This blog post is dedicated to the twelve victims of the terrorist attack by Islamic extremist militants on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris,on the morning of the 7th January, 2015.
A week ago, I confidently say that most of us were out, at some party or another, wishing each other a "Happy New Year" with a bottle of champagne still in our hands after the countdown had just reached midnight. Sadly enough, after just seven days, we have to admit that this was not a happy start to the new year at all.
Its impossible to not have noticed by now ... it was all over the news, any news of any country and it was all over the social media with #JeSuisCharlie too. Yesterday morning, three masked gunmen stormed the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris with sub-machine guns, where they killed several members of staff, and also some policemen which had arrived on site. A total of twelve people were killed in the terrorist attack, and another eleven people were wounded. This launched a huge manhunt by the French authorities to locate, neutralise and arrest the terrorists. The younger of the three, and eighteen year old, surrendered himself to the police later on during the day after the terrorist attacks, however the other two, are still on the run.
But lets get back into perspective, the point about this post it not to report the news, but to raise awareness about what's going on in our world.
What is Charlie Hebdo ?
Charlie Hebdo is (not sure if I should say was over here but anyway) an anti-religious, left wing, satirical weekly magazine published in France. This magazine mostly criticises religion, right-wing politics, socio-economics with regards to current affairs and any hot-topics by publishing caricatures, cartoons and jokes about the subject. Most of the population knows how to handle satirical criticism, and we have grown to accept it as part of our daily lives especially when it deals with politics. Its kind of our way of taking serious matters with a pinch of salt, and be more relaxed about them.
However, as this might seem very normal in our society, it is not for other places. For these extremist Islamists, this was a serious insult, and they had already made several death threats to the editor of the Charlie Hebdo magazine, who was living under police protection (not that it made any difference in the end, except for the murders of the policemen themselves too).
Why did this terrorist attack have such a reaction?
But one might ask, "We hear of terrorist attacks and car bombs and other stuff every week, why is this to different than the others?" It is very different! When the people murdered were mentioned on the news by name, that really made it more real than in other situations.
These journalists were of an older age than one might imagine (two of them were in their seventies), and they are known people in the French community. For generations they had made people laugh every week with their caricatures and also on other media such as television and radio. They represented humour itself, and the barbaric killing of these beloved cartoonists with sub-machine guns, some of which at point blank range, was what shocked the world.
What has this world come to?
Cartoonists around the world quickly expressed their reactions to the attack with their own cartoons. Argentinian Bernardo Erlich drew the image on the left, which has a very powerful message. The text says, "The world has become so serious, that humour is a risky profession". And he is quite right to say so. We have already seen this, not more than a couple of weeks ago, with the cyber-attacks on the film-making giant Sony. This company was attacked by North Korean hackers for the making of The Interview, a movie which pokes some fun at the country's dictatorial leader.
Maybe it's just me, but as time goes by, these issues remind me more and more of an Orwellian society, something out of a dystopian movie or novel, where even people's thoughts are controlled by the central authorities in power. And realistically that's what it is. These jornalists were so brutally killed, because with their cartoons, they were shedding a light on the fallacies of religion (not just Islam), and for these extremists, this is not acceptable.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and with their images the members of staff of Charlie Hebdo were showing some people how to think for them selves and how to be able to criticise the authorities, something which for Islamist extremists and their leaders (such as IS in Iraq and Syria or the Taliban in Afghanistan) is completely unacceptable, since as a consequence, they might lose the power that they would have achieved by wrong interpretations of the Islamic religion. In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, the third motto of the party is "Ignorance is Strength". And that's what it is in this case, the ignorance of the people is the strength of those ruling them, and from what we have seen yesterday morning in the streets of Paris, they are ready to do everything so that this doesn't change.
What are the implications ?
This is a direct threat to our freedom of opinion and freedom of expression. We live in a world where it appears to be that it is becoming riskier and riskier to say your own opinions and show the truth to the masses. There are too many people who would lose if the masses were to know certain truths, and thus they eliminate those trying to show said truth to the masses. Freedom of expression is one of the most important pillars of our modern day society and we must not let anyone take that away from us, as the great writer and philosopher Voltaire once said, "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." They did not just attack Charlie Hebdo, they are attacking all of us.
But lets get back into perspective, the point about this post it not to report the news, but to raise awareness about what's going on in our world.
What is Charlie Hebdo ?
Charlie Hebdo is (not sure if I should say was over here but anyway) an anti-religious, left wing, satirical weekly magazine published in France. This magazine mostly criticises religion, right-wing politics, socio-economics with regards to current affairs and any hot-topics by publishing caricatures, cartoons and jokes about the subject. Most of the population knows how to handle satirical criticism, and we have grown to accept it as part of our daily lives especially when it deals with politics. Its kind of our way of taking serious matters with a pinch of salt, and be more relaxed about them.
However, as this might seem very normal in our society, it is not for other places. For these extremist Islamists, this was a serious insult, and they had already made several death threats to the editor of the Charlie Hebdo magazine, who was living under police protection (not that it made any difference in the end, except for the murders of the policemen themselves too).
Why did this terrorist attack have such a reaction?
But one might ask, "We hear of terrorist attacks and car bombs and other stuff every week, why is this to different than the others?" It is very different! When the people murdered were mentioned on the news by name, that really made it more real than in other situations.
These journalists were of an older age than one might imagine (two of them were in their seventies), and they are known people in the French community. For generations they had made people laugh every week with their caricatures and also on other media such as television and radio. They represented humour itself, and the barbaric killing of these beloved cartoonists with sub-machine guns, some of which at point blank range, was what shocked the world.
What has this world come to?
Maybe it's just me, but as time goes by, these issues remind me more and more of an Orwellian society, something out of a dystopian movie or novel, where even people's thoughts are controlled by the central authorities in power. And realistically that's what it is. These jornalists were so brutally killed, because with their cartoons, they were shedding a light on the fallacies of religion (not just Islam), and for these extremists, this is not acceptable.
What are the implications ?
This is a direct threat to our freedom of opinion and freedom of expression. We live in a world where it appears to be that it is becoming riskier and riskier to say your own opinions and show the truth to the masses. There are too many people who would lose if the masses were to know certain truths, and thus they eliminate those trying to show said truth to the masses. Freedom of expression is one of the most important pillars of our modern day society and we must not let anyone take that away from us, as the great writer and philosopher Voltaire once said, "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." They did not just attack Charlie Hebdo, they are attacking all of us.
