How France Legitimizes Violent Responses to Offensive Speech

How France Legitimizes Violent Responses to Offensive Speech

Jacob Sullum|Jan. 8, 2015 12:08 pm

Nine years before three gunmen executed 10 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo for the crime of insulting Islam, two Muslim organizations tried to imprison the editor of the satirical French weekly for the crime of insulting Islam. Although Charlie Hebdo won that case, the fact that it was possible illustrates how French law legitimizes the grievances underlying yesterday’s barbaric attack by endorsing the illiberal idea that people have a right not to be offended.

The Paris Grand Mosque and the Union of French Islamic Organizations sued Charlie Hebdo  and its editor at the time, Philippe Val, over its 2006 publication of three cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, including two that had appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten the previous year. One of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons showed Muhammad in heaven, telling a line of arriving suicide bombers, “Stop, stop, we ran out of virgins!” The other depicted Muhammad with a turban in the shape of a bomb. The third cartoon was a cover illustration labeled “Muhammad Overwhelmed by Fundamentalists” that showed an anguished prophet with his hands to his face, saying, “It’s hard being loved by assholes.”

The complaining organizations argued that all three cartoons violated French law, which makes insulting people based on their religion a crime punishable by a fine of €22,500 and six months in jail. In March 2007 a Paris judge, Jean-Claude Magendie, concluded that two of the cartoons targeted radical Islamists, as opposed to Muslims in general. He said the third cartoon, the one with Muhammad wearing a turban-bomb, did qualify as an attack on Muslims in general. But because Val had published it in response to an earlier controversy over its appearance in Jyllands-Posten, Magendie ruled, he lacked the requisite intent to insult. An appeals court upheld the decision, although it concluded that none of the cartoons amounted to an attack based on religion.

https://reason.com/blog/2015/01/08/how-france-lends-legitimacy-to-violence