The Charlie Hebdo Affair: Laughing at Blasphemy - The New Yorker

 "The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has condemned Charb’s latest cartoons as blasphemous. But blasphemy may well be the point: Charlie Hebdo clearly thinks so. With its offices under police protection, Charb said that mocking Islam must continue “until Islam is just as banal as Catholicism.” The taboo—the blasphemy, the untouchable—is the very reason. Le Monde reminded its readers that religions “can be freely analyzed, criticized, even ridiculed.” This, after all, has been the case “since Voltaire.” The left-leaning French daily Libération went so far as to call blasphemy a sacred right. In a democracy, it said, “every publication is free to establish its editorial line; every reader is free to read or not read; free is every offended person to seek reparation before the courts, the only legal arm. And let’s hope that, in other regimes, arms of a different nature are not used.” Banning anything that anyone calls blasphemous—especially when it is a matter of vocal chords or ink—is a kind of violence itself." "

read the articly by Emily Greenhouse
The Charlie Hebdo Affair: Laughing at Blasphemy - The New Yorker: