It is still popular in some quarters to attribute Islamic terrorism to Western policies toward the Middle East. The jihadists are provoked by America’s support for Israel or its war in Iraq, it is claimed. Or by European colonialism of yesteryear. Or even by present attempts to roll back the Islamic State.
Well, the jihadists are provoked by many things, but one of their main objections to the West, we have been reminded yet again, is its freedom. The jihadists object strenuously to free speech.
Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and one of 12 people murdered Wednesday by terrorists determined to silence his publication, practiced a form of journalism that is not everyone’s cup of tea. It was brash, biting, provocative, sometimes juvenile and offensive. But it was also in the proud tradition of the brutally satirical and outrageous journalism that is the birthright of everyone who lives in a free society.
And the fact that he and his colleagues directed their biting wit occasionally to commentary and cartoons that ridiculed aspects of Islam also meant they were not mere pranksters or provocateurs. They were also phenomenally brave.
They stayed their course in the face of rebukes by government officials and even fellow journalists, and despite a destructive bombing of their offices in 2011.
They died as martyrs for free speech and Western values.
Many people find the ridicule of religion offensive, as indeed it can be. But free speech does not — must not — depend on the consent of those it targets, or it is not free speech at all.
And yet time and again in the past few decades, Islamic militants and their supporters have threatened vengeance or perpetrated violence against writers, artists and filmmakers whose work they found offensive or blasphemous.
From Salman Rushdie and Theo van Gogh to the Danish cartoonists of the last decade to Charbonnier and the brave journalists and police at Charlie Hebdo — as well as many others besides — the targets of intolerance only keep expanding.
Charbonnier — or Charb, as he was called — once declared he’d “prefer to die standing than live on my knees.” It sounded melodramatic, but it was not. And the West will require much more of such resolution, for many years, to keep the Islamist radicals at bay.
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