Recently in a criminology class that I have been taking at school, my professor asked us why do people do crime. He put up various pictures from recent history and asked us what, in this case, made these people do crime. One of these scenarios was the attack on the French Satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. In this case, masked gunmen stormed the offices and killed 12 people inside of the magazine and injured 5 more people. This particular magazine had a history of publishing satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which angered many Muslim leaders. Hence these cartoons had in some ways provoked the gunmen, even though this is not a valid excuse. A quote from this news article, stated by the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, Gerard Biard, stood out to me. He stated “I don’t understand how people can attack a newspaper with heavy weapons. A newspaper is not a weapon of war.” Yet although a newspaper is not necessarily a firearm, the art it posts obviously has a greater effect than people would think. Nothing excuses these people for taking lives because of a cartoon, but people such as the editor-in-chief should realize the power that these cartoons have. Article found at:
Art Is More Important Than You Would Think
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