I overheard a customer today say, "What happened in France is terrible, but..." As soon as she said 'but' I knew whatever came out of her mouth was going to be ignorant.
"But, you should expect trouble if you mock someone's religion. You should never take the Micky out of someone's religion."
My jaw physically dropped at this. Her comment had no concept of proportion. It seemed reasonable in her mind that if you write satire about Islam then you should expect a bullet in your brain.
Fucking ridiculous. Her comment nearly made me want to go and tell her that her custom was no longer welcome here.
The victim is not to blame when atrocities happen. Her view is unfortunately expressed too often in many arenas. A satirist drawing controversial cartoons is not to blame for psychopaths shooting him to death. A woman wearing a short skirt is not to blame for being brutally raped. A black man being shot dead is not to blame because he looked like he was carrying a weapon. The person being violently mugged is not to blame for wearing a nice watch.
It's a shitty world we live in when explain away a person's actions and then vilify the victims and, in turn, their grieving families.
Yes Charlie Hebdo writers and cartoonists did publish controversial pieces and yes some were pretty harsh, but that never justifies what happened. It shouldn't even have crossed their minds that by doing their job they were at risk of two people storming their offices and shooting them. Anyone who says, "Well they should have expected it," is basically a moron.
It's a terrible path to take when surviving victims are made to feel guilty for what happened to them. When we make a girl blame herself for being raped it makes me wonder what happened to the world. Please, let's stop justifying evil acts with victim blaming.
Peace. x
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