Much to consider after the dust settles

Many readers took exception to my giving links in my last piece to David Brooks of the New York Times, who wrote ?I am not Charlie Hebdo,? and to Jordan Weismann of Slate magazine, who wrote ?Charlie Hebdo is heroic and racist.? Others were angered by my asking why Maurice Sinet (Siné) was fired from Charlie Hebdo.

It was not my intention to denigrate the memory of those who died so brutally or to minimize the gravity of what happened. I would hate to think there are people who think it was. However, I still believe that the thoughts expressed by Brooks in particular will be much debated in the coming weeks and months.

The debate has, in fact, begun. Take, for example, the interview Stephen Sackur of ?HardTalk? on the BBC had on Jan. 13 with Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands Posten, the Danish paper that created the caricature crisis in 2005.

Rose is clearly confused in his thinking. He criticizes his paper for ?caving in? and refusing to publish Charlie Hebdo?s controversial caricatures, but says he understands the reasons, trying thus ? ingenuously some might say - to touch both bases.

Marc Pierini, a former EU Ambassador to Turkey who is currently with Carnegie Europe, explains what I am trying to say much more eloquently than I ever could in a piece on the topic.

Pierini worries the initial show of unity in France after the killings may quickly come apart at the seams for party-political or social reasons, especially through widespread stigmatization of Muslims. He adds that if France is to remain a multicultural country, it will have to instill a much better understanding of Islam and of multiculturalism in general, into the population.

?For example, how many people in France know that Islam...