Here is one of the cartoons that got the magazine into trouble. It is captioned "If Muhammed came back..." It shows an ISIS militant in the act of decapitating a bearded man in white robe and turban. The victim shouts, "I'm the prophet, you asshole," while his killer says back, "Shut your trap, infidel."

In other words, exactly what Muslims have been saying about ISIS from day one—that it does not represent Islam, and is inimical to its true teachings. Are the Charlie cartoons really as uniformly "Islamophobic" as critics portray?

Daily Caller reports that UK-based radical Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary has been tweeting in implicit support of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. A couple of examples:

May Allah allow all Muslims & non-Muslims live together under divine law where the honour of citizens & Prophets is protected #ParisShooting — Anjem Choudary (@anjemchoudary) January 7, 2015

If freedom of expression can be sacrificed for criminalising incitement & hatred, Why not for insulting the Prophet of Allah? #ParisShooting — Anjem Choudary (@anjemchoudary) January 7, 2015

Charming, eh?

Painful but hardly surprising that the left is displaying typical intellectual cowardice on the Paris massacre, even proclaiming "I am not Charlie." The Jacobin response is predictable, rejecting the word "terrorism" as a "narrative device" (God, how we hate the word "narrative") and "inherently normative" (huh?), and decrying "solidarity with what is frankly a racist publication." The writer, Richard Seymour, issues the requisite disavowal of the notion that journalists are "legitimate targets" (gee, thanks), but he offers no critique of political Islam. His argument basically comes down to the notion that CH brought it on themselves, and tough luck.

This is stated even more explicitly on Medium.com, which asserts: "This Attack Was Nothing To Do With Free Speech—It Was About War." We knew that was coming. The inevitable "not about free speech" line. What does that even mean, apart from (stated more honestly) we don't care about free speech for people we don't like? The invocation of the word "war" is particularly ironic, given that CH was targeted with actual deadly violence. The writer, Asghar Bukhari, protests that some "white dude" or "Zionist" will accuse him of "justifying" the attack. But if his screed isn't a justification, what is it? Even if his dubious case that CH is an organ of war propaganda holds up, what can we infer from the assertion that the attack "was nothing to do with free speech" other than the notion that CH was a "legitmate target"?

Contrast the truly courageous editorial from The Forward, a pro-Zionist voice that all us lefties are supposed to hate. Their headline is "Why Charlie Hebdo Must Be Free to Offend All—Even Us," and they actually reprint various cartoons from CH portraying Israelis as murderous thugs. A compilation of CH cartoons on Gawker clearly demonstrates that Jews and Catholics as well as Muslims were targets of their unsparing pens. The Toronto Star reprints a 2013 statement from the late Charb, "No, Charlie Hebdo isn't Racist," in which he reminds readers that the zine's roots are on the left: "Charlie Hebdo is the child of May '68, of the spirit of freedom and insolence… The Charlie Hebdo of the 1970s helped to form the critical spirit of a generation. By mocking the powers and the powerful. By laughing, sometimes uproariously, at the ills of the world. And always, always, always by defending the human individual and his universal values…"

OpenDemocracy scoffs: "[I]t is amazing how many Islamophobic and far right people are declaring their love for a magazine that until recently they would criticize as a 'communist rag' (after Charlie's biting satire mocked their own heroes, from Jesus Christ to Marine Le Pen). These are the heroic defenders of free speech, like Geert Wilders, who want to ban the Quran because it incites violence."

The one unequivocally racist CH cartoon we've found is this one, which shows pregnant Boko Haram rape victims demanding their welfare checks. That isn't poking fun at religious orthodoxy, but the victims thereof. Not kosher. So has CH drifted from its leftist roots to line up with the xenophobe right? While most "leftists" have, in reaction, drifted from their secular roots to line up with the Islamist right? Once again... Are we the only ones who feel like we're through the looking glass here?

