Jason Stanley in the Stone:

“Yet, as the staff of Charlie Hebdo was aware, there surely is a difference, in France, between mocking the pope and mocking the Prophet Muhammad. The pope is the representative of the dominant traditional religion of the majority of French citizens. The Prophet Muhammad is the revered figure of an oppressed minority. To mock the pope is to thumb one’s nose at a genuine authority, an authority of the majority. To mock the Prophet Muhammad is to add insult to abuse. The power of the majority in a liberal democracy is not the power of monarchs, to be sure. But it is power nonetheless.”

Read the article here.

His point is important; it does make a difference whether you mock the symbols of the majority or the symbols of a minority that may have the feeling (and sometimes rightly so) that it is under attack.

By he forgets to add an important point: that assimilation is the capability and the desire to internalize other people’s ridicule.

And as I’ve said many times before: I believe that assimilation is the way to go for minorities.

So what’s assimilation? To say: I’ll make fun of me (and my gods and my prophets) before you can make fun of me (and my gods and my prophets) and I’m better at it than you.