Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Clemens Wergen at Die Welt has some home truths for the American media on this matter of refusing to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, even the new cover cartoon.

Today the French newspaper Libération published the new cover of Charlie Hebdo which will be on the newsstands on Wednesday. Yes, it is Muhammad again. He is shedding a big tear and holding a poster like so many people did in these days that reads “I am Charlie”. The title of the cover says “All is forgiven”. I can only imagine what amount of self conquest the surviving members of the Charlie Hebdo team had to muster to come up with a cover of such melancholic sweetness after they have lost 8 people, their most important editors and cartoonists among them. Anyone would have understood if they had had put all their rage and mourning into a biting and unforgiving cover. Except that they didn’t. They came up with a cover that speaks of the enlightened humanism Charlie Hebdo embodies, despite its at times scathing style.

Exactly. It’s a shatteringly moving cartoon because of that, and the failure to publish it spits in the faces of the people at CH.

And what did leading American media companies like NBC, CNN, the New York Times and others do? They again refused to show the cover. A disgrace to the surviving editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo  just as well as its dead members. It is a disgusting and morally appalling refusal to let Charlie Hebdo speak in its own distinctive voice.

It is not that I don’t understand where you, my American colleagues, come from. You are not  fans of the iconoclastic, anti-clerical tradition of Europe where fighting against the church during many centuries meant fighting against power or fighting against the legitimizing force allied to the absolute power of kings and emperors.

I am! Over here! And I’m not the only one. Don’t go thinking we’re all pious about the very idea of religion, because we’re not.

But way too damn many of us are. Still.

You didn’t need to, because your many and diverse faiths never were accomplices to the abuse of power in the way the old faiths of Europe were.

Never? That’s too strong. Slavery for instance got a lot of support from religion.

On the day after the attack the New York Times ran a story with two small covers of Charlie Hebdo as illustration. In order not to offend its Muslim readers, they didn’t print any of the Muhammad cartoons. “Under Times standards, we do not normally publish images or other material deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities”, the Times said in a statement.

Good grief – what a pathetic “standard” for a newspaper to hold. And it’s a stupid and mindless description of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, too, in fact it’s yet another example of finger-pointing victim-blaming. Their chief purpose was not “to offend religious sensibilities” – it was to undermine the taboo on treating religion like any other subject, and to mock it and have fun with it and sell the paper by doing that. They knew religious sensibilities would be offended, but that’s not the same as deliberately intending to do so.

“After careful consideration, Times editors decided that describing the cartoons in question would give readers sufficient information to understand today’s story.”  This “sufficient information” consisted among other things of two small covers of Charlie Hebdo that illustrated the Time’s story on the attack, one critical of socialist French President Francois Hollande and one critical of Marie Le Pen’s right wing Front National. That was absurd because the attackers, which were most probably sent by al-Qaida in Yemen, didn’t shoot Charlie Hebdo’s editors and cartoonists because their socialist or right wing feelings had been hurt. They went on a killing spree because Charlie Hebdo had ridiculed their prophet. And the Times and others basically conceded that they had a right to feel offended.

Maybe they were just afraid, Wergen concedes. Understandable if somewhat silly.

But would you please spare us in the future all this journalist bullshit about speaking truth to power? It is easy speaking truth to power if you criticize and ridicule you own democratic government which won’t kill you or put you in jail for speaking your mind or publishing unfriendly or over-the-top cartoons. But when you are ready to be intimidated by the new Fascist thugs in the world even in those little things and in such a crucial moment you’d better stop all that self-aggrandizing talk about the bravery of the free press. It is striking that the much maligned “new media” had much less inhibition to inform its readers about the issue at hand than traditional news outlets had.

That’s us. He means us. We’re new media. Good job, us.

Myself and a good number of my European colleagues stood with you and all Americans when you suffered the catastrophic attack of 9/11. Now, my dear American colleagues, I feel that many of you have betrayed your European colleagues in what can only be descibed as the 9/11 of European journalism which was perpetrated under the same misguided understanding of Islam that has attacked the American homeland 13 years ago. Where has your moral compass gone?

Ouch, that stings. But I can’t deny it. Hang your heads, New York Times, NPR, NBC. Stand up Wall Street Journal, USA Today, BuzzFeed.

