RedHanded - Episode 172 - Je Suis Prof: The Murder of Samuel Paty & Charlie Hebdo

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

On 16 October 2020, 37 year old teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded on a suburban street in France by an Islamist terrorist. Samuel had become the target of an online hate campaign after he showed his students cartoons from the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, depicting Muhammad.  In this episode we discuss the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre, the murder of Samuel Paty and the rise of terrorism in Europe. Merch: www.redhandedshop.com  Sources: www.redhandedpodcast.com   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed, where we're going to fill your ears with absolutely no good news, I'm afraid. It's been a pretty shit week, world over. And by the time this is out, we'll know. I don't want to know. I don't want to. About Trump, right?

About whether he gets to still be king of America. We are in blissful ignorance currently. But by the time you're listening to this, the world will know. I hope so. But we are not here to talk to you about Trump, as you'll be delighted to hear. We're actually here to talk to you about France this week. And this is going to get tricky. So I don't know what to say.

Prepare yourself for some thought tunnels and some quite uncomfortable internal feelings. That's certainly what I've been having all week. What else is 2024? Let's do it. If you lot have been watching the news, which I hope sincerely you do, and I hope that it's not Fox News, you will know that there has been an attack in Nice where three people were killed while attending mass at the Basilica de Notre Dame. At least one woman was beheaded and several more were injured. An Orthodox priest has also been murdered. And at the time we're recording this, neither of these incidents have been confirmed as terrorist attacks, but it looks like they are going to be treated as terrorist attacks.

And if they are, they will be the last in many terrorist attacks seen in France in the past five years. The first in the string of attacks was, of course, the massacre at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015. Two days later, there was an attack at a Jewish supermarket. Ten months after that, there was an attack at the Bataclan that killed 130 people. The Bataclan, if you don't know, is a theatre in France. And this was actually claimed by the Islamic State. In July 2016, 86 people were killed and over 400 people were hurt when a 19-ton lorry was driven into crowds gathering, watching fireworks, celebrating Bastille Day, which was also in the city of Nice. I remember that attack. It was only four years ago. But I had, for some reason, forgotten that 86 people died.

That, when I saw it on the news after the most recent attacks, I know it shouldn't because I know I should have remembered it. My jaw hit the floor. Yeah, me too. Honestly, I think purely because there have been so many terror attacks in France over the past five years, I certainly have not been as up to date with the details as I fucking should have been. For example, I had completely forgotten that the Charlie Hebdo, the brothers who conducted the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices, they escaped. They were away for over 24 hours and they were like sieged into a building for eight hours. I'd completely forgotten that. It's like the Boston Bombers.

They were on the run, weren't they? Hiding in a fucking skip or something. You just, I don't know. I feel like these things happen and tragically so many have happened so quickly recently that it's like I'm struggling to hold the details in my head. So this is a horrifying refresher course in all of the recent attacks we're going to talk about. So yeah, strap yourselves in guys. The same month as the Bastille Day attacks, two Islamist terrorists murdered a Catholic priest during a mass in Normandy. And this list that we've just gone through is by no means a comprehensive list of the attacks on France claimed by either Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. They're just the ones that we have written down today.

If either Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State are things you don't actually think you fully understand, or to be honest, even if you think you do fully understand them, go and listen to the New York Times' podcast called Caliphate. It's hosted by Rukmini Kalamachi, who, like, I want to be her best friend. I want her to adopt me. Like, Rukmini, can I please walk your dogs or something? Like, I just want to hang out. There's a little bit of controversy around this podcast at the moment because some people are claiming that the sources are not particularly reliable you can make your own assumptions about that essentially they interview someone who claims

to have been well he claims to have been a policeman actually within the islamic state and then he comes back to canada people are casting doubt on whether his story is true or not but make your own mind up go and listen to it and to be honest even if his story is not true you learn so much about isis by listening to that series that it is well worth listening to it's honestly the most like comprehensive how why what where ISIS like it will just explain to you why ISIS exists is why is this in the first place where did it come from who are they what do they want and until I listen to it I don't think I really. I think it is the perfect starting point. Definitely, definitely go listen to it. Rukmini's an internationally renowned journalist. She

doesn't need me to gas her up, but she's pretty great. Go and listen to it. So we are not covering the same story as Rukmini. We're starting off with an attack that happened because of a civics lesson on the 6th of October 2020 while I was far too busy drinking myself into my 30s to not pay attention. So a civics lesson is what I assume PSHE is in schools in England. It's like when you do that lifeboat thing and you're like oh who is the most valuable person to put on the lifeboat? Is it the doctor or is it the loom weaver? You know, that's the sort of stuff you do. That is amazing. And I think it is now PSHE,

but I think at one point it was possibly called PSHCE and it had the word citizenship in there. But I think it was taken out for some unknown reason. I don't know why. But yes, therefore, I think it is exactly, as you said, Hannah, the closest that we have in this country to talking about citizenship in schools. I remember my PSHE lessons being mainly around like, it's like they were making an attempt to teach us something useful.

Being like, oh, how would you budget your life if you have this much money in your income? It was just such a weird little workbook that we filled in i don't know the whole thing was very strange i definitely remember it being like a fuck off lesson that was like taught by like a pe teacher on like a friday morning yes but like they don't teach you anything useful like how to do your fucking tax return or wire a plug no no no i think this is a problem we used to have our form two teachers to actually do it and i actually really liked my form tutor she was also my art teacher and i do remember in one lesson I think it must have been in a PSHE lesson because I don't know why this was happening I think the S stands for social not sexual but she brought her diaphragm in and showed us her personal diaphragm that's a bit much quite a lot her personal diaphragm and you know what makes it even better

the other art teacher at the school was her husband oh no no no so that was what was going down in my PSHCE whatever lessons not anything particularly beneficial mate I don't know so unlike England and Wales where PSHE is not taken particularly seriously, definitely not by me or anyone I came into contact with at school. In France, it's a bit more of a big deal. Learning how to be French is a very big part of the education system. And you have to learn how to be French no matter where you're from. And crucially, being French is not connected to a religion of any kind. These civics lessons are about how to be a moral,

civil citizen, and they are a compulsory element of the national curriculum. What do you think of that? What do I think about citizenship and religion being separate? What do you think about citizenship and civics being taught as a form of learning your identity in school? I think fundamentally I'm pretty behind it. I think it's important to have a moral code that doesn't necessarily need to be connected with the afterlife. I think that's an important thing to instill in people. and that we believe in as a united country, what are they? And they are not founded upon, you know, religious texts or religious teachings. I think on the face of it, that sounds like a great thing. But yeah, you know, that's where we are.

So Samuel Patti was a 47-year-old history and geography teacher in charge of the civics lessons for a group of 12 to 14-year-old students in the town of Confla-Saint-Honorin, which is about 25 kilometers north of Paris. The lesson that he was teaching that day was about freedom of speech, and to initiate a discussion amongst his students, Samuel Patti had a series of images. These images included caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad as they were printed in the magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Charlie Hebdo. Charlie Hebdo had been around since the 70s and was described by the editor Stéphane Charbonnier as left-wing, secular and atheist. It is known and well-renowned worldwide for its cartoons, in particular those that target all religions, particularly Islam. So the title of Charlie Hebdo roughly translates to Charlie Weekly. Some people think that it's after the Peanuts character Charlie Brown. Other people think it's a reference to the death of Charles de Gaulle, a former president of France. The airport in Paris is named after him.

