It is called the war on terror, but is it really a war at all?

Round table: Charlie Hebdo Paris shootings

The latest violence in Paris, including the killing of staff members and police during the attack against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the slaughter of four hostages in the strike against a supermarket, was triggered, we're told, by cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in the magazine. In the aftermath of these atrocities there has been a ramping up of security around airports and other sensitive sites in many countries, intensified searches for others with a similar bent towards extreme Islam and a lot of navel-gazing about how this could happen and how to prevent it from happening again. And during it all the phrase "the war on terror" has been repeated time and again.

As to why this happened, the Muslim holy book, the Quran, prohibits any visual portrayal of the prophet. Certainly a cartoon would transgress that stricture and in the current cases that is what is being blamed for inflaming extremists. There has been considerable talk about whether the Quran should be taken literally or completely in the modern world because the rules it sets down were propounded so long ago they may not, in the view of some who have studied these things, reasonably apply today. Be that as it may, publishing images of Muhammad is, at the very least, irritating to those who follow Islam. That irritation can range from fairly mild dismissal of the ignorance of the publisher to making the transgressor a target for murder, depending on the fervor with which the Islamist views his religion. The Quran itself doesn't make a distinction, it simply says there shall be no images made of the prophet. The prohibition, for many Muslims, is absolute. The issue is whether this is an offence that should result in death for the transgressor who, in many cases, has probably never even read the Quran.

This is prompting some interesting discussions worldwide. Most people seem to take the position that religion has its place in the world and doing anything to denigrate any religion is probably not a good idea. Charlie Hebdo specializes in satire and has been described by someone who worked there as an equal opportunity offender, having printed cartoons poking fun at icons of the Jewish and Christian faiths as well as those aimed at the Muslims. It seems, however, to be Muslims who react most strongly to this sort of thing. The Jews, historically, probably have as much reason as anyone to be suspicious of others who aren't respectful of their faith but you don't see them getting up in arms and killing people because someone has made fun of them. Indeed, they and the Christians seem to be able to take this sort of thing with a grain of salt, chuckle at it and then move on to something else. The Muslim extremists don't.

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