News "Incredible stupidity has killed brilliant intelligence."

Posted Feb 27, 2015 by Anne Nazzaro

Zineb El Rhazoui, a journalist at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, discussed free speech in an event Thursday at the Law School. The event, titled Who Is Charlie?, referenced the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie that trended worldwide following the assassination of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris last month, and was organized by the University of Chicago French Club and moderated by Robert Morrissey, a French literature professor at the university.

On January 7 two gunmen stormed the offices of the newspaper and opened fire, killing 12. The gunman claimed to be acting in revenge for satirical cartoons about Islam, including some depicting the image of the Prophet Muhammad, that the newspaper had published.

Before the attack, Charlie Hebdo had 10,000 subscribers; after, it had more than 200,000. All of us, we would have preferred to stay poorinstead of paying the very expensive price that we paid to have 200,000 subscribers, El Rhazoui said. She said that this has made them more committed than ever to following a code of ethics, keeping with the limits of free speech according to French law.

El Rhazoui mourned her coworkers deaths at the event. My colleagues have been killed because of something superfluous. My colleagues were simple people, intelligent people, nice people, humans, and they had lives, she said. They have been killed by stupid men. Incredible stupidity has killed brilliant intelligence.

Despite the attack, and the subsequent public uproar over the newspapers cartoons, El Rhazoui defended Charlie Hebdos right to publish what it did and what it continues to publish. She stated that just because it is a satirical newspaper doesnt mean that it does or publishes whatever it likes; it remains within the bounds of French law. The limits of freedom of expression in France are clear, she said.

In response to anger over the publishing of the Prophet Muhammads image, she said that in her studies she has found that there is only one line in the Koran that states that one should not publish his image. She also pointed out that in Shiite Islam, it has become more acceptable to publish the Prophets image. But most importantly, she said that the law banning his depiction belongs to Islam, not to France.

Keep in mind, we work under the French law. Not under the Shariah law, El Rhazoui said. We mustnt accept the rules of a game that are imposed to us by guns, and by crime.

She said that if people are offended by the paper, and do not support its ideas, they are not obliged to buy it.

Original post:

Charlie Hebdo journalist defends satire, free speech at Univ. event