“The mask has slipped.” That’s what Charlie Hebdo’s haters said when the French magazine published a stinging, Islam-slamming editorial in the aftermath of the recent Brussels bombings. We now know, that Charlie Hebdo is not a heroic secularist publication sticking it to Big Religion, chirped the haters—it’s just anti-Muslim. American-Nigerian writer Teju Cole accused Charlie Hebdo’s editors of viewing Muslims the same way that Hitler viewed Jews.
They’re kind of right, writes Brendan O’Neill: a mask has slipped. Yet it’s not Charlie’s mask, but theirs. We now know that when the anti-Charlie Hebdo set feigns concern for ordinary Muslims, what it’s really worried about is any criticism of Islam itself. Their mask of concern has slipped to reveal an illiberal hostility to perceived blasphemy against Islam.
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