Mistaken assumptions about the murders at Charlie Hebdo

Tehmina Kazi wrote a good article on Charlie Hebdo: Dismantling nine mistaken assumptions about the Paris atrocities.

False Assumption One 

‘Charlie Hebdo magazine was needlessly provocative’ 

Manufacturers of outrage and assorted agitators do not need any kind of ‘provocation’ for their actions. When Jyllands-Posten published the Danish cartoons in September 2005, protests in Muslim-majority countries did not start until four months later. 

Mona Eltahawy’s interview with Jytte Klausen, the Danish-born author of the Yale Press’s forthcoming book, Cartoons That Shook the World, recognised that lag. According to Yale Press’s Web site, she argues that Muslim reaction to the cartoons was not spontaneous but, rather, that it was orchestrated “first by those with vested interests in elections in Denmark and Egypt”, and later by “extremists seeking to destabilize governments in Pakistan, Lebanon, Libya, and Nigeria”. 

Further, Quilliam Foundation director and Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate Maajid Nawaz re-tweeted a ‘Jesus and Mo’ cartoon on 12 January 2014. Most of the people who called for his de-selection – and helped to whip up the resultant furore – conveniently ignored his earlier mention of the cartoons on the BBC’s Big Questions programme. The broadcast itself attracted barely a whisper on social media.