“… The most important lesson that we 
need to learn from the horrible massacre is that we must stand up more fiercely for India’s values. Tavleen Singh
Calls for tolerance after the massacres in Paris are misplaced.
Given the history of the Holocaust, America’s horrible history of prejudice against black people, India’s need to meld a Muslim majority into a Hindu society, all liberal democracies must assure the rights all citizens, including Muslims. Assuring those rights, however, requires open criticism of the bad parts of Islam and Sharia.
Unfortunately, the concept of rights and respect for others clearly does not extend to the Muslim world itself. While there are massive demonstrations against Islamic terrorism all over Europe and the United States, it is hard to find any such example in the Muslim world. The most we seem to get are press releases or public comments by generally obscure imans.
In the meantime Saudi Arabia is celebrating the events in Paris by 
sentencing one of its own citizens to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for “blasphemy.” Last week, Raif Badawi, was flogged 50 times. The flogging will be carried out weekly.
Where are the calls for Je Suis Badawi?
There are lesson for western democracies from India. India, like some European countries has limited hate speech in an effort to protect the freedoms of minorities … especially its Muslim minority. As in the west, a lot of the commentary in newspapers and on television has been only about the boundaries of free speech. Tavleen Singh points out, “This is probably because the Indian Constitution imposes limits (free speech) and that has allowed governments to ban books and get up to all sorts of stupid things in the name of not hurting the religious sentiments of someone or the other. In India, this has proved unwise because not only do we have too many religions, but we also have too many people who get hurt too easily. “
Salman Rushdie’s fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, deals with the pagan origins of parts of the Quran. This provoked death threats made against him, including a fatwā calling for his assassination issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989. That Fatwa continues in place today and has never been protested by any Muslim country or even by any large part of the Muslim community living in Europe or India.
” …..Indian Islam produced poets, writers, musicians and academics who have left an extraordinarily enlightened legacy that is now under serious threat from semi-literate mullahs and illiterate jihadists. Ghalib, Mir, Faiz and Iqbal would today be shot dead for the crime of ‘insulting’ Islam and if India were a Muslim country, their murder would be celebrated. We need to remember that India is not a Muslim country so we are not obliged to make any concessions to Islam’s new crusaders. Too many concessions have been made already in the name of ‘secularism’. In this column some years ago, I wrote about the ugly religiosity I saw in the Dar-ul-Uloom seminary in Deoband. A similar ugly atmosphere of extreme religiosity and paranoia now exists in Muslim communities across India and there are fewer and fewer signs of the older version of Islam that gave us such a rich and refined legacy.
It is time for India to at least stand by secularism and make it clear to Muslims, Hindus and everyone else that they are more than welcome to worship in whichever way they prefer, but privately. In a truly secular country, there should be no room for religious exhibitions in the public square and if we remain true to this principle then the recent hysterics over conversions and re-conversions will automatically calm down.
READMORE .. or watch Salman Rushdie and Bill Maher discuss Islamic terror.
Comments on Israeli TV 10:This march FOREIGN participation is not about “freedom of speech”, as many participants don’t allow freedom neither tolerance in their own country, but “against the Islamic terror”.
It will be wrong to expect lesson learned on any level on social life, freedom of expression, attitude toward minorities, a change of the society, a critic of Islam/Islamism/Extremism by the Muslims themselves…Nothing will change, excepting maybe the secret services and the drones that will work harder. The world will return to their sleep. “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
― George Orwell
About Freedom of Speech.Freedom of speech is to allow also things that disturb you or ridicule the most sacred symbols. Charlie ridiculed also Jews. Israel, Holocaust…but this is the price of freedom…Not all the caricaturists are “Charlie Hebdo”; they were unique in the whole world; nobody is today free to ridicule Arabs& Jews&Christians&Left&Right &Fascist& Communists and to do this well and funny and MAKING A LIVING OUT OF IT. Some of the caricaturists are censored by the newspapers, the Party, the society to whom they belong; other they are experienced and they know what is allowed to say; the last category are the most of them and are auto-censorship themselves. If you think that there are not strong images to be interdicted in your country, you are very wrong. A caricature of the Rabbi from Lubavitch or/and of the Ovadia Yossef in sodomic copulation will enflame many Jews and no Israeli newspaper/tv chain will publish this. As the assassination of Rabin or the bombs in Spain, the terrorism again succeeded to change a bit of history. All the ” Je suis Charlie” stickers are promising that FREE ICONOCLASTIC SPEECH will continue by us and it’s not true; it was once in Paris a free caricature satirical weekly named “Charlie Hebdo” drawn by gifted free men and the Islamic terror killed both the weekly and the men.
Even in the Western parts of the globe we can’t expect better.Europe, USA, Australia… even that the democratic capitalist western world is eroded by globalisation and economic crisis, it’s still a cosy world, full of comfort, epicurean, complacent, consumeristic… To offend the Muslim world, that is 10-20% of their own population is dangerous, because grave decision will have to be taken …from internal control on the Muslims and mosques till to send troops to Syria and Iraq to fight ISIS. Those are countries that reduced their armies to a bunch of professionals that are playing as soldiers in military plays called exercices…and only to stop ISIS you need French/English/German soldiers on the ground (!) and you need an army of conscripts to be there in Iraq and in Paris/London/ Berlin to stop the violent manifestations of the Muslims+Left+ Whatever and terror attacks… What the complacent and sybaritic society of England, France or USA will say when the boys will start to return in coffins? What the western society will say if 10 thousands soldiers, Americans, British and Canadians will die in a single day as in D-Day? Europe, USA, Australia are knowing that in house and outside are murderers, but are afraid to look outside of the window and not even in the next room…For many years people from Europe, USA, Australia were duped by mass media and education in a wrong vision of the world, where USA is the bad guy, the poor nations are suffering because of the colonialism, that the underdog is a good dog and the only conflict in the world is Israel-Palestine and if this it will solved by ending occupation, the world will live in peace. They don’t want to be disturbed in their warm nest…
Mirel,
I think that you are sayng that then ideal of true, free speech never happens. The publishers, the politicians, the terror mongers and the terrorists .. all have their effect.
Have you ever read Durrenmatt’s “Das Besuch der Alten Dame?”
I, always found Charlie Hebdo a bit silly, offensive to all with no message other than pious outrage. There is, however, another side of the bad taste coim … that is the effort in China and Russia to suppress free speech .. or the more extreme effort n North Korea. Here in the USA we also have the faux speech, the false world created by Murdoch. Then there are other sorts of offensive speech .. holocaust denial, antiscientific blasphemy, racism, pornography.
I do not now what the answer can be beyond two pieces .. the internet needs to be as free as possible and government’s only role shold be to promote its own view of truth.