19 October 2020

In Memory of Samuel Paty, Teacher

Following the tragic assassination by beheading in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines) of the teacher Samuel Paty, who had been threatened for several days for showing a few satirical cartoons from Charlie Hebdo in a lesson about freedom of speech, a French female Protestant pastor, Sandrine Maurot, has called on people of ALL beliefs to publish satirical portraits of their belief. I really like this one, an imagined assault on a (real) religious paper by an atheist maniac, screaming 'God doesn't exist!!', 'You're insulting my beliefs!', 'I want everyone to believe that they must not believe!!!'. 'Gloire à queuedalle!!!' (a distortion of 'Gloire à que dalle!!!', meaning 'Glory to bugger all!!!') is a hopeless misunderstanding of atheism, but then this is satire, and in any case we live in a very imperfect world. France is determined to make the name of Samuel Paty live forever, and the world should support that.

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