As all of you probably know, the french satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was the target of a terrorist attack. A group of Islamist terrorist stormed the offices of the magazine, and killed the people inside, as well as some policemen.
The reason?
The magazine had a history of publishing cartoons depicting, among other figures, Mohammed, the prophet of Islam.
There will be plenty of time for me to write about what happened, to point fingers, to demand action. For now, I think that the best homage that we can make to the people who were murdered, is to simply continue with their struggle for freedom of speech, for the right to offend, the right to say what others find despicable.
When asked about drawing and publishing these cartoons, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stephane Charbonnier said
“If you start by asking whether or not you have the right or not to draw Muhammad … then the next question is, can you put Muslims in the paper? And then, can you put human beings in the paper?
In the end, you can’t put anything in, and the handful of extremists who are agitating around the world and in France will have won.”
Well, let us never let them win.
And so, here are the cartoons (or at least some of them) that a bunch of savages, who will hopefully rot in jail, deemed enough justification to murder someone.
And just to add more fuel to the fire:
As Tommy Smothers said, “the only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.” We cannot let extremists, whatever religious, ethnic or political group they might come from, dictate the information we can create or receive.
Je Suis Charlie Hebdo!