My thought on the attack in Paris.
Thanks to everyone that checked out my interview with Freckle Sue last week. We all had a great time putting that one together. She is a wonderfully creative and talented person, so it was cool to be able to put a spotlight on her. If you like her work I hope you will go and support her!
This week however I wanted to cover something more serious. The day after my last article, several gunmen stormed the office of a French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people and setting off a search that ended into different stand off killing 5 more people and the deaths of most involved with the attack, save for one woman who has seemed fled to Syria. This attack has touched off a wave of fear of more related attacks around the world.
Folks, the people who died working for the magazine were killed for their expression of a opinion. Whether you agree with their opinion or how they approached it isn’t much of an argument. They weren’t soldiers, they were writers and artists who had an opinion and got the chance to express it. They, along with a score of innocent people who died in the incidents surrounding it, were killed because of a bunch of followers of a perverted and distorted view of Islam were ordered too.
These people were bullied, threatened, attacked, and they still didn’t let them stop the opinions they had and the creativity they used to express themselves. Even after this horrible attack that the events that surrounded it, the magazine is still going forward in tribute to the ones they lost, and a show of defiance to those who wanted to shut them down. For that I commended them for not letting something like this stop them. No one should let bully, fanatics, or anyone else shut them down. Not a artist, a video producer, article writer, or international magazine. This same feeling can apply to any level of creativity and expression, whether it gets to that level or not.
If there is anything positive about this is that for the most part the reaction has been very level headed. Although some, and I won’t acknowledge their name, try to attach themselves with this with their own negative opinions by blaming Muslims as a whole for the actions of a group of terrorists, that opinion has largely been the minority. Muslims around the world have condemned the attacks just as much as everyone else, and thankfully people have realized that this attack wasn’t indicative of the religious belief as a whole.
So all I can say to all of you is this. You don’t have to agree with Charlie Hebdo, their opinions or how they expressed them. Hell, you could be like me and never even heard of them before all this happened, But they never picked up a gun, a bomb, or a knife to try and enforce those opinions on others. They never slaughtered a bunch of innocent people just doing their jobs or happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time trying to bully people into thinking their way. They had a view to share with people and they did it without having to slaughter people to do it. So whatever you think of what they had to say, or how they said it, they should at least have the ability to say what they have to say without being bullied, threatened, attacked, or murdered.
Is that so much to ask for anyone?
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