Charlie Hebdo: How fair is the media?

The central US has endured bitter cold with temperatures hovering in the single digits Fahrenheit, and schools have been closed because of the dangers of frostbite for children. But heated houses and cars make life quite bearable.

The Middle East, too, has experienced unusually cold weather and Jerusalem has even had snow the last couple of years. For the hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim refugees escaping the shelling and bombing in Iraq and Syria, life is little short of hell, and their children ... . How often do we hear about them?

The December 15, 2014 issue of Science News reports on the effects of disasters on children. Thus 55 percent of children suffered post traumatic stress three months after US Hurricane Andrew, 18 percent after ten months and 60 percent of these still displayed symptoms four years later. But no one in the major outlets exhibits any serious interest in the trauma of the child victims of this war on terror -- terror indeed ... for the children.

These issues matter little to the great who seek to right the world and fashion it to their liking. So Madeleine Albright, President Clinton's Secretary of State, dismissed the thousands of dead and dying children of sanctioned Iraq as a price to be paid, and Henry Kissinger's famous injunction, "anything on everything that moves", in bombing Cambodia led to a flattened landscape and a population so numbed and angered, they joined Pol Pot's murderous campaign. Is there a parallel with ISIS?

Yet the deaths of millions is impersonal; the death of a dozen journalists appalls. So the news for quite some time centered on Paris and the attack on the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo -- a magazine few had heard of and which lived off provocation. The cartoon series on prophet Mohammed insulting to Muslims was clearly intended to provoke. While expression of opinion is part of democracy, the French government, on the one hand, ignored this conscious bigotry; on the other, it shut up a popular French comedian, Dieudonne, for what it construed as anti-Semitic jokes while he protested otherwise.

George Galloway the British Member of Parliament had some pithy comments on the killings in Paris: "No person, no human being should be subjected to violence, still less death for anything that they have said, written or drawn, so we condemn utterly the murder of 17 people in the events in Paris. But we will not allow this Charlie Hebdo magazine to be described as a king of loveable, anarchic, fun book of cartoons. These are not cartoons, these are not depictions of the Prophet, these are pornographic, obscene insults to the Prophet and by extension, 1.7 billion human beings on this earth and there are limits. There are limits. There are limits to free speech and free expression, especially in France.”

In the last comment he was joined by Pope Francis, who when asked about the Charlie Hebdo attack responded, "There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity."

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper, published 12 cartoons in 2005 depicting Mohammed in a manner Muslims found abusive and denigrating. It caused violent demonstrations from "Jerusalem to Jakarta" and a boycott of Danish products in many countries. The editor Flemming Rose's intent cannot be known -- suffice to say, the paper was offered a satirical depiction of Jesus and the resurrection, but the editors declined saying it would cause a public outcry. Similarly, Judaism is excluded from its anti-religious crusade.

The bravado it seems is limited to directing venom mostly, and most viciously, at the least powerful, segregated, marginalized, ghettoized community not being absorbed into the mainstream and lacking upward mobility. Yet, printing offensive cartoons only alienates it further making it feel isolated and the object of ridicule; isolated as it is not just through culture and religion but also by race -- in France they are of African heritage. Unfortunately, the persistent racism fattened by this diet of mockery -- Hebdo not only hit their religion but also implied they were freeloaders living off the state's assistance programs -- continues to obtrude the thinking of a substantial segment of Europe's citizenry. To that one could easily add Canada and Australia.

So Australian Rupert Murdoch unsurprisingly blames Islam for the tragedy, his reductive reasoning failing to consider Ahmed Merabet or Lassam Bathily. If most people have not heard of them, it is because being contra-narrative these facts were not reported widely. Ahmed Merabet was a Muslim French police officer who was shot, wounded, and then killed execution style at close range by the attackers. Lassam Bathily is a Malian Muslim who worked at the kosher grocery store where Amidy Coulibaly killed four individuals taking several hostage. Mr. Bathily helped save several people by hiding them in a walk-in freezer. Among the panoply of resources available to Mr. Murdoch doubtless there is someone who can apprise him of the Islam of these two heroes of the Paris siege. He only has to ask.

De-refracting the vast Islamic rainbow of sects and beliefs into the simple light of fanaticism, representing a miniscule, is both gross error and unfair to the vast majority mired in the quotidian details of their often troubled and dangerous worlds.

Perhaps a good rule for writers and speakers these days in their comments about Muslims and Islam is to substitute Jew and Judaism in their sentences and hear what it sounds like -- because blanket aspersions against a religion or group is the very definition of bigotry and racism. It is also not in the interest of peace on our little blue marble when the group comprises 23 percent of its population and is a majority in 49 countries.

* Arshad M Khan is a US-based retired professor. His articles and comments have appeared in both print media and the internet. His work has been quoted in the US Congress and published in the Congressional Record.

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