The French liberal-left and George W Bush are not natural bedfellows, but today the former are sounding just a little bit like the latter. The ‘Je suis Charlie’ banners they are carrying in reaction to yesterday’s murders at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo are effectively saying, to borrow the former US president’s slogan: you are either with us or you are with the terrorists.
The terror attack, of course, deserves universal condemnation. It is an act of cold-blooded murder. That it was carried out against a targeted group makes it neither better nor worse than 9/11 or the London tube bombings which were conducted against random victims.
But imagine you are an ordinary French Muslim, neither given to murderous acts nor extremism of any kind, but who were nonetheless offended by the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. You might even, as many self-professed liberals are very fast to do when people draw cartoons or otherwise poke fun at gay people, think that the magazine had overstepped the limits of decency and that it should in some way be stopped, either by law or social pressure.
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