So the West asked for it?

The public reaction, as always, varied across a large spectrum. Yet, after carefully considering what had just happened, the mainstream response settled upon something that sounds like this:

It was wrong for the two gunmen to attack Charlie Hebdo, but we also don’t approve of what Charlie Hebdo were publishing – it was deliberately and unnecessarily provocative.

As such, the immediate symbol of public defiance and solidarity, the pronouncement “I am Charlie”, was steadily abandoned, and it became more appropriate for people to say, ‘I condemn the violence, but I am not Charlie’.

At first glance, this type of statement might sound reasonable, well- balanced, even moral.

Rather, it is just the opposite.

To think like this is to self-impose a type of moral blindfold. Twelve people were killed for drawing a picture – it is inconceivable for any serious adult could think that the contents of that picture should hold weight in any subsequent discussion of justice. Just as it is inconceivable that someone might feel the need to chastise the magazine for publishing the picture, before they then are comfortable in criticising the murderers.

This kind of behaviour might not explicitly defend the two terrorists, but certainly it does attempt to make them less than wholly responsible – rather than perpetrators, they are now only actors in an injustice.

This is a moral confusion that would be unacceptable in any other context:

Imagine that a women goes to a bar, and at the end of the night is raped by one of the other patrons. Now imagine that when the incident is reported, or commented on in the media, it invariably sounds something like this:

What has happened to this young lady is terrible, and I condemn the sexual violence, but I also condemn her behaviour. The clothes she was wearing were provocative, she was clearly leading-on her assailant, she should have known better, and she brought this on herself.

I hope your moral alarm bells are going off!

Upon hearing anyone speak like this, we all immediately recognise that something is wrong - we all recognise that any after-the-fact considerations, or any extenuating circumstances, have no relevance to the crime itself.