I assume he is a reasonable big deal. And I think I read that when Charles de Gaulle died, another magazine mocked his death and then it went out of print because of it. And then they were the people that started Charlie Hebdo. So I think it's probably much more to do with that than it is to do with Peanuts. But who knows? Yeah, I feel like what's it got to do with Charlie Brown from Peanuts apart from it also being cartoons? It makes way better sense to be the second thing.

I know what I think. So although Charlie Hebdo is internationally famous now, it actually only had a circulation of about 50,000 readers when the attack on the offices happened in 2015, which is not much. No. France is fucking huge. It's really not that many people are buying this magazine at all. I was quite shocked by that. Yeah, it feels like a niche publication that was going out.

It's cartoons. It's got a specific demographic, and that's who was reading it. It wasn't like, you know, the fucking, I don't know, I was going to say it's not the something and I don't know what the big newspaper is in France. It's not Le Times. I don't know. No, I don't know either. Good. But with numbers like that, I'd argue that Girl Talk is potentially more influential. Possibly, possibly. It feels like, I wonder what the readership of something like Private Eye is in the UK. Oh, good point. It's like something you're aware of, but not necessarily something that I buy or that I just like, you know, I wonder what their readership or their circulation is. It feels like that. Yeah, someone find out and let us know. Obviously, there are differences between private and Charlie Hebdo, but they're reasonably similar satirical vibes.

So back in 2020, Samuel Patti was aware that there were Muslim students in his class. So he warned them of the material before he got it out. And he told them that if they were offended by the images he was about to show, the cartoons from Charlie Hebdo, and everyone would have known what they were, that they were allowed to leave the room. Of course, in Islam, it is considered blasphemous to draw any animate objects. An image of Mohammed is at the very top of the blasphemy scale. So obviously it is offensive to Muslims.

But under the law of France, it is not considered hate speech and therefore it is not illegal. Jean-Rémi Girard, who's the president of the National Union of School Teachers, later told the press that all children need to understand that blasphemy can be shocking, but it does exist and it is legal. And is it not better for children to be introduced to images and ideas that they might find shocking in the safe space of a classroom rather than discover it on their own in the real world. I think that's what I would argue. Yeah, I agree. And I also feel like, what is the role of a good education if it is not to challenge you and if it is not to encourage critical thinking, like to be exposed to things that you may disagree with and to challenge your thinking on those things? They're

12 and 14, you know, I think it's fine to be questioning their opinions on things like this. Yeah, yeah. And also, like, it's not something they wouldn't have known about. Exactly. Everyone knows about Charlie, especially in France. Yes. You know, they would have already known about it. I don't think we can argue that it was sort of sprung on them, especially as they were told by Samuel Patti that if they wanted to leave the room, they could leave the room. Absolutely. And it was a watershed moment in France, the Charlie Hebdo terror attack. How is it not to be spoken about? And yes, people may argue, why is he showing those cartoons again? Once again, blasphemy is not illegal in France. What he is showing is not illegal. So it's not clear, like Hannah said, the students were told they could leave the room

if they felt they were going to be offended by what was about to be shown. But it's not clear if any of them did leave the room. But they were certainly given that option. However, despite this attempt by Samuel Patti to stem any outrage that the cartoons would have caused, an eruption of parental fury began. There was a meeting held at the school that included Samuel Patti, other senior school faculty, and parents of children who attended the school. Importantly, I thought to note, not all of these parents who turned up to

this meeting even had children in that particular classroom. So, let's just bear that in mind. Now, this meeting led to the launching of a legal complaint against the teacher Samuel Patty. He even had to go to the police station to give a statement. We're going to get into how culturally complicated this is later on. So like, don't spunk your load all at once. But he's doing his job. It's an essential part of the national curriculum. If he didn't include it, that would be, I mean, breaking the law. Essentially, it's part of the national curriculum he's doing his job. Precisely.

Like we said, guys, difficult. Let's have some difficult thinking. Let's have some difficult conversations today. Because why the fuck not? You know, it's the year of difficulty, 2020. So where were we? After this all happened and Samuel Patti had to go to the police station, etc. There were more than just these legal threats starting to emerge

because there were very real physical ones too. Patti actually changed the route that he took from home to school because he felt so threatened. And if you think that that's overreacting, well, you clearly haven't been watching the news because I would have felt threatened too. After the lesson, a man who is only referred to ever as far as we could see as Brahim C, whose daughter apparently attended the school.

But crucially, like we said before, as was with some of these parents, his daughter was not in the actual civics lesson that included the blasphemous image of the Prophet Muhammad. He, however, took it upon himself to post a YouTube video. And it is difficult to see how this video is not intended as a call to action to Brahim C's fellow Muslims. Some have even considered it to be a fatwa. Now, a fatwa is difficult to explain. And please write in and definitely do correct me if we've got this wrong. But our understanding is that a fatwa is a legal ruling by an Islamic lawmaker who is a recognised authority called a mufti. Brahim C, to the best of our knowledge, is not a mufti, so could not be out there issuing such fatwas. Fatwas can be issued by Islamic leaders that do call for people's death,

obviously the most famous one being the fatwa declared against Salman Rushdie, the author of the Satanic Verses, which similarly to the cartoons published in Charlie Hebdo, was considered to be a supremely blasphemous work. But as far as I know,

someone's dad, who has no standing within the Islamic religion particularly, can't just issue a fatwa. I'm also sure, I don't even think he even used that word.

It's a buzzword that people like to throw around like jihad. Like, I don't think it was issue a fatwa. I'm also sure I don't even think he even used that word. It's a buzzword that people like to throw around like jihad. Like I don't think it was actually a fatwa. But although he doesn't seem to have had the religious standing or status to call for a fatwa, I think the point is that a fatwa, which seems to be essentially putting out a bounty on someone's head, inciting violence, calling for murder because of something they said, wrote or drew that you didn't like because it's blasphemous, does exist as a concept. And I know that blasphemy and anti-blasphemy laws in Islam are contested. Some say that it is in the Quran and some say that it is not.

But there is no denying that in many Muslim majority nations like Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, blasphemy is punished incredibly harshly in those countries that I just listed, even with death. And while of course not all Muslims believe in this, for Brahim Sita to call for this, even if he didn't use the word fatwa or have the religious standing to do this, it is definitely a dog whistle to extremists. And that's the issue of this whole thing, really, is that like France's whole vibe is that no law is above the law of the Republic of France. And that is where we're going to get into some tricky territory. So maybe he was not issuing a fatwa. Maybe he did not say that word. But Brahim C is definitely trying to make a point.

And he's definitely calling for change. In this video that he posted on YouTube, Brahim C declares that Samuel Patti had shown his students a photo of a naked man and claimed that it was the Muslim prophet. This is not the case. It was not a photograph. It was a cartoon. Brahim C goes on to denounce this as pornography, which is a bit of a stretch considering,

A, it's a cartoon, and B, like, what does his daughter look at in biology lessons? Yeah. No? She's not allowed to look at those either? Okay, fine. Brahim implored other parents to join him in action against Samuel Patti, who he insisted was nothing more than a thug. And this is what he specifically said. He said, quote, this thug should not remain in the

national education system. He should no longer teach our children. He should go educate himself. Samuel Patti was 47 years old. He has been a teacher his entire career. He knows what he's doing. Brahim C goes on to say, if you want to join, focus and say stop, don't touch our children, then send me a message. Fucking hell. And then he shared the address of the school and Samuel Patti's name, just in case anyone's unclear. This is 100% a call to action. You don't give out the school's address. And crucially, this is not just local either.

