Masked Muslims invaded the Paris office [1] of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo [2] and murdered a dozen cartoonists and journalists on Wednesday. The publication was an equal-opportunity insulter, goosing political figures and religions alike. But Muslims got their turbans out of joint when they saw Mohammed made the object of humor [3].
Below, the office of Charlie Hebdo was firebombed in 2011 [4] for the magazine’s satires of Mohammed, but editor Stephane Charbonnier refused to cower in fear [5], saying, “I prefer to die standing than living on my knees.” He was killed on Wednesday.
France is afflicted with at least five million Muslims [6] and they are remarkably touchy about any perceived affront to their religion, a belief system which westerners are supposed to respect despite its barbaric norms of headchopping innocents [7] and enslaving women [8]. The Islamic response is to condemn and attack free speech [9] as practiced in the west, and that behavior alone should make Muslims ineligible for immigration.
One remembers the 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh [10] on an Amsterdam street by a Muslim angry about an Islam-critical film, Submission [11]. The axe-wielding attack of a Somali was a close call on cartoonist Kurt Westergaard [12], who managed to escape into his “panic” room until police arrived. In 2013 cartoonist Lars Hedegaard narrowly escaped [13] an assassination attempt when the gunshot whizzed by his head after a jihadist posing as a delivery man came to the door.
In 2010, five Muslims were arrested for plotting a mass murder [14] at the office of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which famously published [15] a series of controversial Mohammed cartoons. So the idea in Muslim brains of attacking the office of a publication is not new, but the attackers’ success in killing a dozen in Paris today is deeply disturbing and shows that preventing jihad murders is not foolproof.
Some of France’s best cartoonists were gunned down [16]by jihadists in the recent attack. Left to right: Jean Cabut (“Cabu”), Stephane Charbonnier (“Charb”), Bernard Verlhac (“Tignous”), Georges Wolinski.
[17]
Your French phrase for the day (or year) should be: “Je suis Charlie” — I am Charlie, a phrase growing in popularity across France.
[18]
It’s similar to “I am Spartacus.” [19]