该杂志社受到攻击并且导致十二人死亡之后，最新一期的杂志将先知默罕默德搬上封面。Myriam Francois-Cerrah 反对这样的做法。
我从来不是《查理周刊》的粉丝——它的幽默对我来说往往非常粗俗。我不得不同意《查理周刊》前雇员Olivier Cyran的观点：近一段时间该杂志正在沦为种族歧视漫画，对法国穆斯林的处境更是雪上加霜。
作为一份众所周知的反体制杂志，它并没有成功地挑战国家明文规定的，日益增长的对于穆斯林自由的限制，反倒是助长了这种气焰。它还在它的漫画中利用各种族刻板印象，而这一举动和它所主张的挑战种族歧视截然相反。一般情况下，如果少数群体——例如少数民族——将你指责为种族主义者，那么没人还能标榜自己反种族歧视。忽略这些群体声音的反种族歧视免不了显得可疑。
我个人的讽刺形式是那种开门见山的，那种用有力的证据来嘲笑权威的方式——嘲笑那些曾经通过特权来统治法国的神职人员和嘲笑那些被权力拒之门外，被严重歧视的移民后代的信仰之间有着本质的差别。
《查理周刊》纪念版封面唯一让我厌烦的就是其对于先知默罕默德带有种族刻板印象的描述，进而非常容易让人将其套用在所有阿拉伯人和穆斯林身上。（值得庆幸的是）我们不会接受同类对于鹰钩鼻犹太人的夸张描绘，所以为什么我们要默许鹰钩鼻的阿拉伯人呢？因为不管默罕默德对于穆斯林人意味着什么，他归根结底是个阿拉伯人，而且被带有种族歧视的方式描绘了出来，而这对于大多数人并不那么碍眼。我个人最喜欢的《查理周刊》的漫画是先知默罕默德被极端恐怖分子斩首的漫画。那幅画完美地捕捉了极端主义者对于信仰的绑架，以及穆斯林实际上是恐怖主义的受害者这一事实，并且完美地向暴力发出有力的回击。
Myriam Francois-Cerrah 是一名英国记者和作家。这篇文章原发表于《卫报》。Timothy Garton Ash的评论：Zaire本网页‘点击一下’原则下，原漫画可以在文章中的链接里打开。
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The first thing to say in response, and it must be said vehemently, again and again, is that Islam is not a race, it is a religion. Small and very dark Indonesians, tall dark Pakistanis, tall olive Arabs and jet black Africans are all Muslims.
And, if you are atheist or agnostic, Islam is just another ideology, a set of ideas constructed by an ideology promoter like Marx or Adam Smith or the proponents of modern ideologies like the theories of multiple universes and the big bang.
Why can we not consider and evaluate ideologies? Would we consider it “racist” to be repelled by the ideology of the Mayans, who promoted the idea that the sun would go out unless it were fed a stream of human sacrifices?
If we have even the slightest commitment to freedom of enquiry and freedom of speech then we accept that it is more than just acceptable to evaluate the ideologies that claim special privileges by calling themselves “faiths”, it is absolutely necessary to do so.
Muslims do so. The Sunni Muslims judge the Shia to be heretics and condemn them with bombs in the marketplace. And the Shia do the same towards the Sunni. And this is not something isolated; we read of it every day in the newspapers.
If, after carefully evaluating an ideology, we find it to be aggressive and bullying then we are obliged to say so. We can say this about Marxism and Social Darwinism, and Catholicism, and the Southern Baptists in America and the Jehovah’s Witnesses; so why give Muslims a free pass.?
Why do so many people find Buddhism so appealing? Because they’ve investigated it, however deeply, and they’ve found it to be genuinely a peaceful and non-violent set of practices.
And if we investigate Islam and Mahommed, and we find a deep desire to rule the world, using force as a first resort, then we are obligated to oppose it. To say it is a minority is rubbish. The Ku Klux Klan were always a much smaller minority but we oppose them vigorously.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a tiny minority but everyone laughs at them as bunch of fools, quite rightly.
It is true that not all Muslims take their religion as seriously as Osama bin Laden, but it is the small minority of activists, swimming in the general seas of resentment, that make the running. Just like the Nazis.
Anyway, why do the Arabs in France remain outsiders The Chinese in Australia don’t; they’ve become leaders. The Arabs remain outsiders because they have a medieval religion.
Of course we must condemn this nasty ideology.
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I am not sure about that which is meant here by ‘condemn’ (disapprove, censure, sentence to a punishment…?), but if it means ‘to allow or encourage critics’, then would’t it be more appropriate and to-the-point to stop focusing on Muhammed and start looking at the real issue? Muhammad was indeed a man from the Middle Age, from Late Antiquity even (for some at least). There is no way for him to be anything else. But when it comes to freedom of speech, the issue is to question the purpose of our critic. By caricaturing Muhammed, do we mean to criticise him as a ‘medieval man’ preaching a ‘medieval religion’ (what did we expect, a man in suit, neatly shaved, preaching twentieth-century peace and love?) or do we want to point out the lack of discernment, self-critic and self-questioning among his followers? The former seems to me barely useful, the latter is much more interesting, yet it requires a lot more investigation than a couple of generalising examples which in the end do exactly prove the point made in Myriam Francois-Cerrah’s article: Muslims are too often confused with Arabs and vice versa (“The Arabs remain outsiders because they have a medieval religion.”), they are both considered as a whole, as if it was possible (albeit convenient I must admit) to describe people coming from Morocco to Indonesia (notwithstanding all the Muslim converts) with one single word, and the so-called condemnation is unfortunately more often than not a way to express racism or xenophobia in disguise, not against Islam (everybody agrees that Islam is not a race, there is no need to state the obvious here), but against Arabs. And it seems to me very important to allow the critic of both: Islam AND racism or xenophobia, or more precisely, of xenophobia, everywhere, in any doctrines. For it seems that medieval or antique doctrines are not necessary the main cause of non-integration, indeed, contrary to Arabs, who are easy to spot out and criticise, racist or xenophobic people are following even more archaic doctrines and they are often so well integrated in societies that they remain unnoticed. If we want to be truly efficient in our address to ‘nasty’ issues, we might be more successful in targeting the fear for and rejection of others in ANY ideology, and be an exemple in this regard, by avoiding double-standard and generalisation.