Five days that shook the republic

Amid a worldwide outpouring of support, millions of defiant French citizens took to the streets last Sunday to protest at the murders by Islamic militants in Paris. It was an assertion of common values held by people of all races and creeds

When President François Hollande and 40 other heads of state and government headed a mass march through Paris last Sunday, it was the largest outpouring of public emotion and solidarity the French capital had seen since its 1944 liberation from Nazi Germany. What began as a spontaneous protest against an attack on a little-read satirical weekly four days earlier evolved into a broad defence of democratic values that rallied support from around the world. The violence targeted France, but the French and their partners quickly saw it as a new stage in Islamist assaults on the West itself.

The five days of drama unfolded in such a French way that one wonders what would have happened had it occurred in another country. Protesters were quick to rally in cities across the land and call for resistance to a threat to the republic’s highest values. Gestures like the “Je suis Charlie” signs held up by people who never read the magazine Charlie Hebdo created a feeling of national unity. And the French sense of mission about their national motto “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” helped turn the reaction into the international march down Paris’ Boulevard Voltaire.

The nightmare began late in the morning of Wednesday 7 January, when two Islamist militants, brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, gunned down 12 people, including two policemen, at the offices of Charlie Hebdo. Among those killed at the paper’s editorial meeting were the editor, Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier, and five other leading artists, murdered for repeatedly publishing cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. As they climbed into their getaway car, one gunman shouted: “We have killed Charlie Hebdo. We have avenged Prophet Muhammad.”

The following morning, 8 January, as police hunted the killers north of the capital, another Islamist, Amedy Coulibaly, shot and killed a policewoman in southern Paris and also disappeared. On Friday morning, 9 January, security forces cornered the Kouachi brothers in a printing office near Charles de Gaulle Airport. That same day, Coulibaly emerged to attack a kosher grocery in eastern Paris and told police he would kill his Jewish hostages if the Kouachis were harmed. He shot four of them dead before police stormed the shop, killed him and rescued 15 hostages. Simultaneously, security forces stormed the printing office and killed the Kouachi brothers. It was all over by nightfall on Friday.

The first rallies began soon after the Charlie Hebdo attack on Wednesday, defending the right of free speech even for an often vulgar newspaper that gleefully attacked all authorities. The enfant terrible of the French press, it sold only about 30,000 copies a week, many of them to leftists nostalgic for the anarchic libertarianism of the May 1968 student protests. When the Je suis Charlie hashtag appeared on Twitter about an hour after the attack, it swiftly became the slogan of the protests.

The reaction among the public and politicians quickly widened. The jihadist militants were recognised as having acted not only against the magazine’s perceived blasphemy, but also against the West’s fundamental freedoms. The large number of Western Muslims now training with Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq meant many could come back to fight them in France and elsewhere. When Coulibaly attacked the Hyper Cacher grocery expressly to target Jews, the focus widened into a general defence of Western democracy itself. The slogan expanded to, “I am Charlie, I am a policeman, I am Jewish.”

As a result, there was widespread support for Charlie Hebdo, even from political and religious leaders it had caricatured in the past. Leaders of all main religious groups issued a call for peace after meeting President Hollande on the Wednesday evening and politicians and protesters stressed that what France calls its republican values included harmony among ethnic and faith groups. Those appeals to common values struck a chord among the French and kept public opinion from turning against the peaceful majority of the country’s five million Muslims. The bells of Notre-Dame tolled during a minute of silence to honour the victims. A Mass was then said for them in the cathedral and several imams later prayed for them outside the offices of Charlie Hebdo – both events without provoking the debate about violations of official laïcité (secularism). However, the editorial in this week’s issue of Charlie Hebdo said “What makes us laugh the most is that the bells of Notre Dame rang in our honour.”

France’s Catholic Church discreetly overlooked the fact that Charlie Hebdo had often lambasted it on the subject of clerical sex abuse or run cartoons such as one showing Pope Benedict XVI holding up a condom in a mock consecration. “Even a caricature in bad taste or a gravely unjust criticism cannot be put on the same level as murder,” said Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris, in a message to the capital’s Catholics. “Press freedom, whatever its price, is the sign of a mature society.”

“The great majority of our fellow citizens experienced this situation as a call to rediscover some fundamental values of our republic, such as freedom of religion or of opinion,” he added. “That French Jews have paid once more for the troubles that agitate our nation makes them doubly grave.”

During the crisis, the unpopular President Hollande rose to the occasion and kept the focus on defending French values and national unity. He met the heads of all the main political parties, including former President Nicolas Sarkozy and far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen, to ensure a common response. However, the organisers of Sunday’s march refused to invite Le Pen, allowing her to complain that her party was once again shut out by mainstream politicians.

By contrast, President Hollande overlooked political rifts among the foreign guests who marched with him. Paris told the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, it would be difficult to include him. But he invited himself once he realised that his foreign and economy ministers – both leaders of rival nationalist parties preparing for a general election on 17 March – were attending. Once that happened, the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, announced that he had been invited and would attend as well. Some marchers, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Gabon President Ali Bongo Ondimba, were criticised in the media for violating the democratic values the march was called to uphold.

Despite the outpouring of support for them, the Hyper Cacher attack only heightened anxiety among France’s 550,000-strong Jewish community about rising anti-Semitism and boosted interest in emigration. Netanyahu angered French leaders by openly appealing to Jews to come to Israel; “France without French Jews would not be France,” the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, shot back.

On Sunday, at an information day organised for prospective immigrants by Israel’s Jewish Agency, Paris Jews complained of increasing hostility towards them and of attacks on their schools and synagogues. The head of the agency, the former Soviet dissident and Israeli government minister Natan Sharansky, said he had expected emigration to reach 10,000 this year, compared to 7,000 in 2014, but would now revise that estimate upwards.

Throughout the drama, protesters, politicians and Muslim leaders ensured the reaction focused on Islamist extremism rather than on Islam itself. Muslims and Jews marched together. After the initial indignation at the death of the Charlie cartoonists, the media stressed that the Kouachis had also killed two Muslims – the magazine’s proofreader Mustapha Ourrad and policeman Ahmed Merabet. Lassana Bathily, the Muslim immigrant from Mali who worked at Hyper Cacher, was hailed as a hero for hiding several shoppers in a cold storage room and helping police plan their assault.

The five days ended with 3.7 million French citizens marching against terror and for national unity, defying the three extremists who aimed to terrify and divide them.

One thing is sure – Charlie Hebdo will go on insulting anyone it likes. The French media quickly rallied around it to provide office space, funds and equipment to continue publishing; the Government pledged financial support. Long queues formed outside newsstands in France on Wednesday for this week’s edition of the satirical magazine and five million copies were being printed to meet the demand. The cover shows a tearful Prophet Muhammad holding a “Je suis Charlie” sign under the headline, “All is forgiven.”

Tom Heneghan is religion editor for Reuters news agency in Paris.