The Dominican press published written and verbal attempts to justify the massacre of the editors and cartoonists of the Parisian satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, using the most absurd and childish pretexts. It was alleged that the newspaper was mocking the faith of millions of Muslims, and since the majority of them are journalists, morally obliged to defend freedom of expression, the argument is pitiful.
Some have fallen into their own trap by pointing out that, while they condemned the cold-blooded killing of the twelve French journalists, in an act of cowardly irrationality, typical of madmen and fanatics, they should not allow or accept what they have come to describe as excesses and irreverent positions against a religion.
The French weekly’s sin was to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, which Muslim law forbids believers of that faith. Just a few years ago, a Danish magazine did the same, and in the following days European embassies in many countries of the Islamic world were attacked by mobs, with a high toll of destruction and death. A novel entitled “The Satanic Verses” forced its author Salman Rushdie, an English citizen born in India, to hide for years, after the leader of the Iranian revolution invoked the Fatwa, ordering the faithful believers of Islam to kill him wherever he was found.
The massacre of the Charlie Hebdo journalists was not justified and only demonstrates the Muslim determination to impose its faith and customs on the Western world, with its enormous burden of intolerance and blind worship, ignoring the fact that the five million Islamists living in France and the more than thirty million welcomed in the rest of Europe reveal the respect of these nations for Islam. Religious fanaticism has no place in a world of respect for human freedoms.
