The Financial Times piece has been edited. The Daily Beast points out that it used to say this: “If the magazine stops just short of outright insults, it is nevertheless not the most convincing champion of the principle of freedom of speech….This is not in the slightest to condone the murderers… it is merely to say that some common sense would be useful at publications… which purport to strike a blow for freedom when they provoke Muslims, but are actually just being stupid.”
Anyway, this is how the freedom of speech dies. The intelligentsia comes out for “common sense,” which equals self-censorship to avoid offending Muslims — in other words, voluntary submission to Sharia blasphemy laws.
“The gunmen in Paris attacked more than a Muslim-baiting magazine,” by Tony Barber, Financial Times, January 7, 2015:
…Charlie Hebdo is a bastion of the French tradition of hard-hitting satire. It has a long record of mocking, baiting and needling Muslims. Two years ago the magazine published a 65-page strip cartoon book portraying the Prophet’s life. And this week it gave special coverage to Soumission (“Submission”), a new novel by Michel Houellebecq, the idiosyncratic author, which depicts France in the grip of an Islamic regime led by a Muslim president.
This is not in the slightest to condone the murderers, who must be caught and punished, or to suggest that freedom of expression should not extend to satirical portrayals of religion. It is merely to say that some common sense would be useful at publications such as Charlie Hebdo, and Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, which purport to strike a blow for freedom when they provoke Muslims….