Following on from Peter Cresswell's excellent piece outlining the recent events in Paris, come two more fundamental questions.
1. What does a free society do about those who want to destroy its freedoms?
2. Why are we, yes we, threatened by those who want to censor us?
The Islamist threat to free speech is not new. Indeed the battle for the right to offend those who hold certain beliefs, whether religious, political, philosophical or even aesthetic, is continuous. Laws against blasphemy were often enforced in many Western countries, to not offend Christian faiths. It is no accident that every authoritarian regime clamps down on free speech as a first move.
There are plenty of opponents of free speech in our midsts. So in fact my second question can be answered first. The majority have censored us already, the Islamofascists simply want the courtesy extended to them.
The much too obvious ones are the small numbers of ardent fascists, nationalists, communists and other sympathisers of politics that would explicitly censor media, art and speech. It is extremely rare for any of them to do anything other than rabble rouse or disseminate their views, and the contradiction between their use of free speech to oppose it is clear, and so they have few followers.
Similarly, we are familiar with the religious conservatives who are keen on blasphemy laws, or who want to censor material involving nudity, sex or vulgar language. Of course we still have laws restricting this, and the state will prosecute you for writing about or drawing all sorts of matters which it prohibits (including completely legal acts), but that's another story. There are those who want more of such laws, some from a religious perspective, others from a radical feminist perspective.
More insidiously restrictions on free speech have come from the self-styled "liberal" left in the form of "hate speech" laws. Whilst few would disagree with how unpleasant and vile such speech can be (i.e. explicit racism, sexism, denigration and debasing of people based on their inherent characteristics rather than behaviour), it is another story to make such speech illegal. It has become increasingly normalised for some to say how "offended" they are by a portrayal of someone because of his or her race, sex, sexual orientation, disability, etc. In recent years laws have been enforced to prohibit such speech. This has been widely supported by most on the left, with the Police in the UK now arresting people for making offensive jokes.
You will struggle to find many politicians who will argue for the unfettered legal right to offend (which is distinct from whether it is morally right or clever to do so). Yet that is what this is about.
Indeed in the UK, a report into systematical sexual abuse in Rotherham indicated that child protection officials were dissuaded from questioning or addressing gangs of predominantly Muslim men targeting young girls, because it would "cause offence" in their communities.
Freedom of speech has been as much under attack from those who live amongst us who are "do-gooders" as it has been by those willing to wield violence directly. The difference is the matter of degree.
The killers of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and employees were offended by the cartoons published by that magazine. The law didn't protect them from offence, but it protects others from offence in other areas.
Don't make an offensive joke about a crime or an accident, for the law may come visit you. Don't think about writing a sexually explicit fictional short story that involves violence and what is deemed to be the degradation of a fictional person, for the law may come visit you.
The men who murder because they are offended are extending the logic of existing laws, and taking the law into their own hands. At least it remains legal to parody religion, right?
So how should this be addressed?