This goes throughout France, this video. Wow. Brahim C, I don't know what he thought was going to happen or what he planned to happen, but he wanted something, and not a very very nice something to happen to Samuel Patti. Precisely. Now, this YouTube video, you can't go and find it, you can't go and watch it because it has now been taken down.

But not before another parent leapt to Patti's defence, writing, quote, I'm a parent of a student at this college. The teacher just showed caricatures from Charlie Hebdo as part of a history lesson on freedom of expression. He asked the Muslim students to leave the classroom if they wished, out of respect. He was a great teacher. He tried to encourage the critical spirit of his students, always with respect and intelligence. This evening I am sad for my daughter, but also for the teachers in France. Can we continue to teach without being afraid of being

killed? And this particular parent who wrote this comment, you will notice that they are talking about Samuel Patti in the past tense. And that is because on the 16th of October 2020, so just over two weeks ago from the day that we're recording this, Samuel Patti was killed and when it happened and I saw the news I think the headline I saw was French teacher beheaded on suburban street by teenager and I just couldn't believe it's what you said Hannah when we did the Joe Cox episode I cannot believe that we live in a day and an age when our nearest neighbor to us country-wise had a teacher murdered in the street because of a cartoon that is at the base of it what happened and I just think it's easy to be horrified by that but we need to talk about the reasons why this happened and

it just made me want to cry like because so many people in my family are teachers. I know you hated it but what a fucking amazing job if you do it well right and it just absolutely broke my heart. So yeah that happened two weeks ago everyone. So Brahim C's YouTube video did not go viral thankfully but it was shared by Muslim people and mosques in the area and there is no doubt that there was unrest and outrage. Most notably this video was shared by the Pantin Mosque again north of Paris and that mosque boasted a congregation of over 1500 followers and after what happened next they were shut down for six months. Later on given that they had shared this video that had obviously inextricably been linked to Samuel Patty's murder, they expressed regret, but never actually apologised for sharing the video.

Did you see on the Facebook group when people were talking about the Vietnam War and all the various opinions of whether the Americans lost or not? I saw the first message in it and I thought, I'm not going to read this because I don't want to. Well, there was one person, I can't remember who it was, sorry. But they were saying, no, like we didn't really go into it in any detail. But I do specifically remember a lesson on like deconstructing the lyrics of We Didn't Start the Fire. I was like, I love that. That's a PSHE lesson right there.

There you go. Just going through every single line of we didn't start the fire. Oh my God. Shall we start writing educational resources for PSHE lessons to be conducted and we can sell them to schools? And that can be the first one. Oh man. The second one can be talking about diaphragms. Just to add to our list of things. To accomplish. Well, we're in lockdown now for the foreseeable. Just a new national curriculum, no problem, and knock it out on a Sunday. So the video that was shared by Brahim C and shared by the Pantin Mosque and lots of other

people reached an 18-year-old young man called Abdullah Anzarov. And because this crime happened so recently, like two weeks ago ago and because there are minors involved we don't actually know the step-by-step timeline of what happened but we do know that brahim c communicated with amdala anzarov by text message anzarov had no previous connection with samuel patty the school he taught in or even the neighborhood from which the outrage stemmed he's an external person brought in i would I would argue, by this video initially. Anzarov was a Chechen migrant. He was born in Moscow, but a Russian diplomat has insisted that he has absolutely nothing to do with Russia because he'd lived in France for the past

12 years and had just received his French residency permit. Anzarov had grown up in an immigrant, but sort of middle-class-ish neighbourhood in Everone, Normandy. He lived with his family who had fled the Chechen Republic and settled in France. Andorov attended a state-funded school where he too would have had civics lessons and learned how to be French. He lived in the rent-subsidised block of flats and according to his peers he didn't really talk that much. But he did do quite a lot of martial arts. Mixed martial arts. Sorry, my fault. He really, really wanted to fight in the UFC, but I was going to make a Joe Rogan joke, but I'm just not going to. So at 16, he took himself off to Toulouse to live with an uncle and to train in a much more legit

gym than the one available to him in Everett. You can all come for my French pronunciation if you want, but I won't listen. Don't you do it. Don't you listen, Hannah. So this gym that he joined even had a Chechen coach. And as an added bonus, by the sounds of it, it seems like quite a lot of the people who attended this gym were Chechen too. And if you're thinking, hold on a minute, what the fuck is a Chechen? You might be more familiar with the word Chechnya, which I feel like got thrown around a lot more in the late 90s and early 2000s than it does now. Throwback. I know. It's now officially known as the Chechen Republic and is currently part of the Russian Federation in the Northern Caucasus.

Chechens are people indigenous to that particular area and they are usually Muslim. France has offered asylum to loads of Chechen refugees because the Russian military has been going after Islamist separatists in that region since the 1990s and well into the 2000s. Conflict in the Chechen Republic has been long lived, with violence in the mountains and southern regions all the way up until 2019. But let's get back to the gym. So this gym that Anzarov went and joined in Toulouse was actually investigated by authorities because apparently members there were asking women to cover their arms and dress

more modestly. Of course, this does not fly in France. And rightly fucking so. Like, I'm sorry, if I went to the gym and people were like, cover your fucking arms up, I'd be like, where do you think we are? You don't get to tell me that. That's the thing. The gym is a public space. If it's your choice to dress modestly, it's your choice. It should not be enforced on you. Absolutely. That's the big problem here.

So what we're saying is that this gym is, it's a pretty radical Muslim space. Yep. And I think that, you know, coming back to what we say are the values of a nation or what we're saying are the beliefs held there. If the beliefs are that women can dress how they want and the state or whoever else cannot interfere in how they dress or conduct themselves in public, then you don't get to say that in your gym. But what I did think was interesting is after this was discovered, the gym was put under surveillance. I'm guessing that it wasn't just this. I'm guessing if this kind of thing was going

on, there are other things that were raising red flags that got them put under surveillance. I'm guessing that it wasn't just this. I'm guessing if this kind of thing was going on, there are other things that were raising red flags that got them put under surveillance. And I do think, therefore, it is probably fair to assume, or at least safe to assume, that the gym probably would have exposed Anzarov to fundamentalist ideology if he had not already been exposed to it elsewhere. After giving it a good go, it turns out that the fighting didn't work out. And eventually, Anzaroff moved from Toulouse back to Evereau, where he started to show signs of radicalisation. Chiefly, on everybody's favourite internet hellscape, Twitter. So he was critical of basically everyone who was not a Muslim. So Jews, Christians, etc. And actually,

in fact, some people who were Muslim mainly for example the rulers of Saudi Arabia. It's people who are not doing his particular form of Muslim is what I understand. Exactly either you're not doing Muslim or you're not doing his particular flavor of Muslim those are his biggest gripes on the internet. Now it's been alleged that Azaroff's sister actually joined the Islamic State in Syria in 2014. But other than that, he does seem to have been a relatively normal kid with a relatively normal upbringing, apart from getting in a few fights now and again. And it wasn't until 2017 that he became fully immersed in religion.

