Anouar Majid contributes to collection of Moroccan responses to Charlie Hebdo attacks

Anouar Majid, Ph.D., vice president for Global Affairs and director of the Center for Global Humanities, wrote an essay that was recently published in the book Ce qui nous somme, a collection of 30 responses by various Moroccan intellectuals to the events of Charlie Hebdo.

In "Can Mohammed be French?" Majid argues that while Charlie Hebdo cartoons may have been offensive to Muslims, the satirization of political and religious figures is legal in France, and those who took offense, therefore, should have used their democratic right to protest with words rather than with violence.

Majid also identified a lack of patriotism among French Muslims and non-Muslim French elites as a factor that has exacerbated the divide that separates French Muslims from the rest of France’s population and argued that this lack of patriotic feeling was responsible, in part, for French Muslims siding with Muslims from other countries rather than with their countrymen after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Finally, Majid criticized Muslims for tenaciously holding on to antiquated notions of self and refusing to accept the changes in identity that are inevitable in our rapidly transforming civilization.