The beautiful city of Paris suffered the worst type of violence in decades when armed militants stormed the office of a satirical magazine and gunned down 12 people, mostly journalists. The attack is not only shocking but also scary and raises questions about personal safety in an era of relentless violence. The attack has also done huge damage to western culture and will continue to sour relations between locals and the thousands of peaceful Muslim citizens and emigrants to European countries. Many of these people have nothing to do with political Islam, but they may be directly and indirectly impacted by the ghastly incident.

The attackers' motive is clear, since they raised slogans and announced that they wanted to avenge the "blasphemous cartoons" published by the magazine. There are several different sides to the gruesome attack, but what intrigues me is the issue of freedom of speech. The killing of journalists has lifted the entire debate about freedom of expression to a new level.

Let me at the outset express my deep belief that free speech is a fundamental right of people and that it should not be curtailed by any extraneous considerations. I sincerely hope that a day will come when people will learn to live with free speech as it is instead of erecting legal and other barriers to it. I am not sure when that day will come as I don't see it on the horizon just yet.

The people of the western hemisphere may have tasted some of the fruits of free expression. There have been some anti-Christian movies and literature like the Da Vinci Code novel, which is quite ruthless in its descriptive unraveling of Christianity. Though the book attacks the base of that religion, I can't find any example of extreme violent expression against the novelist or the makers of movie based on the novel. This is just one example, and there are many others.

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