With the one-month anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo shooting fast approaching, Paris police have decided the greatest threat to the public comes not from Islamic terrorists, but from 8-year-old boys.
According to the New York Times, last Wednesday police officials in the French city of Nice brought in for questioning an 8-year-old boy who allegedly made comments in school defending the Charlie Hebdo gunmen.
The questioning is the latest in a series of moves by French officials to crack down on speech they say supports terrorism.
This month, a French humorist is set to stand trial for a provocative Facebook post regarding the Jan. 7 shooting. At least two men already have been sentenced to prison time for making similar statements in the real world, and French prosecutors say they are investigating as many as 100 other people.
And apparently, the terrorist threat comes not just from one 8-year-old, but from all schoolchildren.
Following the refusal of many students to observe a moment of silence in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the New York Times reported that the French government will invest about $80 million this year on “moral and civic training” for students.
Moral and civic training? Yikes.
Granted, the program is intended to fight racism, anti-semitism and “any form of discrimination.” But there is a distinctly dystopian ring to these proceedings.
Add to the program a healthy dose of forced nationalism — in the future, classroom activities will include singing “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem. Furthermore, “any behavior which will question the values of the republic and the authority … will be systematically signaled to the school principal” and will be followed by an “educational dialogue with parents.”
What we are seeing in France is representative of Western Islamophobia bordering on hysteria. Indoctrination, thought policing: It’s a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream.
The French government is doing terrorists’ work for them. In a fit of fear, France has met the attack — one intended as an attack on the freedom of speech — by imposing strict limits on that very freedom.
But as easy as it is to point out the absurdity of France’s Islamophobia, the same paranoia threatens to take hold of the United States.
Last November, Alabama voters passed a ballot measure intended to prevent Sharia law from being considered in court cases. The measure revealed not only a staggering ignorance of how the legal system works, but also an irrational fear of Muslims.
Just last month, Duke University was forced to backpedal on allowing Muslim students to sound their call to prayer from the campus bell tower. The act was intended to foster tolerance, but Duke canceled its decision after receiving threatening phone calls.
The United States is not yet France, but in our fear, we are inviting our government to restrict free speech in the same way.
The violent acts of terrorists are not in themselves intended to bring down a government or conquer a nation. By definition, they are intended to instill fear in a population. As we have seen in France and in some instances in the United States, that tactic appears to be working.
But we are better than that. Americans have the courage to resist Islamic terrorists by refusing to succumb to Islamophobia.
Those who would instill fear in our population seek to do so by undermining the unity of Americans. But if we can accept and embrace each other regardless of religion, terrorists will never win that fight.
It’s either that, or we start rounding up our 8-year-olds. I know Homeland Security has some questions for them.
Alex Mendoza is a 22-year-old political science and international studies senior from Baton Rouge. You can reach him on Twitter @alexmendoza_TDR.