But I do think we have to say, if it is true that his sister went to Syria three years before this, so in 2014, then I feel like he would have been acutely aware of ISIS from the age of at least 12, if not before. 2017 isn't the first time he's coming into contact with this kind of ideology. Totally. And if your sister moves to Syria, like that's not something you forget. It's not something you're not going to have questions about, you know. And it's not something you're not aware of where she's gone and why she's gone, even at the age of 12. So let's define what we mean by the Islamic State.

ISIS is a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organisation. What they want is a state for Muslims, governed by Muslims, following the Quran to the letter. This is the caliphate, or Islamic state. The leaders of ISIS want to recreate the world of the 7th century, when the Prophet Muhammad was presumably knocking about. So according to their rules, men have to have beards, stoning people to death would be a normal form of punishment, and so would cutting off people's hands. And also, of course, slavery would also be fine. The caliphate was announced in June 2014.

The territory controlled by ISIS was in both Iraq and Syria. And at its height, ISIS governed 12 million people. The Islamic State was never officially, of course, recognised by any international body. So it is what is called a proto-state. I was quite shocked that it was that many people. 12 million people? Wow. And one of the things that they, like, in Caliphate, the podcast, they interview people in northern Iraq.

And they're like, what was the major difference between being governed by the Iraqi government and ISIS? And most of them are like, well, the roads were much cleaner under ISIS, to be honest. Yeah. They had places to get to and shit to blow up. It's just like an interesting idea that like ISIS would have had bureaucrats. Yeah, I know. Organizing the bin lorry. I guess it's like the Nazis, though.

You can't get shit like that done without a bunch of bureaucrats pushing paper around. True. But yeah, I wonder, you know, when they say 12 million people, do they include like all the Yehdeezy women and people that they put into sex slavery? Or is it just like the actual people that are members of the caliphate that they recognize as being Islamic State citizens, if you will? I don't know if you know the answer. I just wonder.

Pass. You'd have to ask Rukmini. Yes. Oh my God, Rukmini, come hang out with us. But yes, the atrocities committed by Islamic State, obviously we can't go into all of them. They are far too many to name. But if you don't know about the Yehudizi sex slavery that they are doing,

it is some of the most harrowing shit you're ever going to hear about in your entire life. So yeah, go fall down a horrible rabbit hole with that. The biggest city ISIS has ever controlled was Mosul. It's like the most politically important city they had control of. And it's actually one of the oldest cities in the world, which I didn't know. And apparently when the wheel was invented, I don't know how you would go about proving that, but there you go. Big words, big words from Mosul. I find it interesting when they say things like that about regions, because I kind of feel like surely the wheel is one of those things that simultaneously was probably invented in lots of places at once, not just like possibly one place, but interesting claim. Maybe the oldest wheel ever was found there. I don't know. I have

no idea. ISIS were driven out of Mosul by the Iraqi government in July 2017. And so was the fall of the Islamic State, kind of, some people say, but not really. This has been called a victory over ISIS, especially by Trump, but ISIS have not gone away. They still control some territory in Syria, but much, much less than they did before. And according to The Atlantic, ISIS is bigger now than when they founded the caliphate, despite having lost their ground. And Anzarov would have been well aware of this. So now we know what we mean when we talk about ISIS. Please don't let that be the end of your research into ISIS.

Go and learn up as much as you possibly can. Let's follow Anzarov through his movements on the 16th of October, the day he murdered Samuel Paty. What we know is that as well as Brahim C, students from the school communicated directly with Anzarov again by text message and on the 16th of October they met him for two hours outside of the school and identified Mr. Patti. Anzarov paid these children about 300 euro for their identification services. There is an undeniable direct causal link between the communication these students had and that Brahim

C had with Anzarov and the death of Samuel Patti. Although they did not carry out the act themselves, blood is on their hands. The students who identified Samuel Patti for money claimed that all Anzarov had said was that he would like to make the teacher apologize. He wanted to humiliate him and hit him. So it sounds like the students are saying they didn't know that Anzarov's plan was to kill him. But it was. What did they think he was going to do? Tickle him? Once Anzarov found out who the teacher Samuel Patti was, he followed him, armed with a knife and an airsoft gun. The exact details of the altercation are still unclear. But what we know is that Samuel was beheaded by Anzarov, not far from the school.

This next bit is particularly important, so pay attention to it. Because after he beheaded this teacher in the street, Anzarov then tweeted a picture of his severed head with the caption, To Macron, the leader of the infidels, I execute one of your hellhounds who dare to belittle Mohammed. Calm his fellow human beings before a harsh punishment is inflicted on you. And we're going to come back to this statement later on, so remember these words. So after the murder, the alarm was raised at 5pm and the police chased and shot Anzaroff, just 600 metres away from the spot he had killed Samuel Patti. He was acting in

a threatening manner and refusing to put down his weapon, and there were concerns that he was wearing a suicide vest. These are, however, unconfirmed. The attack was treated as an assassination in connection with a terrorist organization. And an investigation is currently underway to see just what that looks like and who he was radicalized by. But we've seen this time and time again about like, it's kind of gone are the days where people like go off to fucking training camps in the mountains and get radicalized by Al-Qaeda or ISIS in that kind of a structured way. He seems like someone radicalized possibly at that gym

or online somewhere. But, you know, I guess we'll have to wait and see what this investigation finds. Yeah, absolutely. As far as we know, Anzarov had been in contact with a Russian-speaking jihadist currently living in Syria before he killed Pater. We don't know what was said. Presumably there'll be an inquest. Seven people have been arrested in connection to this crime, including the students who identified Samuel and Brahim C himself. We don't know what the specific charges are, but they include associating with a terrorist. The seven people that have been arrested also include two friends of Anzarov.

One of them is alleged to have driven him to the school and the other helped him to purchase a weapon. They have been charged with complicity in a terrorist murder. A preacher called Abdelhakim Sefriori is also in custody. He has been on the police watch list for years. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection.

Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't.

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Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. So 40 homes were raided after the attack, and it has been announced that the Sheikh Yassin Collective, which is an Islamist group named after the founder of Hamas, were directly involved in the killing. French President Macron, Emmanuel Macron, who I've got a bit of a crush on. You're too young for him. He visited the school almost straight away,

declaring that France's battle against terror was existential, which seems like an odd choice of words, but French is a weird language, and that France refused to be divided by extremists. He fiercely defended the education system and the role that it plays in shaping French national identity. Also, the French ambassador to Turkey has been recalled, which politically is a big move. Apparently, I don't know whether it was the leader of the government in Turkey

basically said that Emmanuel Macron has mental problems, and that's why they pulled the ambassador. Oh, yeah. Erdogan is like, let's fucking take... He is... Because Turkey for a long time was a relatively secular state. It wasn't as religious as Erdogan has driven it to be. He is a religious fundamentalist of a man. And I do think he's not directly going out and orchestrating terror attacks. Well, not that I can confidently say, but I do think his rhetoric,

much like we see with other political leaders and their stoking of racial division, it's having an impact. I definitely think that is the case. And that's what Erdogan wants. And I think he is fully jumping all over this. One of the things that I saw that I thought was just so strange, I don't know if you saw, the protests that are happening in lots of like Muslim majority countries

against Macron and the French, boycotting French goods, etc. They're like burning effigies of Macron or burning pictures of him. And one of them is like a picture of a dog and a picture of Macron being burnt. And I was like, why is that? And my mum was like, it's because dogs are haram. And I was like, oh, but they've picked the weirdest picture of a dog. It's like a smiling yellow golden Labrador. And I was like, it just looks like, hey, and then a picture of Macron's face and just being burnt in the street. I'm baffled.

