Cartoons versus Kalashnikovs
Charlie Hebdo has been hit before. In 2006 its decision to reprint inflammatory cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, first published in Denmark, was described by Jacques Chirac, then France’s president, as a “manifest provocation”. In 2011 the magazine’s offices were firebombed after it published an issue purporting to be guest-edited by the Prophet. That did not deter it: despite pleas from some French politicians, it insisted on its right to free speech. This week, when the gunmen came, they reportedly called for the offending cartoonists by name.
The magazine had the right to publish everything it did, and French law is right to allow it to. There can be no “but” in that sentence. Even when a picture or opinion is imprudent or tasteless, unless it directly incites violence it should not be banned. Charlie Hebdolampoons all religions, not just Islam—but it would have the right to single out that faith if it wanted to, just as Islamists in Europe are entitled to denounce Western decadence if they so choose. In any case, there is a world of difference, and several centuries of liberal political thought, between giving and taking offence and killing people over it. Nothing can be done with a pencil or a keyboard that warrants a reprisal with a Kalashnikov.
This attack was more insidious than a random fusillade on a street or train. Part of the aim, probably, was to cow the Western media in their treatment of Islam. It must not. If the proper first response to the slaughter was outrage, after considering the argument that Charlie Hebdo made about free speech, the second response should be outrage, too.
Many observers will connect this fresh footage of gun-wielding men not to cartoons but to another kind of image: chaos in northern Nigeria, the snuff videos of Islamic State (IS) and Taliban-inflicted carnage in Afghanistan and Pakistan. All can seem part of a long, ongoing conflict between the values of the Enlightenment and obscurantist barbarism. For those who see things that way, the only solution is to fight back, by cracking down at home and engaging the enemy abroad.