The articles that have been shared here pretty much echo my sentiments: No one deserves to die over cartoons and no one has the right to kill over cartoons.

However, it's important to recognize that none of this stuff happens in a vacuum, and it's a little uncomfortably how quickly people are lionizing Charlie Hebdo. Racism is a huge problem in Europe and it's swept under the rug under the pretense of "we're not racist, we're just against Islam". We hear the same rhetoric in the United States, except here we get more variety: "I don't hate black people I just hate black culture", "I don't have a problem with Asians, but they should stop being so Asian/learn English/stop stealing our jobs/(insert contemporary racist scapegoat issue here)".

But Muslims in Europe have to contend with extra problems that their fellow believers in North America don't have to deal with. For example, most countries in Western Europe have strict laws against anti-semitism, for obvious reasons. This is why Siné got in so much trouble. He was drawing horribly offensive cartoons about Muslims for years without a peep. The only time he ever faced legal action was when he took a swipe at Jean Sarkozy and Jessica Sebaoun-Darty. Now whether you agree with the premise behind those anti-semitism laws or not, that's just the way things are in Europe.

So if anti-semitism is specifically protected, what about anti-Islamic hate speech? Where's the special protection for the persecuted religious population that is constantly discriminated against and perpetually unemployed in Europe? There is a ubiquitous, widespread distrust of brown people all throughout the continent, yet there is little legal precedent to protect them.

None of this excuses what the killers did but it does highlight the context of violent religious extremism. When you keep treating a group of people like shit, they will resort to extreme methods or at the very least be more susceptible to aggressive brainwashing.

Like I said, no one deserves to die over cartoons and no one has the right to kill over cartoons. Yes, it's important that people have the right to draw pictures of Muhammad getting banged in the ass and sucking dicks without fear of violent reprisal.

But it's supremely fucking stupid to treat that as a more pressing civil rights issue than actually protecting European Muslims. From the way the US media has talked about it, apparently it's the only pressing civil rights issue, and widespread discrimination of European Muslims isn't a factor at all.