Statement of the Problem
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, France, in January 2015, with 8 journalists of 11 killed was the second worst attack on media, after the Maguindanao massacre in the southern Philippines on November 23, 2009 during which 30 journalists and 2 media workers were among the 58 people massacred.
The self-proclaimed jihadists claimed that Charlie Hebdo ridiculing Islam, including the printing of “blasphemous” images of the prophet, was the reason for which they targeted and killed the journalists, which elicited both right-wing racist and liberal muliticulturalist and secularist responses.
Note, however, that nowhere in the Quranic texts is the drawing of the prophet’s image per se banned. In fact, art historians point out that Muslims themselves have depicted the prophet in many illustrated books of history or poetry in the early Islamic period. Later hadiths have banned drawings for fear of idolatry.