Terrorism

I was invited to Lars Vilks* Committee in Copenhagen to present Passion for Freedom London Art Festival. The committee is organised annually, on the anniversary of Salman Rushdie's fatwa. The meeting started with a short introduction from one of the organizers followed by François Zimeray, the French ambassador, commemorating Charlie Hebdo and discussing the challenges that we face when it comes to the threats to freedom of speech and democracy in our countries. After a short introduction, Inna Shevchenko opened the panel and started to talk about Femen and her work. She also discussed her close friendship with Charb, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, and how they both stood strong exercising their right to freedom of expression.

After Islamist terrorist atrocities, political leaders often rush to say that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam. One can understand why they feel the need to do this but the problem is the terrorists clearly do think, however mistakenly, that they are acting in the name of Islam. But if any politician wants to know how to answer the question about the link between terrorism and Islam, they should look at these answers from the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in an interview with The New York Times: There are aspects of Islamic practice and tradition at the moment that involve them in violence, as there are, incidentally, in Christian practice.

As weather bombs brew in the north Atlantic, I’m roughing it by heading off to Rajasthan, and the literary festival where you are most likely to be greeted by an elephant. The life of a writer is rarely glamorous, but for one week in January — should an invitation to Jaipur be forthcoming — it decidedly is. The festival is to India what a Richard Curtis film is to London: a fusion of all the fondest stereotypes that foreigners have of a place. The talks, which run the gamut from the Mahabharata to the future of the novel, are pure literary masala. The parties are visions of perfumed candles, shimmering saris and maharajas’ palaces. The last time I was in Jaipur, there was even a cricket match.

Last week I lost count of the number of times we've been told, pace the Charlie Hebdo murders, that we have no right not to be offended, that freedom of speech involves the possibility of criticism and ridicule of any religion; indeed, that it’s the flip side of religious liberty. Salman Rushdie, who has more right to make the point than most, said that 'religion deserves our fearless disrespect' and  people like Suzanne Moore in the Guardian seemed to suggest that we have a positive duty to disrespect religion, though I am still waiting for that paper to reproduce some of Charlie Hebdo’s finest on the subject of the prophet of Islam as opposed to its scabrous stuff about gay cardinals.

After Wednesday’s attack on Charlie Hebdo, an argument doing the rounds was that it would have been better not to publish cartoons that were deliberately provocative when the magazines had already suffered violent attacks. Why should the journalists put themselves and others, including Muslim policeman Ahmed Merabet, at risk of death? Now two people are dead in a kosher grocers in eastern Paris, perhaps those who thought that it unwise to publish aggressive cartoons can have a think again. Five or six people are believed to be being held hostage in the shop. The shop sells kosher food. Jews buy kosher food. The attackers appear to be killing people not for what they have been doing, but for who they are. Killed for being Jews.

Today’s Times investigation into how the Islamic State is encouraging young British women to marry into this terrorist organisation is chilling. It is also a reminder that social media is the jihadis’ recruitment tool of choice. What’s striking is that Facebook closed down the account of Aisha, one of the girls in the investigation, because of the material she was posting. Now, the crucial question is whether Facebook informed the authorities after closing these accounts. What riles the security services, as I said in a piece last month, is that this is not done routinely. Infamously, Facebook did not inform the authorities that it had closed down an account belonging to Michael Adebowale, the man who went on to murder Lee Rigby.

We knew and we knew years ago. Anyone who has been paying attention has known for a long time that the CIA committed appalling acts of brutality in the years after 9/11. Anyone who paid attention has also long known that the agency's torture regime - not too strong a way of putting it - produced very little in the way of useful intelligence. It was sadism masquerading as detective work; depravity disguising impotence and, in the end, the kind of programme that shames a nation. There are still some people who think it fine and dandy, still some people who think it's a lot of fuss over not very much. Still too many people who lack the courage to confront the truth. But we know better than that. We know the truth.