People were protesting against terrorism in the streets of Paris, while militants and the regular army were committing massacres in Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria and Iraq, and the terrorists of Boko Haram continued with their killings. A veiled woman protects her child by holding him tightly and shouts at an overflying bomber: "I am Charlie." But in this context the international reaction was very bland.  Why don’t we identify with these deaths?  Is it only because of the inconsistency in the way we appreciate human life?  It is more than that!  As an Italian journalist said, if something like this happens in “civilized” Europe, it is cause for alarm, but it is not cause for alarm if it happens in Africa or in Asia: why do we assume that “civilization” has not yet gotten there?  This is the Euro-centric type of thinking that is still poisoning any thought of impartiality.

Euro-centrism gives to the 17 who died in Paris greater value than to the thousands and millions of others who died in the rest of the world and evaluates our attitudes and gestures on the basis of an ethnocentric code.  Are we sure that killing people’s dignity through insult is less serious than killing them physically, simply because this is written into the European penal codes?  By what criteria does the freedom of expression have a higher value than the respect for a faith or beliefs of other people?

An English journalist observed with humor that Prime Minister David Cameron went to Paris “to celebrate the values of Charlie Hebdo,” without quite possibly having read the magazine.  Was it his intention to celebrate a caricature of a naked Mohammed with a star coming out from his backside, or that of one depicting him naked, saying: ‘“And my #%&*? Do you love my #%&*?”  Did he applaud the caricature of Pope Francis dancing dressed like a prostitute in Rio, saying “Ready for anything to win some clients”?  Or even that of one of Jesus depicted masturbating or a Virgin Mary performing obscenities?  I wonder how many of those who participated in the demonstration in the streets of Paris, or elsewhere for that matter, had really seen the caricatures in Charlie Hebdo.  Too many, one could say, if we listen to the robotic answers "that they were there to support democracy and the right to free speech”. Not for nothing, wrote the English journalist, that employees of the BBC were ordered not to show the caricatures.

It’s time to applaud even without knowing why.

To be serene, just and impartial – namely, evenhanded – should normally lead one to reflect on the consequences of one’s actions. The Pope, with his typical way of speaking, blurted out: “if someone speaks badly of my mother, then he can only expect a punch.”  One of the co-founders of Charlie Hebdo had told the editor: this type of provocation will “lead the editorial team to their death.” “If you insult a billion and a half people in what they hold most sacred, then you should expect that there may be a madman among them,” reminded Arab journalists of Al Jazeera to their North American colleagues.

You cannot write that they are fanatic and then complain when they behave as such, especially knowing that they will take it out on totally innocent people. As a matter of fact, new caricatures of Mohammad have resulted in more deaths and burned down churches.

To those who claim that the work of journalists (including satirists) is never criminal, the plain reply is “journalism is not a crime, but insulting is not journalism.  And not to carry out journalism correctly is criminal."   

Anyone who impartially judges what happened finds it difficult to say: “I am Charlie”. "As the original editor of Private Eye, who over the years has probably contributed as many words as anyone to its “satirical” pages, I’m afraid that I have looked askance at much of what has been said and written about these events in recent days."

Impartiality should be accompanied by reciprocity. Pope Francis said in his own way: “Religion should never kill,” “we must not make fun of other people’s religion.”  Religious liberty goes hand in hand with liberty of expression.  Can we ever legitimize hate speech? To blurt out stereotypical or bigoted epithets to people of a different color, culture or religion is not only racist, but profoundly wrong.  Those who speak in defense of Charlie Hebdo are affirming that religion is an idea, and that ideas can be attacked, because civil and moral laws only forbid hatred against people.  Mohammed, Pope Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth, are they merely ideas?  No, they are people and Charlie Hebdo has regularly and brutally attacked them through satire, ugly and sectarian in the extreme.

In 1946 the judges at Nuremburg condemned Julius Streicher to death.  He had not killed anybody, yet in the magazine “Der Stürmer” he had extolled anti-Semitism by his caricatures.  Is offensive and vulgar satire freedom of expression only when it attacks others?  Isn’t that just what we reproach Muslims for?  They demand Mosques in Europe, but do not allow Christian churches in their Islamic countries; they want to be free to live as Muslims in Western countries, but do not allow Westerners to live as Christians in their Islamic countries.  Reciprocity demands equal measures, just as it demands the respect of cultural and religious diversity.

