Charlie Hebdo Persuasive Speech

I am not courting controversy but I feel compelled to note it here.

What Salman Rushdie perfected, Charlie Hebdo made a sport of. Both of them were not talking of religious extremism per se, they were mocking it. The medium was not a plain discussion, but a highly evolved satire. And they expected people to understand it.

Salman Rushdie got smart, went into an exile. Charlie Hebdo continued to say what it wanted unabashedly. Now people want to protect the right to free speech.

I don't think that making insulting caricatures of someone else's religious figures should be protected under the ambit of free speech. It dilutes the significance of life-threatening dare being undertaken by other agencies like Wikileaks or by people like Edward Snowden.

It's understandable to see journalists vent out. It's their community that has been hurt. But for you and me, I think neither Charlie Hebdo matters, nor the 139 children.

Just to be sure, there are 2000 people, mostly children and women, dead in Nigeria at the hands of Boko Haram. And there are many dying in Syria, Sudan, Congo daily, without a cry being raised for them.

Charlie Hebdo is really just a first world problem. When terrorists are Muslim, the world speaks out loud. But when the victims are also Muslim, the world says, "Meh?", and looks the other way.

I'm just exasperated by people going on and on about Charlie. I think the reason is not free speech. It's sentimental. Charlie Hebdo had 3 very senior cartoonists who died in the shootings. Wolinski was 80 years old. Cabut and Honore were 76 years each. They must have had some pretty amazing legacy behind them. I'd say they would be akin to Pran (who drew Chacha Chowdhary comics), so imagine if someone comes and shoots Pran, how a generation of Indians who grew up reading Chacha's exploits, would feel. But sentimentality is all fine. Rationality is still vital for journalism, I