In a show of defiance and solidarity, amid the presence of heavily armed police officers who stood guard Wednesday (October 21) evening, the people of France espousing the valued of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” and defied Islamic terrorism ideology by projecting huge images of Charlie Hebdo cartoons on a local government building.
The images of Charlie Hebdo cartoons that also included a caricature of Prophet Mohammad was projected onto two town halls in the Occitanie region — Montpellier and Toulouse — for four hours on Wednesday evening. Regional mayor Carole Delga was quoted by FranceBleu as saying of the decision to show the art: “there must be no weakness in the face of the enemies of democracy, facing those who transform religion into a weapon of war… those who intend to destroy the Republic.”
This follows days after the brutal beheading of Professor Samuel Paty by a radicalized Islamist.
Charlie Hebdo cartoons, including one of Mohammed, projected onto Montpellier government building. pic.twitter.com/pnhU0EXTsc
— Chris Tomlinson (@TomlinsonCJ) October 21, 2020
Samuel Paty, who lived in the greater Paris area was murdered on Friday by a Muslim immigrant terrorist because he showed the cartoons to his students as part of an exercise to enjoy the right freedom of expression.
In 2015, Islamist gunmen carried out a deadly attack in the offices of Charlie Hebdo and many of the paper’s editorial staff were killed. Right now fifteen individuals are under trail for the terror attack in a Paris court. Two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, carried out the terror attack because the magazine published cartoons of Mohammed, and justified the killing under Islamic law.
Before attacks were against Charlie Hebdo cartoons and the beheading of Samuel Paty, the French teacher, Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten was the subject of several terror attack plots since it “published an image of Mohammed wearing a bomb in his turban in 2005.”
However, it seems Friday’s attack was the proverbial “hay that broke the camel’s back” and has prompted a strong response from the French government. Already, the French government has been aiding individuals and organisations that expressed support for the attack and attacker.
The French government under the leadership of President Emmanuel Macron have now taken strong measures by dissolving extremist Islamist organisations in the country that had the permission to operate.
One mosque that justified the action of the Islamic terrorist issued an apology for its actions this week, insisting that it was not foreseeable that the call could lead to someone being killed. However, despite the apology, orders have been given to shut the mosque.