What is shameful about the New York Times and the mass media – all those who proclaim the importance of the principle of free expression – is that they refused to publish the highly controversial cartoons that led to the massacres in Paris. To have done so would of course have offended some Muslims, but it would have been a real test of the meaningfulness of free expression. The NY Times, no doubt, was familiar with the position of Jay Carney, then Obama spokesperson, who said in 2012, “We have questions about the judgment of publishing” the cartoons critical of the Prophet that had been published in a Danish periodical.
British prime minister David Cameron in his press conference with President Barack Obama in the White House on January 16, 2015 spoke truth to power: “We are facing very serious Islamist terrorists threat in Europe, in America, across the world.” He instructed his listeners that there is “a poisonous fanatical death cult …perverting the religion of Islam.” It is unfortunate that a similar view of the danger of Islamic fundamentalism was expressed not by the Obama administration, but by Marine Le Pen, who believes that her own party, the right-wing National Front, is the only one willing to solve the problem.