It is France’s arrogant secularism that is the truly intolerant ‘religion’. The men who carried out the brutal attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, and on the deli, who combined killed 17 people, are brutal murderers. My heart goes out to the loved-ones of the victims. But that doesn’t mean Charlie Hebdo was right to publish its depictions of the Prophet Mohammed, either in recent years or yesterday. That wasn’t courage, that was ignorance, particularly in the context of France, in which Muslims are an embattled minority; they represent between 5% and 10% of the population. It wasn’t courage to attack a religious figure in a country that is ring-fenced with laws defending its secularism, and in which a young Muslim girl can’t even put on her head-scarf as she dresses for school. Who is more courageous? The editor and his cartoonists in their city-centre office, feeding the French metropolitan elite what it wants, or the young Muslim girl who puts on her headscarf today and knocks on a door looking for a job? Or the young Muslim boy who passed the crowds that were queuing up to buy Charlie Hebdo yesterday, as he made his way to his local mosque? But, no, this gross insult to the beliefs of a beleaguered minority is defended mightily in the name of ‘freedom of expression’. Which means “freedom to say anything that insults anyone else, but nothing that insults me.” irishexaminer/viewpoints/columnists/victoria-white/it-is-frances-arrogant-secularism-that-is-the-truly-intolerant-religion-306959.html#.VLgJE19Z57t.twitter
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 19:34:05 +0000
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