Ten years ago today, Europe was collectively horrified when journalists were brutally killed in Paris after a group of Islamic fundamentalists decided to riddle them with bullets over a cartoon.
I am speaking of course of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
Up until that point, the fact that there are people living among us that would go so far as to take human life over something so petty probably wouldn’t have entered the mind of your average European.
When we think of so-called crimes of passion (not that I’m calling what those monsters did a crime of passion) we usually think of jilted lovers or something along those lines.
A husband returns home to find the wife he loves in the arms of another man. In that moment of intense rage fuelled by the agony of betrayal, he snaps and does something nobody should ever do. It’s inexcusable, but it’s not beyond the realms of imagination.
To think, however, that some could choose to kill over a cartoon, yes a simple cartoon, falls outside the borders of reason.
And yet the Charlie Hebdo massacre was not the first such crime, nor I fear, will it be the last.
It’s not difficult to guess that the actions of the hate fuelled zealots behind the massacre was not only about punishing those they killed, but about planting fear in the hearts of the rest of us about the possible consequences of ‘mocking’ Islam.
To have aspects of one’s faith mocked is not pleasant for anyone, but to assume that this gives you the right to kill is an idea that has no place in the civilised world.
At least it didn’t until we started to legislate for hurt feelings and feigned victimhood.
How did we as a society go from a bastion of freedom of expression to what often seems like a cowering shadow of that which used to make us proud?
I can remember my fellow students at the time shortly after the massacre donning ‘Je suis Charlie’ stickers on their phones and vowing to protect freedom of speech at all costs.
We were collectively shocked at this most vicious assault on the very foundations of our society: the idea that you and I have the right to express ourselves freely without fear of censure.
The more well read among us even managed to recite a quote often attributed to Voltaire:
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Did we defend it?
The horror of what had happened congealed into a renewed sense of appreciation for the legacy of those who had championed our right to express ourselves freely.
Indeed, it seemed that everyone who was anyone was nailing their flag to the post and vowing to forevermore be a die-hard free speech advocate.
But ten years on, what happened to that zeal?
If you had told the Ugg-shod me of ten years ago, that not only would freedom of speech not be defended, but that in our own fair land the government would advocate for its erosion, I may have swallowed my chai latte the wrong way in disbelief.
And yet so it is, and not just in Ireland, but in most of what we called the western world.
As Islamic terror attack after Islamic terror attack has ripped away at the fabric of British society you might think that serious action would be taken to root out Islamism in that land.
Instead, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has proposed banning “Islamophobia”: a one-size-fits-all tool to silence anyone who dares to even critique or question Islam.
A set of ideas, such as Islam, can only be valued on the weight of its merit.
How can we ever hope to do this when questioning why, for example, the Islamic prophet married a six year old girl (in his fifties) and began raping her when she was nine according to Hadith, can so easily be dismissed as ‘lslamophobia’?
While discussing topics like the grooming gangs scandals in the UK, I have been accused by Pakistani relatives of “hating Muslims” while my questions remain unanswered.
I have found that this kind of emotional gaslighting is often used in order to avoid discussing difficult topics or acknowledging hard truths.
While this writer may have tough questions about Islam, to say that this is fuelled by a hatred of people – many of whom had no choice in the matter of following that faith – is simply an erroneous claim.
Unfortunately, this lazy deflection tactic has been given much credibility by those in power who now, as I touched on above, legislate for hurt feelings.
This attempt to stifle – or even ban altogether – our ability to have adult conversations only serves as a smokescreen deployed to conceal the fact that there are people in our midst who simply do not share our belief that people we disagree with have the right to express themselves.
Needless to say, Islam is just one of the many topics that have been scrubbed from the list of notes on acceptable discourse.
If you were to stand face to face with some of the great heroes of our age, the men and women who have looked death in the eye and chosen to speak anyway, would you be able to hold their gaze?
If the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, who probably went to work that morning filled with ideas for the day ahead never imagining their fate, could look us Europeans in the face ten years on and ask us how freedom of speech is doing after they were martyred for it, would our answers comfort their souls?
How many of us would have little more to say than, ‘I kept silent because I didn’t want to be called names’?
Ten years on, an observer could be forgiven for thinking that they died in vain.
For me: Je suis Charlie.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”