Editorial: Raise your pen, even if you hate the message

The slaughter of cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo was a failed assault on free expression. Bullets felled pens and pencils at the satirical magazine, but thousands were held aloft at rallies around the world in a heartening display of support.

On Wednesday night, throngs amassed in the streets of Paris, where earlier in the day two hooded Islamic extremists entered the publication’s offices and killed the editor, several cartoonists, other staff members, a visitor and two police officers, one of whom was Muslim.

Vigils also were held worldwide, with people carrying signs reading “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie). World leaders condemned the attacks, and cartoonists immediately produced works in support of free speech.

A typical press run for Charlie Hebdo is 30,000 copies, but this week 1 million copies will be produced, thanks to financing from European papers, a Google-related fund and others. Cartoonists and journalists from across Europe will donate their efforts.

The Paris attack came after the Sony Pictures debacle, where the moviemaker temporarily surrendered to threats by delaying the scheduled release of “The Interview,” which poked fun at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Death sentences for irreverence, no matter how crass or insulting, are not accepted by open societies or any faith; just in the twisted minds of those for whom the Enlightenment was a step back. For them, education is a pathway to evil because it promotes independent thought. Witness last month’s Taliban attack on a school in Pakistan that left 141 dead, including 132 children.

The Inland Northwest has been witness to extreme intolerance, with Richard Butler’s band of neo-Nazis and other religious zealots spreading hate. Saying they were following God’s law, Christian Identity adherents in 1996 detonated a pipe bomb at a branch office of this newspaper; one episode in a violent spree that ended with their arrest, conviction and life sentences. Thankfully, nobody was injured.

The Paris attack has stoked anti-Muslim sentiment, but the attackers’ vile interpretations of the Quran are not mainstream, certainly not in the United States, where free speech thrives but such attacks from American Muslims are rare. Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at Oxford, is a steady voice against fundamentalist-fueled acts. After the attack, he wrote on his Facebook page, “It is our values and Islamic principles that have been betrayed and tainted,” the New Yorker reported.

The unified worldwide endorsement of free expression is a wonderful reaction to a terrible tragedy. But we’re mindful that upholding that value is not always popular. We receive many requests to stop publishing the works of political cartoonists. Back when the neo-Nazis marched in Coeur d’Alene’s Fourth of July parade, there was broad support for rejecting their application for a permit.

If we truly are Charlie Hebdo, then we must raise our pens, even if we hate the message. That is the true test.