Sameer Rahim at Prospect points out that it’s not straightforwardly true that – as so many media outlets glibly assert – “Islam forbids depictions of the Prophet.”

Although it’s true there is a strong iconoclastic streak in the religion, there is also a significant alternative tradition of representing the Prophet in Islamic history books and devotional manuals—a tradition not especially well known in the West because Muslim clergy have often condemned or tried to suppress it.

Nothing in the Koran forbids image-making but it does worry about idol-worshipping. A century after the Prophet died in 632, around the time his first biography was being circulated, religious authorities tried to avoid replicating what they saw as the misguided Christian adoration of Jesus and avoided painting him, especially in places of worship.

That’s quite ironic if true, because the attitude to Mohammed of way too many Muslims – and not just the “extremist” ones – is worship. That’s exactly what it is. That’s also what makes it so toxic. Sacranie trying to argue that dissing the prophet is comparable to dissing someone’s relative (which is obvious nonsense since the relative example is limited to one set of relatives while Mo is not limited in that way) is idol-worship and dangerous with it.

Modern western images of Muhammad are by no means always critical of Islam—as some who obsess over the 2006 Danish cartoons published byJyllands-Posten or the South Park episode from 2010 in which the Prophet appeared might think. (That episode was never aired by Comedy Central.) Along with Moses and Charlemagne, he is one of 18 lawgivers carved on the US supreme court building. Bizarrely, a German meat extract company produced some lovely postcards of the Prophet’s life in 1928 as part of a series of great figures in history.

I’ve long thought it would be a great idea to have an exhibition devoted to images of Muhammad—both Islamic and non-Islamic, devotional and polemical—to give some much-needed context to a debate that often seems to produce more heat than light. Under the current grim circumstances, though, I can’t imagine that happening.

Nah; too much fun to kill people instead.

Another tragedy – the Tamil writer Perumal Murugan has decided to withdraw all his books and never write again after being bullied by Hindutva groups.

A week after the police advised Tamil writer Perumal Murugan to leave his home in Namakkal following protests by caste- and Hindutva organisations against his book Madhorubagan, the author has announced that he will withdraw his entire body of work from publication and will never write again.

The announcement came after four hours of negotiations with the groups that had objected to the book.

“Negotiations” forsooth! What is there to negotiate?!

Last month, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh burnt copies of his novel  in Tiruchengode in Tamil Nadu on Friday, The Hindu reported, saying that parts of the book insulted the Kailasanathar temple, Shiva and female worshippers.  They claimed to be offended by the sexual permissiveness described in the book, which is set around 100 years ago at the time of an annual festival in Tiruchengode.

After repeated threats on the phone, the writer decided to flee his hometown a few days ago.

On Monday night, Murugan posted a note on his Facebook wall announcing his decision to stop writing altogether. He offered to compensate his publishers and readers if they incurred any loss and asked people to leave him alone.

Here’s a translation of that note by Aniruddhan Vasudevan – it’s heartbreaking:

Author Perumal Murugan has died. He is no god, so he is not going to resurrect himself. Nor does he believe in reincarnation. From now on, Perumal Murugan will survive merely as a teacher, as he has been.

He thanks all magazines, media, readers, friends,writers, organisations, political parties, leaders, students and anyone else who supported Perumal Murugan and upheld the freedom of expression.

The issue is not going to end with Madhorubagan. Different groups and individuals might pick up any of his books and make it a problem. Therefore, these are the final decisions that Perumal Murugan has taken:

1. Other than those books that Perumal Murugan has compiled and published on his own, he withdraws all the novels, short stories, essays and poetry he has written so far. He says with certainty that none of these books will be on sale again.

2. He requests his publishers – Kalachavadu, Natrinai, Adaiyalam, Malaigal, Kayalkavin not to sell his books. He will compensate them for their loss.

3. All those who have bought his books so far are free to burn them. If anyone feels they have incurred a waste or loss in buying his books, he will offer them a compensation.

4. He requests that he be not invited to any events from now on.

5. Since he is withdrawing all his books, he requests caste, religious, political and other groups not to engage in protests or create problems.

Please leave him alone. Thanks to everyone.

Pe. Murugan

On January 7 he wrote an eloquent defense and explanation of his work, and now he’s been driven to this.

People can be so sickening.

