To some extent, yes, I’m belatedly bandwagon-jumping as everyone else in the blogosphere has already written about the Charlie Hebdo shootings, apparently. But, there are some things that appear to a mind like mine a few days after the initial shocking event as further information emerges, events caused by or linked to the original continue and people start to reflect beyond knee-jerk emotion. The really important one of these, I think, is that the situation that briefly crystallised in twelve deaths a few days ago is very much more complex than it has been made to appear, perhaps particularly concerning whether being destroyed by evil people with an immoral goal makes you or your actions good. By way of response, I don’t think a unified argument essay like most blog posts (including mine) and opinion/comment articles will do; anything I could produce would only oversimplify and I think the situation is too important to make hack writing fodder out of. Here, instead, are some individual reflections, roughly ordered, that may or may not be coherent or consistent – like pretty much any position about Paris’s still ongoing crisis.

• I do not think killing civilians has ever been either an ethical or an effective response to anything.
• It is part of the essential makeup of what is known as something like Western liberal democracy that if people choose to make and distribute cartoons mocking pretty much anything, then they are allowed to do so; they cannot be punished for doing so, though the material may be restricted on age grounds and other parties may seek to insist on apologies or even withdrawal of the material on grounds of their being misrepresented or upset.
• The right to freedom of expression is primarily about the freedom to state the truth, however inconvenient, and opinions, however eccentric, without fear of punishment or retribution. It will need to end up covering indiscriminate mockery that does not present a point of view or critique as such, because it is not feasible to draw a line between the two, but it is not primarily a statement about the latter.
• Charlie Hebdo specialised in indiscriminate mockery of anything in the news, from funerals of French ex-presidents to the girls abducted by Boko Haram. It does not, and does not aim to, produce credible political, ethical or religious viewpoints or critiques. It constitutes an unlikely martyr to freedom of speech; more to freedom of frequently insensitive ridicule.
• Multicultural societies, or probably in fact all societies, require means of negotiating accommodation between conflicting desires about what is and is not done in the public sphere and differing standards of what is and is not permissible. Shooting cartoonists certainly does not constitute an adequate means of such negotiation, though I rather think neither does banning all large or overt religious symbols (including religiously-sanctioned dress codes) in the public sphere including state educational establishments.
• Arguing from the Charlie Hebdo attack to the ‘inherently violent’ nature of Islam is as inaccurate, logically bankrupt and counterproductive as arguing from the Breivik killings to the inherently violent nature of the Norwegian people, from George W Bush to the inherently imperialist nature of Christianity, or from the Crusades to the inherently violent nature of all religion.
• Crime suspects being shot in a gun battle with police is never a victory for justice. The only victory for justice as we (I) understand it is the finding of suspects guilty by fair and open trial and their proportionate and legal punishment. The next best approach to that is the finding of suspects innocent by fair and open trial and their unconditional release.
• Declaring war upon Muslims, or even specifically upon jihadists, is exactly the sort of polarisation that terrorists want to achieve. If they are dignified by being treated as opponents rather than merely criminals, they can crystallise the world into those for them and those against, and rally ‘their side’ to ever more open conflict.
• Vigilante justice is an oxymoron, particularly when the vigilantes wear masks. Yes Anonymous I’m looking at you.
• The discussion cannot and must not end here. Or anywhere.