And also, dog is an animal object. I'm not sure you're allowed those. I mean, I guess you're allowed to burn pictures. You're just not allowed to draw a dog. So you can buy a picture of a dog. You can't just draw it yourself. Yeah, you can't draw it, which is why if you look at mosques, there are no pictures of animals or people or anything. It's all geometric mosaics or patterns like that.

So yeah, as Saru said, Turkey is not on his own. There's protests all over the place and several Muslim nations have announced that they will be boycotting France entirely. But here is what Macron told a gathered crowd. He said, quote, we will continue this fight for liberty and reason of which you are now the face.

He's directly addressing Samuel Paty when he says this. He says, because we owe it to you, because we owe it to ourselves, because we owe it to ourselves, because in France, Professor, the lights will never go out. Oh, that's a lot. He's good at speeches, this Macron, I'll give him that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. He's got a good speechwriter.

Yes, he does. So what Macron is doing here, what he's saying here, is he is defending the French ideal of secularism. I believe secularism in France is written into their constitution. It's a fundamental part of their identity as a nation. And he is saying as well that the French system has nothing wrong with it and that it doesn't need to and it won't change. So let's get into this secularism business. For generations, the ideology of assimilation has been at the core of French

education. Being French is something that is taught and instilled. Here in the UK, we have a multiculturalism model in our curriculum. This is an active choice by the government. And we're not saying that it is a better system than what France has. We're just saying that it is different because this isn't what happens in France. And a lot of people think that this needs to change. Essentially, a lot of people are saying that France needs to move towards a multiculturalism model rather than a secularism model. So the French political system as we know it today was of course born out of the French Revolution and the democratic system was designed to keep the Catholic Church out. There is a very clear separation of church and state in France. I didn't know this, but France doesn't even take religious data during its census.

Your religion is seen as totally separate to your civil identity, to your role as a citizen. Which, when you say it like that, it may sound sensible, but it does cause some problems. So the French word for this principle is laïcité. Now what laïcité is supposed to do is ensure equal treatment of all people, encourage tolerance and freedom of expression and speech. But it does, important to note, have its limits. For example, Holocaust denial, Armenian genocide denial, defamation and hate speech are not allowed. So there are double standards here. There are. I think we have to

admit that we have to face up to it because it is illegal to deny the Holocaust, but other forms of freedom of speech are protected. And this is just my personal opinion. Personally, I think that making it illegal to be a Holocaust denier is not a good thing. People should be allowed to make idiots of themselves and they should be allowed to publicly out themselves as fucking bigots. And we should be allowed to boycott them, mock them, tear them down, whatever. Not physically, I mean purely through our choice of where we want to spend our money, attention we give them, and possibly on Twitter.

The reason as well I do think there is a fundamental issue with making that illegal but protecting other forms of free speech is that when you do that I feel like it leaves you open to criticism when we then defend things like Charlie Hebdo. If we say this is allowable, this free speech is allowable but you cannot deny the holocaust, it leaves you open to criticism from people who want to argue with you about the Charlie Hebdo thing. So that's my issue, but it's just my personal opinion on the matter. Now, I think that there is a fundamental issue in the way that stories like Charlie Hebdo or the murder of Samuel Patti are often presented in the media. We are often made to believe that there is some sort of like balancing act between freedom of speech and freedom of religion. But I don't know. I just don't really think that it should be seen as a trade-off.

So freedom of speech doesn't take away, in my opinion, from somebody's right to practice their religion, which is what freedom of religion means, right? If your way, though, of practicing your religion is to cause violence, to force others to submit to your religion, then it's not freedom of religion. That's a theocracy and that's the opposite of secularism, which is what France says that it is. And something interesting that we also thought was that in a recent poll, 29% of Muslim people said that in their opinion, they felt that Islam was incompatible with the values of the French Republic, which when you consider that France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe is most definitely significant. That's almost 30% of people.

10% of the population of France is Muslim. Wow. It's huge. That is remarkable. And I guess like, you know, having 30% of 10% of your population feel like the overall values of your nation don't align with their values as being a Muslim that is an issue but my question would be which values are these that they don't feel are compatible with their belief system as a Muslim and also I do think

it's important to I guess point out that if a third of Muslims or so felt that it wasn't compatible two-thirds of Muslims either didn't think that it was incompatible or they're not sure or it wasn't compatible, two thirds of Muslims either didn't think that it was incompatible, or they're not sure, or it wasn't a big enough issue for them to even know, like how to respond to that, or they just didn't respond. So it is an interesting point to consider that I would be curious to know which value specifically. I think, honestly, it's the hijab being outlawed in 2004 in public spaces. If I had to pick one, I would say that because you know freedom to practice your religion in my opinion should include being able to wear whatever the fuck you want like i don't understand how that impacts anything really i agree with that i think and i don't know if this

is the argument that france is making but obviously some people will say that the wearing of the hijab is not actually in the quran and it was more a cultural thing. There is an amazing TED talk given by this woman whose name I've forgotten and I'm kicking myself but it is about the evolution of why women started wearing the hijab and she's a Muslim woman and I'm going to leave the link to it when I find it in the episode description below so you guys can check it out. But I do understand that if you do associate that particular garment of clothing with your religion and you're being told you can't, you feel like you're not being allowed to practice your religion freely, which is something that I believe that people should be allowed to do when it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others. So if we're

talking about nationalism, it comes in all shapes and sizes. There's secular nationalism, like sort of patriotism, sort of pledging allegiance to the flag, for example. And then there's religious nationalism, which is more common in the Middle East, where faith and nationality are one in the same. And then we've got cultural nationalism. And that is what happens in France. Being French, being a citizen of the Republic is the best thing that one can possibly be. And there is no law above the law of France. As a result of the policy of laïcité, no religious clothing is allowed in public spaces. As I just said, that was outlawed in 2004. And that means schools.