If you haven’t seen enough rebarbative assholitude enough lately, there’s always Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke. The lovely man did an interview with a lovely site called The New Emangelization – see what they did there?

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke:  I think there has been a great confusion with regard to the specific vocation of men in marriage and of men in general in the Church during the past 50 years or so. It’s due to a number of factors, but the radical feminism which has assaulted the Church and society since the 1960s has left men very marginalized.

Unfortunately, the radical feminist movement strongly influenced the Church, leading the Church to constantly address women’s issues at the expense of addressing critical issues important to men; the importance of the father, whether in the union of marriage or not; the importance of a father to children; the importance of fatherhood for priests; the critical impact of a manly character; the emphasis on the particular gifts that God gives to men for the good of the whole society.

The goodness and importance of men became very obscured, and for all practical purposes, were not emphasized at all.

Yup – men are the forgotten sex now. Why, look at the Catholic church itself! The pope is a woman, almost all the cardinals are women, most of the bishops are women, more than half of all priests are women –

Hahahaha totally kidding. The real numbers are zero, zero, zero, and zero. No Girls Allowed.

But outside the church though – yeah, there, women have stolen everything. Look at movies – it’s so hard to find a movie where a man even gets to talk, with all the women crowding them out. And in government? Corporations? Tech? Women women women, as far as the eye can see.

A child’s relationship with their father is key to a child’s self‑identification, which takes places when we are growing up. We need that very close and affirming relationship with the mother, but at the same time, it is the relationship with the father, which is of its nature more distant but not less loving, which disciplines our lives. It teaches a child to lead a selfless life, ready to embrace whatever sacrifices are necessary to be true to God and to one another.

The good cardinal seems to be confusing his religion with his memories of sitcoms from the 1950s.

I recall in the mid-1970’s, young men telling me that they were, in a certain way, frightened by marriage because of the radicalizing and self-focused attitudes of women that were emerging at that time. These young men were concerned that entering a marriage would simply not work because of a constant and insistent demanding of rights for women. These divisions between women and men have gotten worse since then.

Because marriage just can’t work unless it’s between a superior and an inferior. Equality is a non-starter.

Sadly, the Church has not effectively reacted to these destructive cultural forces; instead the Church has become too influenced by radical feminism and has largely ignored the serious needs of men.

I’ve noticed that! The church is so influenced by radical feminism – its attitude to abortion, its attitude to allowing women to be priests and bishops and cardinals and popes, its generosity toward nuns – it all adds up.

The Church becomes very feminized. Women are wonderful, of course. They respond very naturally to the invitation to be active in the Church. Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women. The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and have become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved.

Men are often reluctant to become active in the Church. The feminized environment and the lack of the Church’s effort to engage men has led many men to simply opt out.

That’s a pleasant way of seeing things – that if there are more women around, men will be so grossed out that they’ll leave. Thanks, Card.

Aspects of the Church’s life that emphasized the man‑like character of devotion and sacrifice have been deemphasized. Devotions that required time and effort were simply abandoned. Everything became so easy and when things are easy, men don’t think it is worth the effort.

Ah and women are lazy, too.

That’s enough Cardinal for me for the moment.

Tina Nguyen at Medialite reports on the photographic obliteration of women who had the temerity to be visible in the Paris march on Sunday. These brazen hussies were merely the chancellor of Germany and the mayor of Paris and the EU foreign policy chief, so what the hell did they think they were doing out there with the grown-ups?

Here’s the YouTube video of extracts from the Charlie Hebdo press conference.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyDIX-dNf5E

The Telegraph has clips from a press conference in which the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Luz describes his thinking about the cover for the January 14th issue.

I invoked all the talents of the magazine, all those who were not there any more, all those were still there, I said to myself, we must do a drawing that above all makes us laugh, and not one on the emotional charge we are victims of.

I had the idea of drawing this character of Mohammed, as it’s my character, because he existed, at least in people’s hearts, and in any case he exists when I draw him.

He is a character that got our offices burned, and a character who at first got us treated as the great white knights of the freedom of the press because the offices had burned down. Then a year later when we redrew the character we were treated as dangerous provocative and irresponsible. So this character led us to be called either white knights or provocateurs, whereas we are above all cartoonists who draw little people like children do.

The terrorists were once kids, they drew like us, like all kids, then one day they perhaps lost their sense of humour, perhaps their child soul able to see the world from a bit of a distance, because that’s Charlie – being able to draw the world from a small distance.