One day, while travelling by train in Europe, I ended up next to a group of young people who were engaged in a fierce argument and using a lot of blasphemous words. “And what’s God done to you to deserve such insults?” I asked them.  "Oh that, well, it’s just our way of talking,” was their answer.  I then told them I was a priest and it offended me to hear them speak like that.  They apologized and stopped.

Of course, if irony that doesn’t sting is not satire, but satire reduced to insult is not irony, it is a crime.  Even if it is subtle and intellectual and it is satire to Western eyes, to others of a different culture and sensitivities it can sound as insulting, offensive and hateful.  Islamic countries have their strict laws against blasphemy; but France too has laws forbidding “incitement to commit crimes and misdemeanors" or "to insult people on the basis of their religion, nationality, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or handicap."  

I wonder if, instead of publishing caricatures of Mohammed (with his head in the form of a penis for instance) or of the Trinity (in an act of sodomy), Charlie Hebdo  had published such obscene cartoons about feminism, transsexuals, the handicapped, miners or journalists, would there have been three million people demonstrating on the streets of Paris and across France?   A United States journalist working for the public TV PBS wrote: “Many north Americans hypocritically support the cause of Charlie Hebdo , because they know full well that such a magazine in the United States would have been shut down after the first issue for insulting minorities.”

"In a time when there is such pressure to prevent people saying things that do not conform with group-think – when every kind of “political correctness” rules; when Christians are arrested for quoting the Bible in the street, for fear of giving “offence to minorities”; when boarding-house owners are prosecuted for not wishing to let rooms to gay couples; when there are calls for “climate change deniers” to be sacked or put on trial; when judges repeatedly threaten people with imprisonment for trying to expose the travesties of justice in their “child protection” system –  who really knows what “freedom of speech” is any longer?"

Or does freedom to insult only hold it when it is directed against the world majorities?  Perhaps impartiality and reciprocity should be based on a good dose of magnanimity.

Anthropologists call them “hidden motivations”, often unconscious but prime movers of attitudes otherwise incomprehensible.  The Arab and Muslim world does not forget how it has contributed to Western culture, that it was one step away from dominating the whole of Europe, and that it was defeated at the battle of Lepanto and at the gates of Vienna thanks to European military intelligence.  Not by faith in the Gospel!

I remember how difficult it was for me to make a typical Catholic family understand and accept a homosexual son.  The various groups that are socially and economically in the minority and which aspire to be taken seriously in the political arena often have a violent feeling of resentment, or even a desire for vengeance, because of the abuses suffered in the past, either real or imagined.  Pope Francis has mentioned the night of St Bartholomew, when the Catholics massacred the Huguenots.  It was a lack of magnanimity and a mistake. One does not kill to avenge and insult, or for a vendetta as it happened in Paris, or as ISIL does. This way it jeopardizes the belief that Islam is a religion of excellence, as Muslim themselves have to admit. “It is a sign of strength to know that one can laugh at certain aspects of our institutions, since it is a way of saying that what is important to us is beyond the forms that are transitory and imperfect. Humor in one’s faith is a good antidote to fanaticism and to an excessive sense of seriousness, which has a tendency to take everything to the letter,” wrote the monthly French Jesuit magazine ‘Etudes’  while publishing some blasphemous cartoons against the Pope and against Christ.  This magnanimity, however, demands at the same time an equitable judgment and ‘largesse’ of soul that is often lacking:  “These are the same people who do not support the wearing of the veil in France and who demand that Muslims accept rude insults against their faith without flinching.  Typical!”  (Boubacar Boris Diop)

“Doubtlessly, the attack has to be condemned", but it begs another question:  was it really an attack against the West, or was it targeted at those who have insulted over a billion people?  It is one thing to defend “freedom of expression in the face of a dictatorial regime,” but quite another to “proclaim the right to offend albeit in a childish manner” and all in the name of principles that nobody henceforth contests.

To be able to think magnanimously proves how the countless confrontations of religion, politics and ideology have been shown by history to be pointless. "Being outraged by these senseless deaths is easy, but it’s not especially effective or illuminating."

Today, as we celebrate the end of the First World War (1914-1918) and remember those millions of deaths, we wonder:  Was it really all worth it?  I have read that in 1941 Mussolini was advised by his generals against going to war, because the Italian army was not ready. Convinced of a German and Japanese victory, he answered:  "What I demand is a mere 100,000 deaths to bring to the negotiating table.”

Could it be that someone is carrying on this battle for freedom of expression with this mentality, far from the human values of justice that demand impartiality, reciprocity and magnanimity?  ***