je ne suis pas que Charlie

After being hurt by another, it is easy to become defensive and create a counter attack to protect oneself.  The ego tells us that someone has threatened our well being and that it must be defended.  We automatically put up the division of "us" and "them".  But who exactly is the "us" and who is the "them"?   What if we quieted our ego long enough to examine who is actually at fault and who will be hurt by a counter attack.  The truth is that we are all guilty of the crimes committed in this world and when we hurt another, whether the attack was justified or not, we are in turn hurting ourselves. 

France is devastated by the recent attack on "Charlie" and their reaction has been to spread the slogan "Je suis Charlie".  The words are not only carrying remorse for the victims but hatred towards the perpetrators.  The problem lies in the over generalization of perpetrator.  It has expanded to include a large portion of the Muslim population and immigrants.  This attack has fueled their desire to separate the Muslim population from their own.  Motivated by what they perceived as an injustice to their people in France the Muslims attacked the French journalists, but in the end, the greatest victim will actually be the Muslim population.

I had several French friends tell me that when they heard about the attack they cried all day for the victims.  I asked if they had also cried for the victims of 9/11 and of the terrorist attacks that happen in Africa and in the Middle East everyday.  They said that this was different because it was not only an attack on their fellow citizens, but on freedom of speech.  This got me thinking about my own reaction to tragedies.  Do I react with more remorse if something tragic happens to an American than I do if it happens to someone else?  Does it matter if the tragedy was motivated by a seemingly righteous cause?  

The same situation occurred in the U.S. after 9/11.  We saw ourselves as the victims of a horrible hate crime and in turn wanted to defend our country from the perpetrators.  However, in our counter attack, we made victims of more than just the guilty.  We labeled an entire group of individuals as suspect outsiders adding a constant challenge to their existence.  We used our own tragedy as a righteous cause to create more tragedies continuing the cycle of hateful acts.

The ironic thing about any attack, motivated or not, is that it makes victims out of us all.  There is never one guilt free party.  When one person is hurt, the world as a whole is hurt.  It is understandable that France is grieving the loss of 12 individuals, but it is not understandable that they would put more importance on this tragedy than on any other.  Just as it was not right for the U.S. to put more importance on our own tragedy of 9/11.  Our ego tells us that when we are attacked, we must defend ourselves, but to what end?  If we remove the idea of "us" and "them", then we can see that no body was attacking "us" and we can't fix it by retaliating against "them" because, in fact, we are both the "us" and the "them" and in hurting the other we hurt ourselves.