“Kids” is “gamins” – which is a much nicer word than “kids” if you ask me. The part where he says that is very affecting, as are other parts.

The only idea left was to draw Mohammed, I am Charlie. Then I looked at him, he was crying. Then above, I wrote: “All is forgiven”, and then cried. We had the front page, we had finally found this bloody front page. This was our front page.

This was not the front page the world wanted us to draw, it was our front page.

This is not the front page that the terrorists want us to draw, as there are no terrorists in it, just a man who cries: it’s Mohammed. I am sorry that we drew him again, but the Mohammed we drew is a Mohammed who is crying above all.

A Mohammed who is a human being, a mensch, not a murdering hate-machine. That’s probably not historically accurate but it’s a million times more generous than it had to be.

Libération reports on Charlie Hebdo’s exile at Libération and the process of putting together the January 14 issue.

They were working in a rush in a new space and without most of their own equipment, not to mention all the emotional turmoil. There are a bunch of potential covers tacked up on the wall for consideration.

Une très bonne nouvelle, quand même : plusieurs dessins de Riss (touché dans la fusillade et hospitalisé) sont arrivés, avec un jugement esthétique en forme de diagnostic : «Ah ben, ça va, il tremble de moins en moins.»

One piece of very good news, all the same: several cartoons by Riss (wounded in the attack and hospitalized) arrived and got a verdict that was both aesthetic and medical: “Oh great, progress, he’s shaking less and less.”

And then.

Vers 21 h 30, un petit bout de papier passe de main en main, et déclenche des cris, des rires et des applaudissements. Le rédacteur en chef Gérard Biard prend Luz dans ses bras, qui s’effondre. Après des heures d’essais, de déprime, de passages à vide, le dessin de une est validé. Le Prophète est Charlie.

Toward 9:30 p.m., a little scrap of paper is passed around, and sets off exclamations, laughter and applause. The editor in chief Gérard Biard takes Luz in his arms, where he collapses. After hours of attempts, of depression, of bad patches, one cartoon is endorsed. The Prophet is Charlie.

As always, correct any mistakes in the translation.

BuzzFeed has another (in addition to mine, I mean, she said modestly) useful collection of which media outlet did and which did not show the new cover of Charlie Hebdo.

1. Libération: Yes.

No surprise there, since Charlie is now working out of Libération’s office using Libération’s equipment.

2. CNN: No.

3. CBS News: Yes.

4. The Guardian: Yes.

Yes but with a warning at the top. Many points deducted.

5. Wall Street Journal: Yes.

It’s annoying when the WSJ does better than the Guardian.

6. NBC News: No.

“Doubling down” “of course risks further enraging” – a pox on you, NBC.

7. Mashable: No.

8. The Daily Beast: Yes.

9. BBC: No.

On the website, they mean. The Beeb has shown it on Newsnight and News 24 at a minimum.

10. AFP/Yahoo: Yes.

Again, no surprise there – AFP has been good on this. Notice the unapologetic forthright wording:

11. Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Yes.

USA Today yes; Business Insider yes; NPR no; Washington Post yes; New York Times no; LA Times yes; The Blaze yes; the Telegraph no; the Daily Mail no; the Huffington Post yes; Mic yes; and last…BuzzFeed, yes.

Merci, BuzzFeed.

The Beeb showed the new Charlie Hebdo cover on the air again, on BBC News 24 –

The Charlie Hebdo effect.

I’m out of time, but want to make sure I draw your attention to this great post by Yemisi: The Charlie Hebdo tragedy: The five crowds that are getting it wrong.

Gotta go.

See

you

tomorrow.

A comment by Lady Mondegreen aka Stacy, originally a comment on a Facebook discussion and posted here with permish.

Ironic racism/sexism can be harmful even if the intent is good.

I think it can be–sometimes. And sometimes it can be harmful and also good.

I suspect that a young African American child reading Huckleberry Finn could suffer emotional pain reading all that raw racism. I would never dismiss that pain. Neither would I ever, ever stand with the people who think Huckleberry Finn shouldn’t be taught, should be taken off the library shelves, or should be bowlderized.

