Charlie Hebdo just isn’t funny enough

Let’s face it, 2014 was not a great year. Tragedies ranging from epidemics to political tension to aviation mysteries to religious extremism defined those twelve depressing months. Even the supposed sporting highlights were overshadowed by allegations of greed and corruption. At best, it was a 3/10. Everyone is hoping that 2015 will be different. Is a 6/10 too much to ask? Only seven days in, however, the dream suffered a huge body blow. The Charlie Hebdo attack has been widely covered and I’m sure you all know what happened.

The mass shooting was as moronic as it was despicable. To kill over a cartoon is the kind of improbable overreaction that you only see in a cartoon. The attackers’ plan was deeply flawed and the assault on Charlie Hebdo’s head office, considering their motivations, was incredibly counterproductive.

I doubt that many Muslims have ever read Charlie Hebdo. It was not a hugely popular publication, with a circulation of around 45,000 a week. The left-wing magazine describes itself as strongly anti-religion. This makes the paper very easy for Muslims to avoid. But after the attack the paper became the most talked-about publication in the world, and the subsequent edition increased its print run to 7 million in order to meet demand, and it seems that an act of savage terrorism has temporarily saved the print industry. Unsurprisingly, the Prophet Mohammad made an appearance on the front of the magazine. It is now a lot harder for those who will be offended by the publication to avoid these cartoons, and support for the satirical newspaper has increased exponentially. This attempt to suppress freedom of expression has seriously backfired.

Like most people, I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo before news broke of the senseless killings, and knew nothing of their controversial depictions of the Prophet Mohammad. After the unforgivable shootings, I had a look at the cartoons, and if I’m honest, I had a problem with them: they just weren’t that funny.

Charlie Hebdo’s portrayals of Mohammad are cliché and stale, and don’t even attempt to make any kind of point about Islam. Any satirical message is undercut by juvenile humour, and this makes reasonable followers of Islam less likely to understand the majority of the West’s peaceful position.

Most Brits want to coexist with the Islamic world but these images will not get us any closer to this ambition. I whole-heartedly support Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish the cartoons; but that does not mean that I like them.

Society functions best when citizens can have reasonable debates about their views, and challenge each other’s opinion. One such vehicle for this is satire, but it seems to me that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in question barely qualify as satire. It’s just a dumb picture of Mohammad – a lazy caricature devoid of wit and commentary. The correct response to these cartoons is to voice your opinion about them, or write a column like I have here, not to shoot the people responsible. People who will kill others over a joke, no matter how offensive, are sick in the head.

In order to prove the terrorists have lost, we must go back to business as usual. When I heard that Charlie Hebdo was going to print the next edition only days after the brutal deaths of their colleagues I applauded their courage and perseverance. The ‘Je suis Charlie’ demonstrations that took place reassured me that people are ready to protest against threats to a free society. I just think it’s a shame that the cartoons provoked a lot of hatred without making many people laugh, or even think.