'Death to all who are not as we' is the awful new reality

Our world has entered a new phase of unreason in which people are no longer free to hold different views or opinions.

The killing of some of the best-known cartoonists in France yesterday raises concerns about the rise of intolerance worldwide.

When gunmen stormed the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo yesterday, killing about 10 staff members and two police officers, freedom of expression and the right to publish were attacked head-on.

Charlie Hebdo is known for flirting with danger by frequently challenging religions, most precariously Islam.

But it has also lambasted other faiths and frequently ridicules powerful politicians.

There are those among us who will quietly say that the Paris-based magazine should have stayed away from satire related to religion.

But Charlie Hebdo has never retreated. It certainly did not do so after publishing the Danish cartoons depicting Islam's most revered prophet, Mohammed, that sparked Middle East riots in 2005.

Its stance on Islam over the years led to its office being fire-bombed.

Yesterday's killing tells us that freedom of expression is viewed differently by those at the receiving end of the pen.

Novelist Salman Rushdie, who in 1989 was declared "apostate" and sentenced to death by the ayatollahs when his novel The Satanic Verses caused outrage in Islamic states, said yesterday that religion was a "medieval form of unreason" and, when combined with modern weaponry, became a grave threat to our freedoms.

Rushdie said that "religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect".

As we debate yesterday's events in Paris this morning what must occupy our minds is what kind of a world we envisage for our children.

Respect, tolerance and the right to hold a different view should surely be at the centre of human interaction.