I would hope people hurt by Twain’s ironic racism (for example) would, if they don’t get the context, have it explained to them. Having it explained wouldn’t take away all the pain. But the true cause of that pain is not in the irony. It is not in the representation of the problem.The cause is in the bigotry itself, its effects on society.

I’m starting to suspect there’s some shoot-the-messenger going on here. It’s like looking in a mirror, seeing a dangerous troll is standing behind you, and getting mad at the mirror. Maybe it’s a form of displacement. I feel pretty powerless to do much about all the hatred and bigotry in the world, but if I can displace my indignation onto a smaller target, I can feel like I’ve done something (and I’ve signalled that I stand against bigotry.)
Satire is a mirror. It reflects terrible things, sometimes.

Oh jeez – something I didn’t know – Caroline Fourest is a senior editor of Charlie Hebdo. NBC News talked to her.

A senior editor at Charlie Hebdo says she’s living a nightmare that she could never have prepared for despite years of threats against the magazine.

Caroline Fourest, who has contributed to the satirical magazine for years, told NBC News that she and the staff are working through their shock after the attack, and will show the world they will not be silenced.

…

Fourest told NBC News that the editorial staff had been debating cartoons to demonstrate the scope of racism against Muslims in France. That made the attack, an apparent act of revenge for insulting Islam, even harder to believe.

It makes the accusations of racism from ignorant Americans hard to believe, too.

Fourest said that the survivors are “of course” in shock but determined to put out the next issue, scheduled for Wednesday, and to show the world that they are not afraid. Continuing to publish will send the message that while “you can kill our friends, you cannot kill freedom of speech,” she said.

She defended the magazine’s caricatures, saying that they took aim without favoring any religion, and she asked other media to print the very cartoons for which Cherif and Said Kouachi sought revenge.

…

While Fourest said she has nothing to say to the killers, she appeared to take solace in how their plans backfired. A unity rally on Sunday became the largest demonstration in modern French history, and “Je Suis Charlie” has become a rallying cry around the world.

“They try to kill Charlie Hebdo, they make Charlie Hebdo the most famous newspaper in the world,” she said. “How stupid they are.”

The Streisand effect will have to be re-named the Charlie effect.

Other media are showing the new Charlie Hebdo cover though.

The Chicago Sun Times.

ABC (Australia).

This week’s publication, the first issue of the French satirical weekly since last Wednesday’s deadly attack in Paris, will be offered in 16 languages.

The surviving members of the magazine prepared the edition in the offices of French newspaper Liberation, which said three million copies would be printed.

“Charlie Hebdo will be in kiosks this Wednesday, January 14. Like it is every week,” Liberation said.

“The journalists of the weekly publication finished it at around 21.30 on Monday.”

Business Insider.

The first cover of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after a terrorist shooting at its Paris headquarters has been revealed. As expected, the cover defiantly features the Prophet Muhammed, in response to the radical Muslim gunmen’s efforts to silence the often controversial magazine.

The Guardian – but with a warning at the top.

Warning: this article contains the image of the magazine cover, which some may find offensive.

The front cover of Wednesday’s edition of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the first since last week’s attack on its offices which left 12 people dead, is a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad.

The cover shows the prophet shedding a tear and holding up a sign reading “Je suis Charlie” in sympathy with the dead journalists. The headline says “all is forgiven”.

The two gunmen who launched the attack on the magazine’s offices last Wednesday killed five of the country’s top cartoonists, saying that they wanted to avenge the prophet for Charlie Hebdo’s satire of him.

The grieving journalists who survived the murderous assault promised it would be business as usual at the weekly publication.

A record 3m copies are to be printed, in 16 languages, after the massacre triggered a worldwide debate on free speech and brought more than 4m people on to the streets of France in a unity march on Sunday.

They should have left the warning off.

The eight-page edition went to the presses on Monday night, according to Libération, the newspaper which offered Charlie Hebdo staff temporary working space following the attack.

The cover cartoon was drawn by the weekly’s cartoonist Luz who survived the massacre because he was late arriving at the office.

Then they do what I’m doing – give a rundown of some other media who show the cover.

Newspapers around Europe, including Libération, Le Figaro and Frankfurter Allgemeine have used the image online. The BBC showed it briefly during a newspaper review on Newsnight. In the US, USA Today and the LA Times ran the cover but the New York Times did not. The Guardian – which has not published other Charlie Hebdo covers with images representing the prophet – is running this cover as its news value warrants publication.