Children are sent home from school for wearing hijabs. Technically speaking, yarmulkes aren't allowed either. But it seems like that is not as harshly enforced. Interestingly, crucifixes are allowed because they have been deemed to be not ostentatious. And that's the wording of the law. It's no ostentatious religious clothing is allowed. So it's quite difficult to feel like Islam has not been specifically targeted. I mean, that's when it gets very blurry. And I can back that up because a Catholic nun was told that she couldn't stay in a retirement home that was state funded because she wouldn't stop wearing her religious nun outfit. This decree was retracted and she received an apology

from the mayor of the town in which she lived. I find it quite hard to believe that that would have happened to a Muslim lady. Protests to allow students to wear hijabs in school and college, university happen all the time every year. It kind of feels a bit like to become totally French, you have to leave a little bit of yourself behind. And some people have felt a bit robbed of their roots. We should mention, though, that faith schools do exist and they're not all private. Some of them are state

funded. So a bit of me is like, if you want your kids to go to a faith school, send them to a faith school. And by all accounts, Samuel Patti was a strong believer in laïcité, the secularism that separates religion and state. And actually, Samuel Patti, I read, he once told a student to remove a crucifix necklace. So maybe he was being a bit more fair about it than the government. Now, I mean, I'm not going to stand here and say that children who fail to assimilate successfully aren't going to be left feeling lost and feeling like they don't quite belong. I can speak personally coming from an immigrant background, being a first generation immigrant in this country, having one background at home and then having to come to school and assimilate there. Luckily for me, I was able to

do that successfully. But I can understand if there are particularly strong barriers in your way why that can be very disorientating and if the notion in France is that nothing should come before being a citizen of the republic not even a relationship with God then okay like I do think secularism may inevitably end up marginalizing people of faith and Hannah and I have our views on organized religion we've made them very clear on this show and we are all for a secular education and a end up marginalizing people of faith. And Hannah and I have our views on organized religion. We've made them very clear on this show. And we are all for a secular education and a separation of church slash any other religion and state. But can secularism become a slippery slope to limiting people's freedom of religion? I may vehemently not agree with organized religion, but I certainly believe in your

right to practice your religion without it infringing on the rights of others and without my freedom of speech being undermined. But I believe in your right to practice your religion without it infringing on the rights of others and without my freedom of speech being undermined. Because as I said before, I don't think we should talk about freedom of religion and freedom of speech being mutually exclusive. I don't think one takes away from the other. But the thing is, it feels like in France that teachers have somewhat been left to bear the brunt of the backlash to secularism that seems to be happening in schools, particularly in state schools, with almost no state support. Recently, there has been an increase in Muslim

students not taking part in classes, hiding their eyes from depictions of pigs in things like animal farm, or verbally attacking science teachers for speaking against God's truth. And these are just a few examples. And the thing is, in France, teachers earn barely above the minimum wage. And according to the French education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, quote, teachers do not feel protected by the institution and think that the day they will have difficulties, they will be let go. And these issues have been present in this, you know, environment well before Macron's time, but few improvements seem to have been initiated during his time in office. I'm not sure where I stand on the ban of the hijab in schools. It feels like an infringement of religious freedom to me.

But if you are sticking to this laicite policy, if that's the hill you're going to die on and you're sending teachers out to increasingly radical communities, because Samuel Patti, he changed his teaching style when he moved out to the school that he was killed at because he knew there was a higher Muslim population. So he was like, oh, I'm going to have to change the way I do this. No one helped him do that. That was his own thing. And I think if you are going to send out teachers to be the defenders of the secular state, you've got to help

them out a bit more than is going on, I would argue. 100%. 100%. I completely agree. I had a little wiggle around where this secularism idea came from. And surprise, surprise, it developed in France's colonial peak, which was in the 19th century. Essentially, the idea of assimilation was a social deal. A person could privately maintain their religion and still become a full-time citizen of the Republic. This, of course, fits in with the idea that no law could be greater than the law of France. It was an attempt to erase linguistic and regional distinctions within France and a way to negotiate treatment of domestic others, which in 19th century France usually was code for Jewish people. In French colonies like Algeria, Muslims were allowed to practice elements of their faith, like polygamy, etc., that would have been

illegal in France, but it did mean that they lost their right to vote. So effectively, to be eligible for French citizenship, one had to leave their religion behind. It's tricky, isn't it? The whole idea of, I don't know, because I feel like your nation's law being the highest law of the land makes complete sense because you can't have different religious groups or different groups of people believing in different things, thinking that they can do that and then use their religion as an excuse to do that. It's where the law of the land draws the line, like something like FGM. Things like forced marriage was only made illegal in this country a few years ago. Forced marriage is a cultural thing, it's not a

religious thing, but FGM is a religious thing. And I'm like, that doesn't get to be okay. That doesn't get to be okay and you don't get to excuse it using your religion because the law of the land should protect those people, those vulnerable people who are going to be exploited by that. But it's where you draw that line. That's the thing. I think cultural relativism can only go so far. It's a nice argument. It's a very left wing argument. 100%. But it does have limitations. So we have to agree that we all believe in some fundamental truths, like little girls should not have their genitals cut off. Like, I think we should all agree on that. 100%. And if you're a liberal, and you're like, well, I'm torn between this cultural aspect and protecting children.

I'm sorry, but protecting children should always trump, should always win. It should always be the thing that you feel more passionately about than being culturally sensitive to somebody else's beliefs, because that doesn't count as much at all. So, no. So it becomes where do you draw that line, really? And that's the slippery slope. Yeah, exactly, exactly. If we skip all the way forward to 1974, after a period of very busy migration to France from former colonies and beyond, France closed its borders.

Immigration for the purpose of work decreased and migrants were encouraged to return home. So the immigration policy of France has, like every other country in the world, chopped and changed lots and lots over the centuries. But this idea of being French, being something that you learn, something that you adopt, has been a common theme throughout. At least in a way that is better than some countries where you can live here your entire life, but you'll never really be one of us, I would argue. Yeah, like you can't become Japanese, you're Japanese or you're not. Precisely. And that is a very elitist way. This is almost, they're saying it's the opposite. They're saying this is totally like egalitarian. You can become French, but you learn what that means. You learn what the values

are. And again, I'm not saying it's the best thing in the world. It's the worst thing. I'm saying it's different. And I'm saying that there is a slippery slope and there's a line. But who am I to draw that line? We'll get fucking phone calls from education think tanks tomorrow and red-handed will be no more. Oh my God, I'm pumped. Let's go. So I think it's fair to say that there is unrest in the Muslim community in France. We're not saying that all Muslims are extremists

and we're not saying that extremism should be tolerated before you all go nuts on that. But it does feel as if Muslims in France are marginalised. For example, French guy I went on a date with on Friday said, if you want to find out about that and what a catastrophe it was, please go on over to Under the Duvet for the next installment of Empty Handed. Anyway, he said that having a Muslim mayor like Sadiq Khan, who's the mayor of London, is a Muslim.

He was like, there is no way that would happen in France, that the mayor of Paris would be Muslim. Absolutely no way that would happen in France, that the mayor of Paris would be Muslim. Absolutely no way. So I don't think we can argue that there isn't a marginalization there. And unhappy people are easier to radicalize. I think there is something to be said for, I don't really know how to say this delicately. Well, it's hard because the UK actually suffered the most terror attacks last year, followed by France and Italy. But France actually had the most number of arrests. Almost half of all 400 or so arrests of suspected terrorists within EU member states were made in France in 2019. And clearly, with the most recent attacks, France is back in the spotlight. And the question

