Charlie Hebdo And The End Of Reason

We are appalled at the barbaric murder of 8 cartoonists and other staff of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris. It is hard to express our outrage at such insanity. Perhaps the reason is that one cannot argue with irrationality. It is irrational to kill someone over their point of view, however offensive. It doesn’t matter what it says, whether it is racist, anti-Semitic, anti-religious, politically incorrect, insensitive, and no matter how virulent; an opinion, or in this case, a satyrical cartoon, cannot be commensurate with murder. Nothing is sacred enough, not God, not Allah, not Jesus, not Jehovah, not any dogma, faith or tenet is sacred enough to warrant murder over it. Nothing is more sacred than a human life.

We are deeply saddened by the murder of artists who made a living drawing, commenting on their society, defending freedom, through satire, from intolerance and fundamentalist thugs. There is nothing more dangerous than the absence of a sense of humor. Not that the cartoons were hilarious. They were more provocative than funny. But that was precisely their intention, to remind people that they should exercise their freedom of thought and speech without fear. But thought is what absolutists most hate and fear. Fundamentalism is simply an extreme form of human oppression. It aims to hold absolute power over people’s thoughts.

That religious fundamentalists have no sense of humor is a given. If they did, they would laugh at their own perverted, evil madness. That they completely distort and misinterpret the teachings of their own religions is also a fact. What God could possibly condone the killing of someone over a drawing?

We are moved and heartened by the pictures of many thousands congregating in Paris to mourn and protest these unspeakable acts. We are disheartened at the news media that is cowardly pixelating the Charlie Hebdo drawings as they report the incident when they should be publishing them in defiance. The best way to mourn and commemorate the deaths of these artists is by thinking and speaking our minds without fear.