For the first time in over decades of living by and living for the truth and fighting for it with the only weapon known to a crusading journalist, the pen, the biggest truth of them all was brutally hit in a wave of gunshots in Paris, on a bloody Wednesday – the truth that the pen is mightier than the sword.
As the Editor in Chief of the magazine, Charlie Hebdo, himself a cartoonist and three of his absolutely irreverent and hugely popular cartoonist colleagues, Cabu, Tignous and Wolinski were shot dead in their offices, where they lived a large of their creative lives, with the terrorists calling them by name and then uttering their surnames as they shot them, the heart of the free press was pierced.
At the same time even in the time of the greatest tragedy for those in the media, let us also accept this. While no condemnation and shock can be response enough, we will do disservice to the very mission of truthful journalism if we do not say this. Charlie Hebdo is a satirical magazine which consistently crosses the line of religious taunting and uses satire to mock and ridicule religious figures including the Prophet. Therefore when the argument of free speech is placed on the table and defended with all the ferocity it deserves, the argument that words, pictures and cartoons that will seriously offend large sections of the community cannot be allowed, just to score a point against some sections of a community, holds. But nothing, absolutely nothing, justified such cold blooded murder by terrorists. At the end of the day, everyday peace loving members of a community did not do this. Terrorists did.
Charlie Hebdo has had a history. And the magazine, deep down knew that an attack of this nature was coming. In November 2011, its offices were fire bombed after it brought out a special issue supposedly guest-edited by the Prophet. The cover was a cartoon of the Prophet threatening the readers with “a hundred lashes if you don’t die laughing”. Its editor Stéphane Charbonnier, who has been reportedly killed in the Wednesday attack received death threats after this.
A week later, it published a front page cartoon depicting a male Charlie Hebdo cartoonist kissing a bearded Muslim man. The headline was: L’Amour plus fort que la haine (Love is stronger than hate).
Incidentally, the French government had asked the editors not to go ahead with the publication and closed French establishments in 20 countries out of fear of reprisals.
While Charlie Hebdo may have crossed the line between irreverence and irresponsibility, not for a moment can an attack on the idea of Charlie Hebdo be allowed to pass. The magazine continues to be a different kind of a reaction, an angry response through the medium of laughter, to increasing and murderous fundamentalism. It has refused to bow, or be cowed down, almost walking into a trail of bullets with many of its issues. It paid the price on Wednesday but not before re-establishing that the greatest fear that fanatics and fundamentalists have is the fear of anti- propaganda. It fears the western press much more than it fears western leaders.
As the ISIS and the Al-Qaeda gets fuelled and represented, increasingly by western men and women as well as resident fundamentals from its core area of influence, it has been attacking journalists with a single objective- make them nervous and gullible and therefore forcibly control stories and opinions against them that influence the western world
In the pursuit of truth, the free press will still hold the pen against the Kalashnikov or the sharp knife that slits throats, but in the world of grim reality, journalists will not form an assembly line of sacrificial lambs ready for slaughter. While carrying the torch we have still carried, we can rightfully say that that pen has been hit and hurt, but it is not dead and lives to fight yet another day. However, it can no longer live comfortably in the grand romance of what journalism can do. What happened in Paris has once against brought a reality to our newsrooms that we are just another set of victims.