I think on everyone's mind is why? Why are these attacks happening in France? And some places talk about why as if France's secular society and the potential this has to marginalize people of the Muslim faith is the only reason. And that feels like just not the whole story, to me at least. But we'll come back to it. So there's a great fear in France surrounding Islamic separatism. And because of this, homeschooling has been banned. And Macron's way of dealing with this separatism is to, quote, build an Islam in France that is compatible with the Enlightenment. So, you know, what he's saying is like, we'll fit it into our box. But I can imagine

that Muslim people would not take kindly to the idea of someone else deciding what Islam is, who is not a Muslim himself. Difficult. This is the thing. It's difficult, very difficult, difficult, difficult, lemon difficult. It's super difficult because at the same time, you do need to have a shared set of values. I do believe that the people of a nation agree upon and this is what we all strive towards. And I think that if you're having 30% of the Muslim population saying that it's not compatible with the values of France, again, I come back to which of those values is it? And is it just the hijab, the ban? If not, what else is it? is it just the hijab the ban if not what else

is it I don't think I totally understand that but I do again think you know coming down this harshly banning homeschooling I don't know it's difficult again I know I said we'll come back to this later let's talk about it now because I do think that there are many places who report this have kind of reduced the factors leading to these attacks down to just it being racism and the difficulty of immigrants or minorities to assimilate into what they call like a hostile western society but i feel like putting it like that isn't telling the whole story because these terrorists are telling us why they are doing what they're doing and they're saying that it's based in religion hannah and i have talked about this before on the show, like with incels. Why is it that when somebody commits a crime like that, and they're telling

us why they did it, they're leaving manifestos, they're yelling shit. We're like, nah, that's not why. Let us tell you why. Let us ascribe a meaning to why they've done this. These people are telling us, these terrorists are telling us why they're doing what they're doing. And they're telling us what they believe, and they're telling us what they stand for. And again, of course, we're not saying that this is a universal worldview of Muslims. Of course, it's not. But if people, and there are people out there who are willing to blame France's lack of willingness to accept multiculturalism as an ideology, then why is it that these killers' ideologies that are based in religion because they're telling us they are, are too often brushed over? That's the question that I have in my head at the heart of a case like this. Why is it that

we don't believe these people when they're telling us why they're doing what they do? To say that it has nothing to do with religion and honest belief in religion and that it's just about racism and cartoonists and the marginalization of minorities in Europe feels incomplete at best to me. And that's just my personal opinion. And don't get me wrong, I absolutely grant that there are issues. There are huge differences like the way, you know, Hannah and I talked about the way that, for example, Muslims are reported upon in the media. Of course there are. But these killers, these terrorists are driven by blasphemy. They're driven by a hatred of blasphemy. They're driven by a need to provide justice for those who have wronged them through their blasphemy and the belittling of Muhammad. They are driven by doctrines in their religion and we cannot deny that. To quote from

the killer who killed Samuel Patti tells us as much. He tells us exactly why he did it. Remember the quote I told you to remember? To Macron, the leader of the infidels, I executed one of your hellhounds who dared to belittle Mohammed. I'm not saying that there weren't other factors that fed into his radicalization, but he's telling you why he did it. So I just think we should consider the other factors, of course, for why this is happening. This is a multifaceted, incredibly complex set of issues that we're dealing with. But we cannot ignore this reason just because it makes us feel uncomfortable. Because I think, what is the purpose of that then? Yeah, I think you're right.

And the timing of the murder of Samuel Patti should not go unnoticed either. A few weeks before his death, two journalists were stabbed outside the former offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo. 14 people are currently on trial for the infamous massacre. In January 2015, at 11.30am, two brothers called Sharif and Syed Kowachi entered the offices armed with assault rifles. First they killed the caretaker, Frédéric Basso. Then they forced a cartoonist, Corrine Ray, to let them onto the second floor using her security code. Once on the second floor, they forced their way into an editorial meeting. Frank Rinsolaro, Stéphane Carbonier, Jean Cabut, George Walensky, Bernard Verlach, All except Michelle Runoff were employees of Charlie Hebdo,

and most were cartoonists, but some were columnists. The police arrived as the brothers left the building, but they managed to escape, and on their way they killed their final victim, Ahmed Meribat. Then they abandoned their car and continued their escape by other means. The police lost their trail. The next day they were found again, when they robbed a petrol station 45 miles northeast of Paris.

They were pursued until the 9th of January, where they were forced off the road and hid out in a print works on an industrial estate after taking the owner hostage. The brothers stayed in the print works for eight hours. What they didn't know was that an employee, Lillian Lepree, was hiding under a sink for the entire time and was in contact with the police, laying siege to the building from the outside via text. During the siege, the brothers had time for some press.

They did a short interview with BFM TV in which they said that they were defenders of Mohammed and they'd been sent by al-Qaeda because of the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo and that they were ready to die as martyrs. It's interesting, at the beginning of the trial, which is this year, Charlie Hebdo republished all of the Mohammed cartoons

so the timing is something that we really can't ignore Just before 5pm the brothers walked outside of the print works and were shot dead Both of them had been under surveillance but they dropped off the suspect list after it was decided that resources would be better spent on tracing those returning from Syria

Sharif was an active member of the Bouchamon group, which happened to be named after a park they used to meet in in Paris, and their primary function was to send European Muslims to fight in Iraq after the US invasion of 2003. Sharif was 32 years old when he died, and he'd served 18 months in prison after being found guilty of attempting to enter Iraq.

At least one of the brothers, probably Sharif, had weapons training in Yemen. So the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices were in response to a now famous series of cartoons. They were republished to mark the start of the trial, which may have contributed to the string of terror attacks, including the death of Samuel Patti in 2020. We are not saying that if they hadn't republished the cartoons that he wouldn't have died. So what actually are these cartoons? I would be amazed if you hadn't seen them. But here we are. They depict the Prophet Muhammad either naked or being featured as the guest editor. In fact, that issue was entitled Sharia Ebdo and Sharia is French for Sharia,

as in Sharia law. Sharia is spelt with a C-H like Charlie. And on that cover, Mohammed is saying, 100 lashes if you don't die of laughter. Other cover issues featured a Muslim man kissing another man wearing a Charlie Hebdo t-shirt. So there's no doubt that these cartoons were meant to offend. Of course they are. The question is, should that be allowed? Should a magazine be allowed to make fun of a marginalized community?

And yes, Charlie Hebdo has featured covers that mock Catholicism and all sorts. There's a Pope holding a condom that says, this is my body, for example. But I do think they are making more fun of Islam than they are of other religions. And is that because of the growth of Islamic extremism? Quite possibly. But this is one I have a particular problem with. In 2018, Charlie Hebdo published a cover that showed a caricature of a 19-year-old Muslim college student who had been to a protest wearing a headscarf. Her name was Mariam Pujito. And in this cartoon, she has a monkey's face.

Is that freedom of expression or is that something else? I don't think I would see any person depicted as a monkey and not find that not all right. It's the lie. Is that secularism covering for Islamophobia? Is that what that is? Is it hate speech, really? That one made me feel particularly uncomfortable. I'll take the piss out of religion all day long.