Good, and yes it does, but they should have skipped the warning.

So the cover of the next Charlie Hebdo appeared on Newsnight, but it doesn’t appear in the story on the BBC website. The story’s headline is “Charlie Hebdo’s latest edition to depict Prophet Muhammad” but the depiction itself is absent. No depiction for you.

The cover of the latest edition of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has been published in French media, and depicts the Prophet Muhammad.

The cover shows the Prophet holding a sign reading “I am Charlie”, below the words “all is forgiven”.

The magazine’s lawyer Richard Malka told French radio earlier that it was important to show that staff would “cede nothing” to extremists.

As always with these things…it doesn’t really “show the prophet” – it shows a crude cartoon of a guy in a turban. The cover doesn’t label him “Muhammed.” It’s all very abstract, as always.

But in any case – the BBC doesn’t show it in this story talking about it. So much for the idea that it’s important to show that nobody is ceding anything to the murderers. (They’re not “extremists.” They’re murderers.)

The slogan “Je suis Charlie” or “I am Charlie” was widely used following Wednesday’s attack on the magazine, as people sought to show their support.

Three million copies of Wednesday’s edition are being printed. Normally only 60,000 are available each week.

Mr Malka told France Info radio: “We will not give in. The spirit of ‘I am Charlie’ means the right to blaspheme.”

Survivors of the massacre have been working on the magazine from the offices of another French title, Liberation.

Five of Charlie Hebdo’s top cartoonists were killed in the attack.

The new edition will be created “only by people from Charlie Hebdo”, its financial director, Eric Portheault, told AFP news agency.

Contributions from other cartoonists were declined.

Here’s the cover again, in case you’re missing it already.

Newsnight showed the new Charlie Hebdo cover. Andrew Copson took a picture.

Daily Kos has a great collection of cartoons by Cabu for Charlie Hebdo – anti-racism cartoons to be specific.

Below are cartoons drawn over the past several decades by Cabu, one of the most emblematic cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo (if not the most). Cabu was murdered along with his colleagues this past week. He was 75 years old.

Although no media outlet in the US will show you these images, they can all be found online with a simple Google search.

“No to racist identity checks.”

That’s Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Front National, saying “We want to be able to go out at night without being afraid!” He doesn’t mean without being afraid of white supremacist gangs armed with clubs.

See Daily Kos for the rest.

H/t Kausik

Charlie Klendjian has an eloquent blast of fury at all the what-abouttery and they-were-racistsism over the past five days.

Over the last five days I have listened patiently to the most extraordinarily confused and painful discussions on the rights and wrongs of murdering people who draw cartoons. What an odd response our public discourse has generated towards what is, to my mind at least, a moral issue of the most blinding clarity.

It is to me too, but it might not be. If Charlie Hebdo had been an unquestionably racist xenophobic immigrant-bashing magazine, affiliated with a far-right organization and running editorials demanding expulsions and closed borders – then the moral issue would not be so blindingly clear; not to me. I would agree that people who drew cartoons for such a magazine shouldn’t be murdered, but I would not express any kind of solidarity with them. I wouldn’t consider them colleagues or allies. I wouldn’t mourn them.

But that’s not the case. That makes all the difference.

The one free speech scenario which is the most relevant here (and it’s blasphemy, just in case you’ve already forgotten), seems to be the one everyone is now discussing the least.

I’m starting to get the impression people don’t want to talk about the problem facing us. And that, to me, is a big part of the problem.

I have heard the most exquisitely manicured theories about “marginalisation” and “stigmatisation” and I have heard dissertations about conditions in French suburbs, and also about foreign policy – even though the attackers themselves left us in no doubt about the motives for their savagery by announcing proudly that they had avenged their prophet, just before speeding away in a car for their date with death a couple of days later at the hands of French commandos.

And who else would get that sort of treatment if the Kouachi brothers had had the power? Muslims. Muslims who weren’t of exactly the right kind, Muslims who opposed IS, Muslims who didn’t want people like the Kouachi brothers in authority over them.

