Self-fettered press

But is that not just what the killers wanted? To so intimidate the free press that they fear to express any anti-Islamic sentiment? You believe that the killers  wanted to create a state of war  between the West and the Islamic world.

But this war already exists – most clearly in Syria and Iraq but also in conflicts between religious communities everywhere. By submitting to a self-imposed ordinance, you declare that free expression has limitations, but freedom has no bounds. Once you start to limit it, the end is tyranny.

Steuart Campbell

Dovecot Loan

Edinburgh

The free world was outraged following the Paris murders of 12 innocent people that were seemingly carried out as a revenge attack after the French magazine Charlie Hebdo had dared to publish a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad, thereby causing inexcusable offence to some Muslim people.

Last Sunday, world leaders led a march of 1,500,000 through the boulevards of Paris, presumably in a demonstration of support for freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Why, then, I wonder, is there  the current controversy over Charlie Hebdo publishing a similar cartoon on the cover of the first edition of the magazine since the tragic crime?

Walter J Allan

Colinton Mains Drive

Edinburgh