But when you're depicting a 19-year-old girl as a monkey is something I... Absolutely. And again, you know, that's a conversation to be had about what their editorial standards are, what is legally allowable, whatever it may be. But if you feel that way, protest. That is one of the fundamental covenants of being here, being in the West. That is one of the things that I'm proud of. You look at what's happening in places like Hong Kong. Protest. Go make your voice heard. You can say what you like. You can go stand in the street wave a placard scream all day long what you cannot do and what isn't allowable and what does not fit with the beliefs of this nation and of france is that your offense cannot be taken of course to the level that you are committing murder and this is the thing yeah right i mean that's it feels like a very obvious thing to say i'm saying and i'm like what reasonable person would disagree with that but we cannot make excuses for it and look for look for just escape holes there are very clear factors at play here that need to be talked about but it is scary to think again we're gonna come back to this you know just like I felt when I heard about what had

happened to Samuel Patti it is scary to think that there are 12 people dead in this day and age because of some cartoons and you guys are all probably aware, very much so, of the hashtag that was trending at the time that this happened, hashtag Je suis Charlie. But I guess the question is five years later, are we still Charlie? And it looks like possibly not. Charlie Hebdo themselves commissioned a survey that found that 59% of respondents said that they thought Charlie Hebdo were right to publish the found that 59% of respondents said that they thought Charlie Abdo were right to publish the cartoons in the name of freedom of expression. But in the under 25 age group, that number who felt that they were right to do so fell to 35%, with 47%

saying they could understand why the Muslim community found them offensive and they insisted outrage. So Macron is sticking to his guns, saying to be free in France means having the freedom to believe or not to believe, and that is inseparable from the freedom of expression. Again, this is tricky because, like we said, there are things in France that are illegal not to believe in. The Holocaust, for example, it's illegal to also insult the flag or the national anthem. So freedom of expression clearly has its limitations, even in France. Hafiz Shemzadeen, the rector of Paris's Grand Mosque, told the press, quote, even if the caricatures offend my faith, as citizens they are important. They are part of our culture. And I think that sums it up pretty well. Yeah, I don't have any

answers. I've got a lot of questions. What's the difference between mocking a religion and hate speech? And where is that line drawn? Because hate speech is illegal in France. Where is that line? And are you really letting people freely practice their religion if you don't allow them to wear religious dress in public places?

Is being fundamentally French at odds with being fundamentally a Muslim? And if the Charlie Hebdo cartoons are not talked about, what happens next? Is it time for an update to France's secular policy? I don't know the answers to any of these things, apart from the Charlie Hebdo cartoons definitely should be talked about. But one thing I am sure of is that the teachers need more help. 32% of teachers in France have been verbally or physically assaulted by a student or a parent. And in 2019, this was reflected in the Red Pens movement, which demanded more respect and higher wages. And they used the hashtag pas de vagues, which means don't make waves, which is quite funny, I thought. So if teachers are the torchbearers of laïcité, if one of their major functions within French society is

to defend this controversial policy of secularism, surely they deserve more help. Definitely. I mean, we've crisscrossed a lot of very high points this episode, a lot of big thoughts that we need to think. But ultimately, this case came down to a group of journalists being murdered for some cartoons, which some people may deem offensive, some may not. And also a teacher, a 37-year-old teacher,

who was beheaded in the street because he showed those cartoons to some students. And I think we should never stop being outraged by that. And I know that you guys aren't going to be, but I think also we need to think critically about the reasons that are leading to this. I don't have the answer to what it is that solves those problems. The one thing I will say is that, like I said, when I think about the fact that my parents left India and now Modi, who is carrying out a campaign that is very much suffocating the right of people to have their freedom of religion against Muslims. One of the things is maybe like when they say the zealousness of a convert, as somebody who came here as an immigrant, one of the things that when Western people laugh at the West, I think you don't know how great it is here that we have the freedom of speech to say whatever we want.

And so I will just reiterate that freedom of religion and freedom of speech are not mutually exclusive. There doesn't need to be a trade-off between the two. So yeah, I don't know where that line lies for people, but that's what I would say. Hope you're still there, guys. Hope you haven't totally exploded. Yeah, we're just leaving you with some big thoughts. Big thoughts. Big thoughts is the name of my think tank. You're all invited. I'll join. Can I be junior VP at Big Thoughts? Yes. Excellent. Yeah, exactly that. Change your handle. You'll have to get your own email address. Oh my god, I'm so excited. Saruti at bigthoughts slash vp.com dot tank yeah dot tank oh god so yes guys if you would like to join our think tank all applications i don't know send them somewhere send them to

prince andrew prince andrew what was it sweaty nonce at prince andrew.com he's in the tower if you don't know what the hell we're talking about that's because you aren't a patreon you want a patreon you want a patron you should probably think about becoming one because we really like to take the edge off there with all of our sweaty nonce jokes. So if you are a patron, if you'd like to become one, all $5 on our patrons head on over now for this week's Under the Duvet,

where we're talking, as Hannah said, about her latest experience of empty-handed. Also talking about the upcoming US elections that we don't know the answer to yet and UK lockdown and also a yellow turtle. So come hang out with us there. We've also got some really fun stuff going on for Patreon this month. We're doing a $20 up live stream that will be available for $10 plus people afterwards and it is on the Maura Murray case. So Red Herrings this month is on Maura Murray. It's going to be very interesting. And we have also got a very interesting $10 and up bonus Patreon episode

that is on the case of Sidney Loof. So if you want to come check that out, you know where to do it. And if you don't, the link's in the episode description. But before we leave you, we've got some thank yous to do for some lovely people. Oh my God, there are so many of you. Right. Erin H. We?

Why? Yep. Harriet, Lena S., Sarah Walsh, Charlotte Daweser, Frankie Bradshaw, Rachel Raines, Kelly Craddock-McEwen, Jekka, Liz Russell, Candy Luca, Candice Driver, Tarquin Rappapera, Sarah Giles, Rebecca Hardesty, Tom Padgett, Ella Todd, Lauren Shriver, Elle Cassin, Stephanie Barlow, Caitlin Harrington, Maya, Lot, Carrie, Karis Berry, Cookie Dickerson, Emily Weaver, Ashley, Days, Annie Fitzgerald 505, Deirdre Dee, Katie White, Beth Turner-McLachlan, Emma Gallina, Sarah Bancroft, Lily Wald, Alexandra Hess, Ludmila. Natasha Berg, Margarita Nelms, Emma Dodd, Kellen Williams, Laura Dixon-Coldwell, Kirstie Duncan, Colin Cara, Nicole Thorpe, Holly Tregertha, Megan Termese, Sarah Gann, Kelsey Weeks, Elena Caridwen, Catherine Knox, Alexandra, Roberta S, Cheryl Lee, Chelsea Rose, Victoria, Dominique Morneau, Jennifer Allen,

Kat Bumbleumble Verisa Cruz Patty Pfennig That's probably a silent P, isn't it? Jill Maria Laura Muir Rebecca Wilmer Maria Cristo Emily Minch

Sofia Fraticelli Stephanie Rodriguez I feel like there's 17 bajillion Stephanie Rodriguez's, but we love every single one of you. Danielle Crystal H Vicky Griffin Kat Ebert

Kaylee Larson Jeremy Mindy Stephanie Vannevar Vicky Jacobs Or Kat Ebert, Kaylee Larson, Jeremy Mindy, Stephanie Van Ever, Vicky Jacobs, Orchid Corsetry. That sounds like a company. Send me a corset, babes. Rebecca Hensley. I'll put it on my Instagram. Vanessa Hanshaw, Natasha Haynes, Ashvin Khera, Jen Vardaman, Luke Matthew Sutton, Kim Howell,

Marissa Donnelly Rachel Anderson Michelle Ellis Louise Weil Jennifer Banks Sophie Mullen Edward Hearn What are you sniggering at? Jodie Taylor It was Michael Ellis

but I appreciate you calling him Michelle It's been a long ass day It has Edward Hearn Jodie Taylor Kayla Cruz Callie Engle Jasmine Turney

Wallets and Sam Ferret has got a ferret in his trousers. Well done to making it this far. I don't know how I made it this far, to be honest. Today has been a day. It's been a long one. So we'll leave you to your own days, and hopefully they are lovely. Goodbye.

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