{"id":119118,"date":"2020-10-30T13:32:19","date_gmt":"2020-10-30T12:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=119118"},"modified":"2026-01-16T16:39:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T15:39:43","slug":"the-french-soul-has-not-been-attacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2020\/10\/30\/the-french-soul-has-not-been-attacked\/","title":{"rendered":"Etienne Aug\u00e9: ‘The French soul has not been attacked’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Etienne Aug\u00e9 is the Principal Lecturer in the department of Media and Communication at ESHCC. After the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Etienne explained<\/a> why he thought that the paper was so important for French journalism. Now, five years later, his home country is experiencing another horror, first with the beheading of Samuel Paty, a teacher who used cartoons from Charlie Hebdo in his secondary school class to discuss freedom of expression, and this week with the murder of three people near a church which coincided with several arrests in France.<\/p>\n

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Etienne Aug\u00e9.<\/span><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>

\u201cSamuel was exactly my age (47), he was also a professor and also had a child who is the same age as my boy, so, I could definitely relate. I\u2019m disgusted, because he was killed for teaching critical thinking in France. That is unbearable. But I don\u2019t think our reaction should be that this was an attack on our way of life. The French soul is not being attacked, this was an isolated incident, I hope,\u201d Aug\u00e9 said in an interview with EM just two days before the attack in Nice. Even with this incident that followed shortly afterwards, his views on the matter have not changed. \u201cAs academics, it\u2019s our job to think and to communicate our knowledge. There\u2019s a lot we still don\u2019t know about both cases and we should take a step back before responding in a way that will only be harmful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isolated cases<\/h2>

Aug\u00e9 has worked and lived in many different countries, including Lebanon, which he notes is very religious. As he says himself, he tends to see religion differently than his fellow Frenchmen because of that. \u201cMany French are angry at certain types of Islam and it\u2019s not the first time that we have had to deal with someone who acts in the name of Allah. But after being extremely shocked, my second reaction was: \u2018Is it Islam or is it just some crazy guy who is fulfilling his own fantasy?\u2019 I tend to believe that we do exaggerate the weight of religion on these people. Muslims are the number one victim of terrorism in the world. We should therefore not focus on these isolated cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

'Clear case of propaganda'<\/h2>

Around the world, political tensions have increased as Turkish president Erdogan has alleged that the French president has \u2018mental issues.\u2019 This was in response to Macron who had declared Islam a \u201creligion in crisis\u201d after the murder of Samuel Paty by a Russian-Chechnyan Muslim extremist. \u201cUnfortunately, it is turning into a clash of civilizations, which some people really enjoy, but I don\u2019t,\u201d Aug\u00e9 continues. \u201cThis is a clear case of propaganda. When you have an unfavourable situation in your country, you divert the attention to something else. That is exactly what Erdogan is doing right now. He\u2019s posing as the defender of Islam around the world. And when you know Erdogan and the secular history of Turkey, this is quite ironic. Macron himself also did exactly what was expected of him: He declared war on a certain type of fanaticism. I do understand that this is what he must do as leader of the French people, even if I don\u2019t always approve of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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