The Paris attacks on 7 January caused a global shockwave, with the slogan \"Je suis Charlie\" soon to express outrage at this attack on freedom of speech and artistic expression in Western society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The slogan was shared massively, and for a while it seemed everyone was unconditionally in favour of free speech. However, the widow of one of the cartoonists was quick to denounce the hypocrisy of many of those who walked behind the \"Je suis Charlie\" banner, as the cartoonists were regularly accused of racism and Islamophobia before the attack and could not yet count on much solidarity from society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I first viewed the cartoons on the internet, because of the very provocative persiflages, I could not immediately identify with Charlie either. I did notice, however, that there are no taboos at all for the magazine. Catholicism, Judaism and (inter)national politics, nothing or no one seems to escape the cartoonists' biting satire. In overturning sacred cows, the magazine is at least consistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I find this consistency in the socio-critical stance more important than its artistic interpretation. In a pluralistic, broad-minded and tolerant society, it should be possible for cartoonists par excellence to exaggerate and ridicule, as long as the drawings do not put persons or population groups away or put them at a disadvantage. With Islam as well as other religions being parodied by the magazine, the magazine approaches the Islamic population group as an equal partner in society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Journalist Wouke van Scherrenburg tweeted last week about a youth debate between Muslims and non-Muslims in which she took part, where a majority of those present thought 'respect' was more important than freedom of speech. I also infer from this that more can be said and drawn about religion, for example, if minority groups are addressed as equal partners in society. Since the cartoonists persiflate Islam with that thought, I can say \"Je suis Charlie\".<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
De aanslagen in Parijs op 7 januari leidden tot een wereldwijde schokgolf, waarbij al snel de leus \u201cJe suis Charlie\u201d de verontwaardiging moest uitdrukken over deze aanval op de vrijheid van meningsuiting en artistieke expressie in de westerse samenleving. De slogan werd massaal gedeeld en het leek even of iedereen onvoorwaardelijk voorstander van het vrije […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strafrecht"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penn.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}