I have also heard endless discussions about whether the magazine Charlie Hebdo and its noble cartoonists were “racist”. This is nothing new or unsurprising. A discussion about any aspect of Islam is simply not possible without a discussion about racism. The default assumption when criticising Islam is that you are a racist, and it is up to you to prove a negative: that you are not racist. It is not up to the person making the accusation to produce any evidence of racism. For those of us who are still alive, being subject to this reverse-burden-of-proof is highly annoying, intimidating, time-consuming, exhausting and potentially career-ending – and that is its purpose. But then at least we’re still alive to defend ourselves from the smears.

Yes. That is a luxury and a privilege.

Even if we assume for a moment that the cartoonists were racist – and I have seen no evidence whatsoever that they were – this changes things not one jot. In a secular liberal democracy, holding and expressing unpleasant views is not punishable by the contents of an AK-47 anyway. If that were the case then there would be some very nervous imams, “scholars” and “community leaders” in the UK that I can think of.

Well, again, for me it does change things several jots – that is, it would if we assumed it for a moment. It would change things. Of course it wouldn’t change the fact that in secular liberal democracy, holding and expressing unpleasant views is not punishable by death, but it would change my attitude to and feelings about the people killed.

I’m not good at isolating the principle of free speech and defending it no matter what. I’m not good at being consistent in that way. I can easily defend the principle that racism should not be punished by murder, but that’s a separate issue. The issue is one of solidarity: I am in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, and I would not be in solidarity with a far-right racist xenophobic counterpart.

There are problems with failing to be consistent on this, because it can equate to just carving out exceptions for one’s own pet category, and if everyone does that, so much for free speech. I’ve never found any solution to this problem.

The endless discussions about the cartoonists’ alleged “racism” have generated an elaborate sideshow and also smeared the memory of some tremendously brave and inspirational individuals. These individuals were valiantly holding the line for free speech, and therefore for freedom itself, on behalf of everyone. Their bodies are barely cold. These people have been sold out in the most spectacular fashion. What a way to honour their bravery.

No well-informed commentator is making the case for completely limitless free speech. Even in mature, secular democracies like our own free speech does of course have its limits. But the point here is that one of those limits is not and must never be “offence”, so any discussion of whether the cartoons were offensive is completely pointless anyway. Nor is one of those limits whether someone might shoot you or hurl a bomb through your office window because they don’t like what you say.

That I agree with, no quibbles.

Condemning murder is the easy part. Any fool can do that. The hard part, for far too many people, is affirming the right to free speech – specifically the right to cause offence and in this case to depict Mohammed. Hashtags and strongly-worded condemnations and marches and selfies and calls for “solidarity” are all well and good, but they are the bare minimum we should expect. If people are not also willing to unequivocally defend – and actually physically exercise – the right to depict Mohammed then it’s all a bit #hollow.

Is that an imam on the cover of a book I co-wrote? Or is it Mohammed himself? Hard to be sure – photographs of Mo are so scarce.

Ah, Fox News. As an American, I apologize to the world for Fox News. (Or should I demand that Australians apologize to us?) An actual news organization, the BBC, reports on a faux pas from yesterday.

An American terrorism commentator has apologised for describing Birmingham as a “Muslim-only city” where non-Muslims “don’t go” during a Fox News interview.

Steven Emerson told the channel that in London “Muslim religious police” beat “anyone who doesn’t dress according to Muslim, religious Muslim attire”.

He later issued an apology for his “terrible error”.

His comments have come in for ridicule, with the hashtag #FoxNewsFacts trending on Twitter.

Ridicule? Can you do that? Someone might misunderstand.

On social media, Mr Emerson has been the butt of jokes, while he has been accused of “speaking nonsense” by people posting on his investigative website.

One Twitter user said: “As someone born and raised in Birmingham, I must admit there was a pressure to read the Kerrang.”

“I was supposed to go to Birmingham last week but I forgot my passport,” said another.

Risky, very risky. People might actually start canceling trips to Birmingham because of these tweets.

The Guardian’s Simon Ricketts on #FoxNewsFacts

I was at home and the video of the Fox News “expert” Steve Emerson had popped up on my Twitter feed and people were rightly expressing their disbelief at what he had said.

I thought it might be funny to counteract the anger with silliness, so I wrote a tweet and stuck the hashtag (#FoxNewsFacts) on it.

Sometimes the best response to such nonsense is satire and mockery, rather than anger and outrage.

It is? I thought responding to nonsense with satire and mockery was racist and colonialist and bad.