I write this column with outrage, pain and yes, a terrible desire for vengeance…but not shock. After three days of carnage in France, where almost an entire staff of a satirical magazine were wiped out for drawing cartoons, and four Jewish people killed just because of their faith, the world is in a state of shock. But shock is the last emotion they should have. I, being from a country, which has faced the brunt of Islamist Jihadism and other forms of intolerance on free speech, much longer than the rest of the world, who has seen the collective cowardice of our species, when it comes to defending the liberal principles of human rights and freedom of expression, and who has seen the entirely predictable politically correct response, am now too cynical and immune to shock.

A lot has already been written about the Charlie Hebdo attack, not because the clinical cold blooded execution of our French colleagues, or because this is the first time since the fall of fascism in Europe that a group of individuals have been mass murdered for their right to expression, but because the cause, the reason, why they died. Just as entirely predictable were the array of laughable responses and discussions I have heard in the last few days.

The first claim I have heard was that this is a direct reaction to drone strikes and foreign policy. So, by that logic, so were Salman Rushdie's death fatwa and the murder of his Japanese translator, and attempt on his Norwegian publisher and Italian translator, in 1989. In fact this is probably the most ridiculous argument advanced by the post-modernist academics and activists with an agenda. There have been Islamist terrorist attacks, incidents, plots etc in over 70 countries in the globe. How many of them were involved with American led foreign policy?

Islamism is responsible for terrorism in the entire stretch of Levant and Sahel and Maghreb. The entire North Africa down to Nigeria in the west and Somalia and Sudan in the east is the hotbed of Islamism, with groups as diverse with completely different and sometimes even contradictory geo-political agendas. What we need to understand is there is no evidence of a direct correlation between foreign policy, of any country in the world, with religious intolerance. Religious intolerance is there in every religion, and comes out in every way possible.

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