It is receiving alarmingly little coverage in English, but Raw Story reports a wave of attacks on Muslim targets across France overnight. Three blank grenades were thrown at a mosque shortly after midnight in the city of Le Mans, west of Paris. A bullet hole was also found in a window of the mosque. In the Port-la-Nouvelle district near Narbonne in southern France, several shots were fired in the direction of a Muslim prayer hall shortly after evening prayers. The hall was empty, the local prosecutor said. An explosion at a kebab shop near a mosque in the eastern French town of Villefranche-sur-Saone this morning also left no casualties. Local prosecutors have described it as a "criminal act."

This comes just months after a wave of attacks on Jewish targets in France. How much overlap will there be in those who protest the current anti-Muslim attacks and those who protested last year's anti-Jewish attacks? All too little. So few seem to understand what we have repeatedly pointed out: anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are genetically linked phenomena.

Here we go again. While the above-cited "leftist" idiots completely fail to acknowledge the problem of political Islam, now we have an exemplar of the opposite error. George Packer in the New Yorker does call out political Islam—but explicitly denies the critical context for it. He opens: 

The murders today in Paris are not a result of France’s failure to assimilate two generations of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. They’re not about French military action against the Islamic State in the Middle East, or the American invasion of Iraq before that. They’re not part of some general wave of nihilistic violence in the economically depressed, socially atomized, morally hollow West—the Paris version of Newtown or Oslo. Least of all should they be "understood" as reactions to disrespect for religion on the part of irresponsible cartoonists.

You know, way back in the aftermath of the 2005 London attacks, we had to call out both those on the "left" who refuse to see the threat of political Islam and those on the right who refuse to see how the post-9-11 hyper-interventionism and the rise of the Western security state are part of the dystopian dynamic. We have had to make the point since then as well. As we said after the new 2013 London attacks: We are really tired of having to make the same point over and over.

Reuters reported Sept. 21, 2012 that French authorities banned protests against cartoons in Charlie Hebdo denigrating the Prophet. Interior Minister Manuel Valls said prefects throughout the country had orders to prohibit any demonstrations over the issue and to crack down if the ban was challenged. "There will be strictly no exceptions. Demonstrations will be banned and broken up," he said.

Mind you, this was in the midst of the violent protests throughout the Middle East over the Innocence of Muslims video. But still... Sheds a paradoxical light on the whole issue of free speech in France... We will also note the banning of pro-Palestine marches in Paris during last year's Gaza conflict. Of course, it is possible to oppose such protest bans and also support Charlie Hebdo's right to be offensive. But how many of those now cheering on CH protested the bans?

Just asking.

The Paris manhunt for the perps in the CH attack seems to have come to a close with two shoot-outs—including one at a kosher market where four hostages and their captor were killed. (Al Arabiya) Joshua Keating writes in Slate:

It is unclear if the grocery store where a hostage situation unfolded earlier Friday was targeted because it is kosher, but the siege there follows a string of attacks on Jewish businesses and synagogues in France, the country with the third-largest Jewish population in the world, after the United States and Israel, as well as the largest Muslim population in Western Europe. Last month, speaking at a rally against anti-Semitism in the Paris suburb of Créteil, the country’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said that anti-Semitic acts and threats had more than doubled in the past 10 months, and he promised to make the issue a "national cause."

The rally was prompted by a particularly shocking crime in Créteil in which a couple was robbed and the woman raped in their apartment by armed assailants who told them they had been targeted because "you Jews, you have money."

We noted the Créteil attack in our round-up of the anti-Jewish violence in France in the wake of Israel's Gaza attack. We must again call out the twin errors that are nearly ubiquitous in commentary on such incidents. One is to deny the context of the Gaza bombardment and portray such outbursts as mere arbitrary anti-Semitism. The other is to deny the anti-Semitic element, as if fire-bombing a synagogue or shooting up a kosher market were a legitimate way to protest Israeli atrocities.

WikiLeaks has certainly released a lot of interesting information, but they sure have bad politics. Now they just tweeted: "How the Jewish pro-censorship lobby legitimized attacks on Carlie Hebdo for 'offensive' speech." The tweet links to a Jan. 27, 2009 piece in The Telegraph about how certain prominent Jews including Bernard-Henry Lévy, put pressure on Charlie Hebdo to sack supposedly anti-Semitic cartoonist Maurice Sinet. Not quite sure what WikiLeaks' point is. Putting pressure on CH to sack a cartoonist set a precedent that "legitimized" a massacre? Huh? Anyway, it is certainly necessary to find a way to blame it on the Jews, whatever it is...

