Story Archive

Sometimes It Takes Awhile

After the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine’s offices in Paris, killing 12, the attention of the French — and the world — was focused on freedom of speech. So much so, for its next issue the magazine that normally prints 60,000 copies printed as many as 5 million copies to satisfy demand. The week following the attack, French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala posted on Facebook, “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly.” — a reference to the gunman who killed five in the hours after the Hebdo massacre. Prosecutors ordered Dieudonné prosecuted — French law criminalizes “apologists for terrorism.” The controversial comic explained, “I only seek to make people laugh, laugh about death the same way death laughs about us.” Meanwhile, an 8-year-old Muslim boy in Nice interrupted his school’s minute of silence for victims of the Hebdo attacks to say “I am with the terrorists.” The boy was interrogated by police, who also brought his father in for questioning. “I said, my son, do you know what terrorism is? He said, ‘No’,” Mohamed Kebabsa said. He told his son the attacks were “barbaric [and] not an act of Islam.” (RC/Wall Street Journal, AP) ...There’s no need for laws ensuring freedom for speech that everyone agrees with.