In light of the recent attacks on Charlie Hebdo in France and the barbaric murder of more than 10 people there were a lot of accusations towards the Islamic culture as being shockingly primitive in its way of dealing with satire and how a small proportion of this religion is inevitably taught to act like animals in the face of offences such as what Charlie Hebdo was putting out.
There was of course people that commented and told the inevitable crusading proportion of the Catholic faith not to generalize and condone all Muslims for the barbaric act of few extremists. Some of these "peace-makers" were members of Charlie Hebdo itself. They are trying to mitigate ethnicism by implying that the killings were the consequence of a few crazy individuals and not the Islamic religion.
But how accurate is this really? What I see, and what I see greatly lacking in the media and the general public, is that the true consequence of this murderous incident was Charlie Hebdo itself. The killings occurred as a radical response to the "satire" of Islamic religion Charlie Hebdo is known to venture into. Charlie is said to target "political right wing, capitalism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam" according to NPR.org, but at what extent should ridiculing people, entities or their beliefs be accepted?
When I was still young my mother always taught me that if I did not want to get punched or assaulted at school I should never insult other people, not just to not get attacked, but because making fun of others or calling them names is wrong in itself. Charlie Hebdo did not apparently receive this message.
Even though the mocking of religions or famous figures is in itself harmful, in the sense that it does not kill nor physically injure anyone, it could still be a very damaging and spiteful endeavour. It is of course known that the satire issued by such media companies tends to mock radical, extremist or misguided behaviour by religious or famous figures, such as terrorism, racism, feminism and the like. However, one must ask if the act of ridiculing the main figures of religion is in fact combating these mal-behaviours, or is it in fact ridiculing and generalizing a whole religious group of people as being all terrorists?
It is rather ironic that in the aftermath of the incident that happened on the 7th of January 2015, Charlie Hebdo and the media at large are telling (to mostly Western Countries) to not get angry at Muslims in general, even though what they themselves were drawing about was mocking the whole religion (even if unintentionally, which would be a great overlook).
The problem here and the point I'm trying to make is thus that the consequences that brought about the killings of Charlie Hebdo's journalists were caused by Charlie Hebdo itself. This is not a matter of freedom of speech or not, this is a matter of ethnicism. Did Charlie Hebdo's caricatures of prominent religious figures imply ethnicism?
The majority of the Islamic community is not of course terroristic, and is not going to come at your doors with guns and shoot at you for drawing their prophet. But if their is a small proportion of this religion that is dangerous, is mocking them and insulting them the way to go in combating such a problem? Do the majority of "good" Muslims feel as if they are actually being respected when they see this satire?
Combating physical terrorism should not be done with verbal or visual terrorism. Same would go for any other religion.
No one dares enter a Christian church naked and bellowing profanities when that same venue is considered "holy" by the community. Doing so would probably result in a jail sentence. We must not forget that the Christian faith has had many flaws in the past, and that during the Inquisition in Spain, even failing to cite loyalty to the King or to your devotion in God would result in torture or death.
Today we are facing a similar situation were the new Inquisition is the underdog, yet instead of purging it with proper means we are poking it with a stick and pretending it will not retaliate.
