdn.com.tr The new trend in Istanbul is throwing headscarf donning parties for young girls, as we have learned from a reader’s letter to a conservative daily. Is this some kind of a Turkish touch to the traditions that otherwise represent very little fun and offer very little to the modern woman? It is like the Muslim version of the Jewish coming of age ritual for girls, the Bat Mitzvah. I would not have known about it if columnist Fatma Barbarasoğlu had not written about it. I am quoting from her column dated Oct. 24, 2014, from daily Yeni Şafak. This is very new information for all of us, as I and my colleagues in the office had never heard of it before. Even the writer had not heard of it before. The news comes from a letter from a reader, who is a career woman. She wrote that headscarf-donning ceremonies were being held in large wedding halls for young girls in rich, conservative neighborhoods of Istanbul. She wrote: “I live in a conse...
When urban myths meet islamophobia
American journalist Liz Smith once said very aptly that gossip is just news in a red satin dress. Although there is indeed an intimate relationship between rumour and news, it is important to note that rumour can often be a form of fiction that dones the cloak of veracity. Over the past couple of weeks a story has been featured in social media and email inboxes about a burqa-clad woman chastising a supermarket cashier for supporting Western bombing of Iraq. The most recent posting that came to my attention reached my facebook timeline from a user based in Israel and situated the alleged incident in a small Canadian town. The story sounded suspicious as, since the eviction of the Iraqi army from Kuwait in the first Iraq war, Canada has not been involved in military operations in Iraq and I therefore did some investigation only to find that the story must have been circulating in the internet since as early as 2003, during the early days of the second Iraq war. This o...
