LE FIGARO S’EXCUSE POUR LA PUBLICATION
DE L’ARTICLE ISLAMOPHOBE
[FIGARO APOLOGISES FOR THE PUBLICATION
OF ISLAMOPHOBIC ARTICLE ]

23 septembre 2006 (Agence PAF) - Monsieur Pierre Rousselin, directeur-adjoint de la rédaction du Figaro a exprimé à Al Jazeera, chaîne d’information arabe, ses regrets concernant la publication d’un article islamophobe et haineux signé par Redeker, paru dans le Figaro le 19 septembre 2006.

M. Rousselin a déclaré que la publication d’un tel article est une erreur, il a aussi affirmé que ce texte n’exprime pas l’avis du journal ; il a été publié dans le cadre d’une tribune libre qui n’engage que son auteur.

[M. Pierre Rousselin, deputy editor of le Figaro expressed to Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel, his regrets concerning the publication of an islamophobic and hateful article signed by Redeker, published in le Figaro on September 19, 2006.

Mr. Rousselin declared that the publication of such an article is an error, he also affirmed this text does not express the opinion of the newspaper; it was published within the format of an opinion column that only speaks for its author]

Figaro has removed M. Redeker's now offending article from its Web site. However, Fausta's Blog has tracked down the original at Judeoscope. She also provides a halting translation of the article in its entirety.

M. Redeker in a correspondence to André Gluksmann:

It's quite sad. I exercised my constitutional rights, and I am punished for it, even in the territory of the Republic. This affair is also an attack against national sovereignty – foreign rules, decided by criminally minded fanatics, punish me for having exercised a constitutional right, and I am subjected, even in France, to great injury.

[Hat tips The Brussels Journal, Fausta's Blog via ¡No Pasarán!]

Whether you agree or no with M. Redeker's characteizations of Islam, its prophet, or its agenda, well, we hope you would agree that he has a right to have these views published.

The truth is this right is not immediately apparent anymore. Polite democracies have banjaxed their expressive freedoms with vague and unworkable hate speech laws. France has a clutter of speech laws. These laws have a specific context such as insulting the president* or minorities, religionists, feminists,** denying the Holocaust,*** and the in-the-works Armenia genocide denial.† All these laws share a common establishing principal, which is, the state can determine what opinions can be publicly held.

You do not have to support any of these proscribed opinions to decry the state's authority to police them. The principle involved has a restless generalizing energy. The state easily enough will find other obnoxious opinions to ban -- backed by good reasons to smooth out the polity, get us all thinking correctly, politely. And one day you will wake to find it has criminialized something said in all innocence the day before.

And then M. Redeker will not seek out the police, they will seek him.

* LOI du 29 juillet 1881: Loi sur la liberté de la presse (version consolidée au 19 avril 2006): Chapitre IV, Paragraphe 2, Article 26

† LOI n°2001-70 du 29 janvier 2001 already legislates the Armenian genocide as history. Curiously, competence to legislate history was the very thing that earlier this year sunk LOI n° 2005-158 du 23 février 2005, which sought a positive presentation of French colonialism.

PFFT (What is this?): Spineless Figaro 4 | M. Redeker's opinion as hate speech under current law 4 | Rayonnement français 0