#dnaEdit: Outrage in Paris

The killing of the journalists at Charlie Hebdo, the satirical Paris weekly, including the editor and three of the top cartoonists and a columnist who is also an economist on Wednesday, has sent shock ripples across the Western world and in many other places. This murderous assault is seen as retaliation to the weekly reproducing Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad, showing him as a terrorist, in 2011. The weekly had its own cartoons which portrayed the prophet in a satirical vein to criticise the jihadis. One of them showed Muhammad being executed by a jihadi terrorist. The weekly had been equally critical and satirical towards Christianity and Judaism as well. One of the covers showed Jesus in a comic manner to make a point against present-day Christianity.

The incident has opened up yet again the debate on what we have come to believe as the basic feature of modern democracy —  freedom of speech. It seemed that the assailants have not only murdered the journalists of the weekly and the police; they have also challenged the belief in freedom of expression. France, which prides itself on secularism because it had fought a century-long battle during the 19th century with the domineering and near-dictatorial Roman Catholic Church, sees the cartoons depicting Muhammad as part of this freedom of expression. Not all of the French people necessarily agree with the cartoons but they feel that the weekly had the inalienable right to be irreverent. The rest of the western world sees it as one more instance of the continuing battle against jihadi terrorism which had begun with the attack in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. The sporadic terror attacks in London, Madrid and in The Hague through the decade had kept the jihadi challenge alive. The January 7 attack in Paris is seen as part of the jihadi terror series.  

The three masked men including Said and Cherif Kouachi, who are brothers and Algerians, and Hamyd Mourad are French-born. They are residents of Paris and its suburbs. The Kouachis have a jihadi background. Cherif according to French records was outraged by the United States attack on Iraq and the inhuman treatment meted out to Arab and Muslim prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. It is yet to be established whether the three acted on their own or they belong to a larger jihadi network which was tasked with the mission of killing Charlie Hebdo journalists. 

While the worldwide shock and anger at what has happened in Paris is justified, we have to decide whether this can generalised as an instance of clash-of-civilisations. If one were to see the murders as an incident with far-reaching cultural significance, then all Muslims and the whole of the Muslim world will have to respond to the question whether they believe in freedom, and the freedom of expression in particular. If the Muslims are unable to answer this in an unambiguous manner, then they will be told that they are indirectly endorsing the murders of Charlie Hebdo journalists by the three young Parisian Muslims. The other way is to see this as yet another instance of jihadi violence, and that the entire world of Muslims cannot be held morally responsible for it. It goes without saying that even as they would object to and resent the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the prophet, the Muslims would not murder the weekly’s journalists. Common sense dictates the second position to be the sane one.