Originally Posted by Josef K

Here are my thoughts:

This was an event that, yes, was really really awful. Others have expressed that here, and so I don't feel the need to spend a lot of time saying so, but I agree entirely. However, let's not set these cartoonists up as martyrs of some kind - they did publish virulently Islamophobic cartoons, which was a (much less) terrible thing to do. Trollheart and Chula Vista are right that they could have seen this coming, but I buy James's (I think) argument that that isn't a good reason to stop. The reason to stop should have been that they were engaging in horribly Islamophobic behavior, which, um, is a bad thing. They didn't at all deserve to die - again, this was a tragedy - and I wouldn't even argue that it's right to stop drawing your cartoons (or speaking out in any way) just because you're afraid. Free speech is important. But that doesn't make these cartoonists heroes - and them not being heroes doesn't make their deaths any less tragic.

(There's something else I'd like to address, but James, when you say society has moved past Islam (paraphrasing), you should just note that what we consider "radical Islam" is an invention of the last century.)

I also think it's time for the French people to take a long hard look at themselves and think about how their culture makes stuff like this so common. I gather that French society is much more communitarian than America's (for example), and so our problems with racism manifest themselves differently than France's. In France (or so I've been told - if you have firsthand experience feel free to tell me how stupid what I'm saying is), people are focused on a "French culture" - but that translates to "white Christian/"enlightened" atheist culture" because they're the majority, and that directly leads to there being so few voices saying "Hey, maybe you shouldn't do something just for the sake of pissing off Muslims, who, just like anyone else, are a group that ought to feel safe and able to be who they are in our 21st century liberal society" in the mainstream, along with leading to anti-Semitic violence and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

I don't think the "long hard look" I talk about is going to happen, and in some ways I think that's the real tragedy of this event - the culture hurts Muslims, a couple radicals strike back, causing people's prejudices to increase, and so the cycle continues. However you look at it, this is awful, but I think we need to be careful to to walk the line between Islamophobic bigotry and defending the attackers.