Je suis Charlie

We are Charlie. Toujours. Even after 10 years, France and Europe feels the shock of the terrorist attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. In total, 17 were killed.

Today, it is ten years ago that two masked men with Kalashnikovs attacked the Paris office of the renowned satirical magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’. They killed twelve people, famous cartoonists and editorial staff. For all freedom-loving readers, Charlie Hebdo is a bastion of freedom of expression and continues to fight for the freedom of the press.

Vigil in front of the French Embassy in Berlin, Germany on 11 January 2015. Photo by Informationswiedergutmachung - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

The terrorists Saïd and Chérif Kouachi exercised the killings during in just a few minutes and then managed to flee. Their accomplice Amedy Coulibaly killed a policewoman in Montrouge the next day, and another day later, four other people in a Jewish supermarket at Porte de Vincennes. During three terrible days, the three men caused shock and terror in the Paris region, the whole country and further onto the free World. On 9 January, the terrorists were finally killed by the police intervention force after a murderous journey during which they killed seventeen people.

The Charlie Hebdo magazine had printed Muhammad cartoons, despite all the Islamist threats. Cartoonist Luz survived by chance, because it was his birthday and he arrived late to the office with a cake, only seeing the attackers from afar. Luz created the next cover for Charlie Hebdo a week after the terrorist attack. He drew a crying prophet Muhammad, holding a sign with the iconic sentence ‘Je suis Charlie’.

Luz left the magazine’s office a few months later. He still lives under police protection at an unknown location. The open minded World will be assessing and discussing the outcome. Manifesting the freedom of expression, especially of satire and criticism of any important issue, no matter how sensitive it is to some people, turned out to come at a high cost. Today is a day to remember and honor those who were hit particularly hard by repercussions from reactionary and Islamist forces that want repression and submission rather than freedom.

It is a prime example of the dilemma of democracy. Freedom of religion, tolerance for diverse views on morality, leads to conflicts in the secular realm. However, threats of violence or parallel justice based on out-of-this-World violent practices are completely unacceptable in a free society. If religious or political groups turn to violence and practice or even sanction it, civil society must stand up to defend the right to live in peace and order, whatever opinions you may want to express.

This conclusion goes for both Allah- and Trump-supporters and everybody else.

It is not a human right to not be offended by what other people mean or express.

The Muhammad cartoons in Charlie Hebdo were partially inspired by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Charlie Hebdo reprinted their original already in 2006. It featured a competition for cartoonists back in 2005, wanting to manifest that this particular religious taboo was exactly that - a private religious matter for those who believe in such taboos. The publication of a page with a variety of cartoons caused an outrage in Muslim countries and a major diplomatic crisis. Violence erupted at a number of Danish embassies, but the main reaction was a consumer boycott of dairy products which eventually ran out of steam. However, Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who drew a bomb in the turban of Muhammad lived under police protection for the rest of his life and saw repeated attempts on his life, though ultimately died from natural causes. On one occasion, police were outside his house when a Somali man entered with an axe. Westergaard locked himself up in the panic room and avoided injury. His grandchild sat in the sofa and was not hurt either. The attacker was soon after shot by the police guard, when they realized what was going on.

In France, the attack led to a tightening of security measures around journalist activities and offices believed to be particularly exposed. Charlie Hebdo is still in existence but the office is not accessible, well protected. The Jyllands-Posten office at Copenhagen City Hall Square is open for appointments, but well guarded and with extremely high security measures for this country. At least one terrorist suicide attack on the office is known to have been prevented by the police and intelligence operations.

Further, in France, the killing of the teacher Samuel Paty in 2020 was also a misguided Islamist terrorist attack on something that was hyped and blown out of proportions by a thoughtless, irresponsible campaign on social media. Paty had shown the Muhammad drawings in his senior class, warning and explaining that those with religious objections could and should stay away from the session. He wanted to show real evidence and have a serious and open discussion in order to prepare his students for the World that we actually live in. He was killed by a 18-year-old Chechen Muslim refugee a few weeks later, not related to the pupils or the school, just eager to show religious fervor and prepared for extreme violence for that petty purpose which was ultimately self-promotion. Others have been sentenced for complicity of different degrees.

France has suffered more than its fair share of Islamist terrorist attacks. In the same year as Charlie Hebdo came the 2015 Bataclan attacks that killed 130 people and injured 416, almost 100 of them critically. The country was of course on high alert since the attack on Charlie Hebdo and on the Jewish supermarket. ISIL of Syria and Iraq claimed responsibility as a retaliation for earlier French airstrikes there. The attacks were planned in Syria and organized by a Belgian terrorist cell. Some of the attackers had entered or returned to Europe during the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis.