The Robert Redeker affair.

   This past September, the 19th, a French qualified philosophy teacher published an Op-Ed article in the newspaper Le Figaro. The piece, a response to the controversy over remarks about Islam made a week earlier by Pope Benedict XVI, was titled “What Should the Free World Do in the Face of Islamist Intimidation?” It was a fierce critique of what Redeker called Islam’s attempt “to place its leaden cloak over the world.” If Jesus was “a master of love,” he wrote, Muhammad was “a master of hatred.” Of the three “religions of the book,” Islam was the only one that overtly preached holy war. “Whereas Judaism and Christianity are religions whose rites reject and delegitimize violence,” Redeker concluded, “Islam is a religion that, in its own sacred text, as well as in its everyday rites, exalts violence and hatred.”

   So far, it is not a big deal. Many so-called intellectuals have written-rightly if one read the Koran literally- such kind of notes on Islam. For instance, Michel Onfray has expressed similar views in its recent “Atheology Treaty”. Yet, in our affair, having been posted online, the article was read all over France and in other countries as well, and was quickly translated into Arabic. That is where all this about that ‘too-freely-written-article’ reached considerable proportions. Denunciations of Redeker’s “insult of the prophet” spread across the Internet. Within a day after publication, the piece was being condemned on al Jazeera by the popular on air preacher. In Egypt and Tunisia, the offending issue of Le Figaro was banned. Robert Redeker himself soon received a large number of threats by letter and e-mail. On an Islamist website, he was sentenced to death in a posting that, in order to facilitate a potential assassin’s task, also provided his address and a photograph of his home. Fearful for himself and his family, Redeker sought protection from the local police, who transferred the case to the national counter-espionage authorities. On their advice, Redeker, his wife, and three children fled their home and took shelter in a secret location. Since then, they have moved from city to city, at their own expense, under police protection. Another teacher has been appointed by the French Ministry of Education to replace Redeker, who will probably never see his students again.

   Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was virtually the only public official who took an honorable position, declaring that this “fatwa” against a French intellectual was “unacceptable.” A group of centrist intellectuals, including Alain Finkielkraut, André Glucksmann, Elisabeth Badinter and Bernard-Henri Lévy, also issued an appeal on Redeker’s behalf and in defense of France’s “most fundamental liberties.”

   But the vast majority of responses, even when couched as defenses of the right to free speech, were in fact hostile to the philosophy teacher.

   Yet, to be openly condemned and threatened of death is a bizarre charge against the author of a piece clearly marked as personal opinion. Indeed, this matter must be put into perspective. We are in democracy, are not we? Let him talk! Those who disagree with him can still answer to him, in an argued speech. That is the way things should work. That affair is reminiscent of the one about the caricatured pictures of the Prophet drawn by the Danish journalists. In what kind of world are we evolving? Individuals like Redeker should now be censored?! The necessity is to maintain freedom of speech, fundamental principle of democracy, in the rank it deserves, even if it means offending or provocating some people. And one must remember Voltaire and his ideal of Freedom: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend on your side your right to express it".