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We have recently gone through what was termed as “Ground Shaking — Charlie Hebdo” incident, after which so much has taken place around the same issue all over the globe. Some events have even gone to the extent of branding and spreading hatered toward Muslims, who believe in One Supreme God as only and sole being worthy of worship. Sharing the same belief as other Muslims, I would like to take a stand on my freedom of speech. To begin with, let me clarify that our religion, Islam, does not allow us to kill any innocent human being even in the battlefield. So branding the followers of Islam i.e. Muslims as killers or terrorists is not correct. Let us now zoom in into the Charlie Hebdo incident which has created a sudden fuss in our lives and have disturbed many of us. Charlie Hebdo is a French weekly news-cartoon magazine which first appeared in 1970 as a successor to the Hara-Kiri magazine, which was banned for mocking the death of former French President Charles de Gaulle. Among French media, Charlie Hebdo was well-known for not running advertisements. Instead, it relied primarily on newsstand sales and subscriptions, as well as occasional donations. Its most recent call for donations was in November, when now-murdered editor-in-chief Stéphane “Charb” Charbonneau admitted that “we've already cut back on everything: paper, printing, and even salaries.” And in an age where publications are pushed to generate new online content around the clock, Charlie Hebdo kept a simple website and put out a single weekly print publication. To be honest, I have lived on this blue planet Earth for the past several decades but I just recently came to know about Charlie Hebdo and I am sure many more people like me came to know about it for the first time a week or so ago. How did we come to know about this magazine? Through the controversial cartoon which triggered the terrorist attack that killed 12 workers, including journalists and cartoonists, of Charlie Hebdo. The incident increased the magazine's usual weekly sale of 60,000 prints to more than 5 million copies. For a normal person, it is obvious that the attack benefitted the brand name “Charlie Hebdo” which got free advertisement across the world because of the incident, not to mention that its profit soared several times over in just a week. And it is still earning through donations from humanitarian organizations and individuals. They pledged to give the money collected from donations to the families of the victims. Well, that's very kind of Charlie Hebdo. I am not against anyone who gives away his earnings to make an organization grow. But what I am concerned about is the aftermath of this incident — the wrongful labeling and accusation that Muslims are terrorist after the attack. We are innocent people engaged in improving our own lives. Neither we nor our religion harms or hurts anyone. Even killing of animals by torturing them is prohibited in Islam. We believe and try to spread in peace at all times, we love and respect Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Yes, there are a few radical, anti-social, extremist psychopaths in every religion, community and country and we are not proud of such individuals who kill in the name of our religion I am not making any justification here, I am just saying that we are not so bad as projected by some people. We also believe in Abraham, Moses and Jesus (peace be upon them). We do not make fun of other's faith and practices. So to the West and the media, stop bothering us. We already have a lot of other problems to worry about — our brothers and sisters are being killed over the past 60 years in Palestine, our beautiful children are dying homeless due to cold. We are bleeding in our hearts, yet we condemn the wrongful killings in the Paris attack. We do not benefit from that attack. I don't want to put the blame on anyone for any wrongdoing, but I ask anyone not to label Muslims as terrorists for we are not. We are often the soft and easy target for the wrongdoings of those who do not represent us and our religion.
