IN 2011 Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper, was firebombed. Its editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, was asked if he could understand that moderate Muslims might have been offended by its cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. “Of course!” he replied. “Myself, when I pass by a mosque, a church or a synagogue, and I hear the idiocies that are spoken in them, I am shocked.” Charlie Hebdo kept publishing such images. On January 7th Mr Charbonnier and 11 others were murdered by radical Islamists for their “offence”. The paper’s actions were a sign of defiance. But they also reflect France’s free-speech law, which protects commentary on religion, even when it insults or mocks.
The reason lies in French history. Blasphemy laws carried the death penalty before the 1789 revolution, but were scrapped in 1881 as part of a bloody struggle against the Catholic church. Such latitude is not granted to incitement to racial or religious hatred, which was made a crime in 1972, partly as a response to a rise in attacks on Algerians. Holocaust denial was outlawed in 1990, and “apology for terrorism” last year. There is a “fundamental difference”, declared the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, in a speech to parliament on January 13th, between the “freedom of impertinence” and “anti-Semitism, racism, apology for terrorism, Holocaust denial”.