The perennially wacky Thierry Meyssan of course weighs in with the inevitable "false flag" theory on the Paris massacre. Online at VoltaireNet,* it basically comes down to the baseless assertion that the attack did not "coinicide with jihadist ideology" (huh?), that it plays into a "'Clash of Civilizations' strategy conceived in Tel Aviv and Washington," and that there are numerous "precedents" (mostly both dubious and irrelevant).

File under "Aw Shut Up Already, Will Ya?" 

* An odd name for a seemingly anti-Enlightenment publication.

Benjamin Netanyahu, in France ostensibly to show solidarity after the Paris attacks, shamelessly made political hay, exploiting the terror to lure French Jewry into becoming demographic cannon fodder for the Zionist state. In a televised statement, he said:  "To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home. Unless the world comes to its senses, terror will continue to strike in other places." (As if terror is not striking Jews in Israel, and for very obvious reasons.) (Al Arabiya) Fortunately, few are taking the bait. In an unsubtle gesture, the New York Times notes that a packed crowd at Paris' Grande Synagogue broke into a spontaneous rendition of French national anthem after Netanyahu finished his remarks there. The Haaretz headline reads "French Jews in Israel say 'non' to mass emigration after attacks."

A big "oui" to their "non."

This is too rich. After Bibi's obnoxious stunt in Paris, the Jerusalem Post takes great glee in calling out Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for using the Charlie attack to get his licks in at Israel, saying Tehran "condemns extremism, violence, and terrorism whether in Palestine, Lebanon and the Levant or in Paris and the United States."

This from the same regime that still has a fatwa in force against Salman Rushdie, eh? Plenty of hypocrisy to go around here, that's for sure...

From Beyond Nuclear:

We pause today to remember those slain at the French satirical news magazine Charlie Hebdo. Several of the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo were close allies of the French anti-nuclear movement, even providing cartoons to the French anti-nuclear network, "Sortir du nucléaire." Stéphane Charbonnier, its editor in chief, drew many cartoons lampooning the nuclear industry.. Charb, as he was known by his pen name, participated in opposition to both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. He was among the 12 killed. Another Hebdo staffer, Fabrice Nicolino, who was wounded but we are told will survive, was the author of the brilliant special edition of Charlie Hebdo focusing on nuclear power and called The Nuclear Swindle [cover pictured at link]. In it, Nicolino, an author and environmental journalist, pointed out that nuclear power is a hold-up, with democracy as the spoils. The assassination of the 12 people at Charlie Hebdo, and the injuring of others, was also an assault on democracy. 

Charlie Hebdo a voice of the political right? Are you sure?

Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabar writes for TIME, a piece entitled "These Terrorist Attacks Are Not About Religion." 

They have to keep proving they are more relevant than their competing terrorist groups. It's just business.

Nor should we blame America’s foreign policy as the spark that lights the fuse. Poverty, political oppression, systemic corruption, lack of education, lack of critical thinking, and general hopelessness in these countries is the spark.

We like his spirit, really. But we have to disagree with much of this. Contrary to what you hear on the right, yes the US hyper-interventionism since 9-11 is part of what animates this rage. And contrary to what you hear on the left, yes it is about religion. Whatever the roots of the rage (including many legitimate greivances), the totalitarian ideology at work here is poltical Islam.

All the lefties (e.g. Anonymous) are jumping on the fact that cartoonist Maurice Sinet was fired by Charlie Hebdo in 2009 for supposed anti-Semitism, taking this as evidence that anti-Semitism was verboten while Islamophobia was permissible. They do not emphasize that Sinet was fired only under pressure from Jewish organizations (or, if they do note that, it is evidence of the haughty power of the Jews, of course). They also seem not to have noted that in 2011—after Sinet was sacked—the magzine ran a special "Shoah Hebdo" issue full of Holocaust humor. (See Media Libre, Nov. 2, 2011) So we're supposed to be outraged over the "Charia Hebdo" issue poking fun at Muhammed, but pretend the "Shoah Hebdo" issue didn't exist, eh?