On the 7 January 2015 there was a massacre in the streets of Paris, where employees of the Charlie Hebdo magazine were killed at the hands of an Islamist group. This has led to a huge of amount of debate on whether the use of free speech has been used irresponsibly as the killings were intended as a message from a group of people who are evidently unimpressed with the content of the magazine. Charlie Hebdo, who see themselves as atheist and secular, publishes articles where they mock society, politics and religion. The fact that all religions are mocked is violating the sense of responsibility that comes with ‘freedom of speech’. In this situation, the magazine published an article where the Islamic prophet Muhammad was made fun of and that stirred a strong sense of injustice in regards to the Muslims it had offended.

I believe that there needs to be the idea of ‘freedom of speech’ all around the world as some countries are still run by dictatorships and the people living there have their points immediately disregarded by their government. In this world we should be able to listen to all points people have to bring, however there’s a limit to where you can address a point to someone without inflicting conflict and offending. In this case the Charlie Hebdo has violated this and it’s no surprise that they have got a reaction. France is one of the only countries to approve blasphemy where people can mock and insult religions and publicize it. Being a satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo have exploited the allowance of blasphemy in the country and continue to publicize offensive articles. I believe this is discrimination and racist in regards to Muslims and it should be made illegal as we globally have made substantial progress into eliminating the hatred for one an others beliefs and backgrounds, but Charlie Hebdo is still promoting the negativity which is not morally right. For this reason something had to happen to make people aware that this is not right. Killing innocent people who are just doing their job wasn’t the way to go about delivering out message that the mockery is wrong however something had to be done or the situation will never be resolved.

I’m against the ‘Je suis Charlie’ campaign as it’s brought the world together to approve what Charlie Hebdo do. This is the wrong way to go about promoting the idea of ‘freedom of speech’, as the act of discrimination and racism is not being tackled but being accepted into society. Supporters of ‘Je suis Charlie’ are basically saying it is fine to disrespect other religions. This is a direct insult to Muslims as no one is regarding them of being victims as their beliefs are made fun of by the magazine. Muslims have to fight their ground to make people realise that this unacceptable. Eliminating the satirical messages that is in Charlie Hebdo magazine will be disastrous economically but we need as people need to see that equality of humanity to one another is far more important than making money.

After the events of the massacre there was huge criticism on the Islamic faith. People were being heavily judgmental on the whole religion and making an unfair overview Muslims. Islam is thought to be a peaceful and loving religion and the teachings in the Qu’ran does not approve the act of violence against others. Then to continue this prejudice that ‘Muslim are terrorists’ is not acceptable. It’s not every Muslim that has affiliation with these groups in the Middle East, the majority of Muslims are normal people who live about their lives peacefully. Then again they’ll receive hate because a person with the same beliefs is doing wrong. These innocent people are not responsible for the acts of terror, they do not conduct these acts in any sort of way and the world has to see that it’s wrong to presume that every Muslim is evil or dangerous. You never hear criticism on the Christianity faith when men shoot up numerous of people dead, as the shooters are always pronounced to be mentally ill. An example is the shootings in Oslo in 2011 where Anders Behring Breivik, a protestant, shot 77 people dead and injured over 300 people.This attack had the ideology of being a religious attack and before his sentencing forensics pronounced him to be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenic. This is the common trend when white men perform these acts of terror as they are always seen to be mentally ill. There’s a clear injustice, so why criticize the Islamic people when terrorist attacks by Islamic men are put ahead?

In my opinion equality between different races and religions is still a major problem in the world today. The ‘Je suis Charlie’ campaign has not helped to resolve this problem as their actions has formed discontent between them and Muslims. If we are to get a peaceful world in the future the hate towards each other has to stop as it calls for reactions from the people targeted and nothing is resolved.