France has had not one but two beheadings in recent weeks, all in response to the ongoing Charlie Hebdo saga that is now before the courts.
Back in 2015, two brothers stormed the satirical news magazine’s offices and killed 12 people over its decision to publish multiple cartoons of the Islamic prophet.
The first beheading was of school teacher Samuel Paty, killed for showing some of the cartoons in a class discussion. The second saw three people killed at a church in Nice, with one of them beheaded, as the killer repeatedly shouted “allahu akbar.”
That’s a lot of people slaughtered all because of cartoons. Talk about a low barometer of offence.
The question we face right now, the one we are all confronted with whether we like it or not, is as follows: Is the problem here the fact people are drawing these cartoons or the violent reaction some people are having to those cartoons?
That’s it. It’s a pretty straightforward question. There should be no funny business in twisting it around and trying to change it into being a different question.
