Newspapers, novelists and scholars across the globe seek to make sense of the murders in Paris and their implications
Flowers and other tributes to those who killed are laid outside the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris on Thursday. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP
Anne Penketh in Paris and Tania Branigan in Beijing
Thursday 8 January 2015 06.56 EST
French newspapers have united in condemning the killing of journalists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo as an unacceptable assault on freedom of expression.
Le Parisien’s front-page headline on Thursday read: “They shall not kill freedom”. For Le Monde, Wednesday’s attack was “The French 9/11.”
The leftwing Libération headline “We are all Charlie” reflected the Twitter hashtag #jesuischarlie (I am Charlie), which expressed worldwide solidarity after the attack. Nine journalists, a maintenance worker and two police officers lost their lives in the shooting at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo.
Le Figaro ran a giant headline “Liberty assassinated”, and commented in a front-page editorial that “this is war. A real war, not by soldiers, but by shadowy assassins, methodical and organised assassins whose quiet savagery freezes the blood.” The rightwing paper called for society to unite against the jihadist threat, and for the tightening of “complacent” laws that had allowed religious fanatics to hijack the internet.
Striking a different tone, Libération’s editorial by it editor, Laurent Joffrin, said that the attackers “wanted to take the war into our newsrooms. We shall not wage war. We aren’t soldiers. But we shall defend our knowhow and vocation: to help the reader to feel like a citizen.”
Media organisations, scholars and others around the world sought to make sense of the murders in Paris and their implications as the news spread. While some searched for causes and others for solutions, the overwhelming message was of solidarity with the victims and Charlie Hebdo.
The Daily Mail said in an editorial: “If liberty is to mean anything, it must include the freedom to mock, offend or question the beliefs of others, within the limits of democratically decided law.
“On any other day, the Mail would feel only distaste for a French magazine with a history of sniggering at faiths held sacred by billions worldwide. But today, freedom lovers everywhere, whatever their religion, should proclaim the slogan of solidarity with the murdered staff of Charlie Hebdo: ‘Je suis Charlie!’”
Ross Douthat, blogging at the New York Times website, went further by arguing that while “under many circumstances the choice to give offense (religious and otherwise) can be reasonably criticized as pointlessly antagonising, needlessly cruel, or simply stupid … The legitimacy and wisdom of such criticism is generally inversely proportional to the level of mortal danger that the blasphemer brings upon himself.
“When offences are policed by murder, that’s when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed.”
Many expressed concern about potential reactions to the massacre and a backlash against the Muslim community in Franceand further afield.
“It is absurd to suggest that the way to avoid terrorist attacks is to let the terrorists dictate standards in a democracy,” said an editorial in the New York Times. “This is also no time for peddlers of xenophobia to try to smear all Muslims with a terrorist brush.”
British novelist Hari Kunzru tweeted: “Islamists use old Leninist tactic: attacks like #CharlieHebdo intended to sharpen contradictions. Calls for extreme responses fall into trap … Watch Fox and similar whip up frenzy, completing the other half of the terrorists’ work for them. Resist this.”
Yascha Mounk, a fellow at the thinktank New America, wrote at Slate that “while the European far right points to Islamic terrorism to exclude and malign all Muslims, the European left responds by refusing to recognize how fundamental a challenge Islamic terrorism represents (or that it is inspired by Islam at all).”
On the New Yorker website, George Packerstressed that many Muslims had immediately condemned the killings and dismissed those who sought to blame the theological content of Islam for the attack.
But he added: “Islam today includes a substantial minority of believers who countenance, if they don’t actually carry out, a degree of violence in the application of their convictions that is currently unique.”
Ajaz Ashraf, writing at the Indian website First Post, blamed totalitarian regimes in the Muslim world for fostering such violence.
He cited the Qur’an in support of the idea that “words should be used against words and cartoons against cartoons, not bullets and bombs”. But he said despotic rulers sought to impose their own reading of the sacred text as they crushed opposition, while their opponents interpreted it to justify their militant opposition.
“Since the sociopolitical context in which the contest for defining Islam isn’t democratic, the actors in the drama have sought to violently impose their version of ‘true Islam’ on people, demanding their adherence under duress,” Ashraf wrote.
Nicholas Kristof in the New York Timespointed out: “The vast majority of Muslims of course have nothing to do with the insanity of such attacks – except that they are disproportionately the victims of terrorism.”
He noted that Wednesday’s most lethal terror attack was a car bomb outside a police college in Yemen, possibly planted by a group affiliated to al- Qaida, which killed at least 37 people.
In Britain, the Sun focused on what should come next. In an editorial is called for an aggressive response to terrorists who “cannot be understood. Only condemned, protected against and fought.
“Intelligence, including the use of the RIPA anti-terror law for its intended purpose, is our best defence. Yet liberals still fret over the perceived assault on civil liberties of spooks analysing emails.
“Yesterday Paris experienced a REAL assault on their liberty: maniacs machine-gunning cartoonists.”
It also said it was crucial for allied ground forces to tackle Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq and Syria and that moderate Muslims should expose and combat extremism.
“They must steer their kids away from the evil, insane idea that Allah wants them to kill in his name. They must teach them too that free speech is a cornerstone of our democracy,” the Sun said.
In China – where the vast majority of those commenting on microblogs and websites condemned the attack – Song Luzheng of the Chunqiu Institute, which has been highly critical of the west, questioned whether Charlie Hebdo should have been allowed to publish such material.
“In hindsight, such press freedom not only does not help solving conflicts between different races, it aggravates them. Beside, does press freedom include the freedom to offend other people’s belief? From this point of view, it’s a bless for our nation that China does not have such press freedom.”
In an editorial, the nationalist Global Times said: “Many Muslims living in the west are aggrieved at not being respected and trusted and some western media satirise the prophet – westerners think it’s ‘free speech’ and some people regard guarding this freedom an act of upholding western values … Western politicians, more often than not, for the sake of winning votes, are reluctant to persuade the media to be more restrained.”
It added that western society was not very alert to the need to avoid over-simplifying inevitable conflicts as religious or racial in a diverse society, leading to their escalation.
But Hu Xijin, the editor of the Global Times, added on his microblog: “We should have more sympathy for Paris. Nobody should publicly display their gloating … All terrorism has ‘deep-rooted reasons’, but however many these reasons are, they are not the fundamental cause of this event. The west should reflect on itself, but the condemnation of the attackers should be unconditional.”
Elsewhere, people asked what future free speech and satire had following the attacks.
“Though the self-righteous have killed the satirists they will never annihilate satire itself … From now on, Charlie Hebdo will be the rallying point for all those who cherish life and laughter over the death-cult of sanctimonious gloom,” wrote the historian Simon Schama in the Financial Times(subscription).
“Just because the unhinged perpetrators are murderers does not mean they are also not clowns.”
But Amos Biderman, cartoonist for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, was profoundly pessimistic (subscription).
“The bad guys have won – those guys from the Islamic Jihad, al-Qaida, the Islamic State, whatever you want to call them. They’ve beaten us big time in the battle for freedom of expression,” he wrote.
“Now there is no cartoonist or publisher who would dare start up with them. They’re all trembling in fear. Personally, I’ve felt threatened ever since the storm over the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad in 2005. I don’t go near the subject.”
Joe Randazzo, former editor of the Onion, urged people not to be cowed in a commentary for MSNBC. “You cannot kill an idea by murdering innocent people – though you can nudge it toward suicide. That is the real threat: that we’ll allow our fear, or our anger, to kill ourselves,” he wrote.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/08/media-charlie-hebdo-attack-freedom-of-expression
