France needs to convince its Muslims liberty and freedom of expression are sacrosanct

Looking at the blasted-out print works where the Kouachi brothers holed up after their campaign of terror at Charlie Hebdo last week, an elderly Parisian told me with tears in his eyes: “There is no more liberty in France.” Liberty has been a dearly held and dearly won right in France, even more so than in other Western countries. This has come home to me as I reported on the events of the last week in Paris. Some 40,000 “enemies of the revolution” died during the French Revolution, between the guillotine and summary executions. From the violence of the revolution emerged the three defining values held most dear by the nascent Republic – Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, which originated as a popular slogan of the revolutionaries. Today we