{"id":9529,"date":"2015-01-08T04:55:52","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T04:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=9529"},"modified":"2015-01-08T04:55:52","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T04:55:52","slug":"charlie-hebdo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/charlie-hebdo\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Hebdo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hebdo\"<\/a>Cross-posted on the Corner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The revolting terrorist assault on Charlie Hebdo<\/em> today is designed to intimidate for the future as much as to \u2018punish\u2019 for the past.<\/p>\n

And I suspect that it has, to some degree, been encouraged by opinion in Europe that has gone along with the idea that, when it comes to Islam, certain things must not be written, said or shown.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s part of something I posted on the Corner in 2007<\/a>. It concerned the earlier decision by the editor of Charlie Hebdo<\/em> to republish the Danish Mohammed cartoons . He was quoted (in part) by the Wall Street Journal<\/em> as follows:<\/p>\n

I invited my colleagues from the daily and weekly press to republish the Danish cartoons, too. Most of them published some of them; only L\u2019Express<\/em> did in full. Before publication, I was pressured not to go ahead and summoned to the H\u00f4tel Matignon to see the prime minister\u2019s chief of staff; I refused to go. The next day, summary proceedings were initiated by the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France to stop this issue of Charlie Hebdo<\/em> from hitting newsstands. The government encouraged them, but their suit was dismissed.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I noted at the time, \u201cThe government encouraged them<\/em>.\u201d <\/p>\n

And in a piece<\/a> the previous year, I wrote this:<\/p>\n

Jacques Chirac was quick to condemn the republication of the Danish cartoons in Charlie Hebdo, an iconoclastic French weekly, as an \u201covert provocation\u201c, but was able to leave the dirty work to others. The French Council of Muslims, a body set up with official support, is reported to be organizing the prosecution of poor Charlie, quite for what remains unclear, but doubtless the Council\u2019s lawyers will be able to find something useful in France\u2019s laws against \u201chate speech\u201d or any number of other offenses dreamt up by the enforcers of multiculturalism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Responsibility (moral and legal) for today\u2019s murders lies unequivocally with the criminals who butchered the innocent, but it\u2019s hard not to think that they went about their killings knowing that intimidation has been shown to work.<\/p>\n

I concluded that piece, which mainly concerned the reaction elsewhere in Europe to the stance taken by the Danes, as follows:<\/p>\n

Denmark, and its tradition of free speech, has been left to twist in the wind, trashed, abused, and betrayed. An article published in Jyllands-Posten<\/em> (yes, them again) on Friday revealed clear frustration over the way that the country is being treated. It\u2019s in Danish only, but one phrase (\u201cYtringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed er ytringsfrihed. Der er intet men.\u201d) stands out, and it deserves to be translated and repeated again, and again, and again: \u201cFree speech is free speech is free speech. There is no but.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If only.<\/p>\n

And to the victims today, slaughtered for the \u2018crime\u2019 of free expression, RIP.<\/p>\n

This is a terrible day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted on the Corner. The revolting terrorist assault on Charlie Hebdo today is designed to intimidate for the future as much as to \u2018punish\u2019 for the past. And I suspect that it has, to some degree, been encouraged by opinion … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15,711],"tags":[51,434,1108,456,50,804,684],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9529"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9532,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9529\/revisions\/9532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}