Matt Wright led our team listening to East London’s response to the Hebdo murders and cartoons of Mohammed.
Mayhem on the streets of Islamicised East London – that’s what you might have been led to expect, following the Paris massacre earlier this month and the ‘inflammatory’ publication of a further issue of Charlie Hebdo magazine in which the prophet Mohammed was depicted as a cartoon figure.
There have been dire warnings that both sides of the free speech divide were bound to react violently as soon as the controversy spilled over from the Continent.
But nothing could be further from the truth. When Rising East reporters went out to ask a range of East Londoners how they felt about religion, satire, and free speech, we heard contrasting views expressed in a consistently calm voice – the voice of all sorts of people continuing to get along together, despite their considerable differences on these issues.
‘I haven’t seen the image myself,’ began one Muslim teenager in response to the latest Hebdo cartoon. ‘As a Muslim, I know the image will be wrong, but I also know Islam is a peaceful religion.’ Referring to the Paris massacre, he added: ‘the reaction of those Muslim brothers was obviously wrong’.
Another young Muslim – in his early twenties and conservatively dressed, was unexpectedly liberal in his attitude to all religion: ‘There is only one God. There is no Christianity, no Islam, no nothing. Just God. And we are all human beings and we should respect and take care of each other regardless of race or background’.
A Muslim sixth-former, wearing a headscarf, emphasised that the cartoons should not have been published. Meanwhile her elder brother thought that ‘we shouldn’t be bothered’ by them. Despite their differences on this point, there was no sign of a family feud.
A middle-aged white woman said she was disgusted by the murders and the people who committed them. But she showed no sign of antipathy towards Muslims; she was diffident rather than draconian.
By contrast, two young women of Afro-Caribbean origin firmly believed that Charlie Hebdo going ahead and publishing the drawing of Mohammed crying was ‘the right response’ to the shootings. They realised that it was bound to be offensive to Muslims, but, one of them went on, it would have been worse to ‘bow down’ to religious pressure. However, she said this without bitterness or malice – as if in a measured debate with others holding decidedly different views.
Instead of the ‘mean streets’ of East London, she could have been speaking at the Oxford Union.
If there has been a post-Hebdo rise in Islamophobia, as some have reported, we found no evidence of it.
Matt Wright is Rising East’s Religions Editor. Additional reporting by Jasmine Wing.