Rorschach Philology

Six years ago, Fox News (and imitators) ran a most ill-founded story in a genre that we may term Allah-sightings.

The underbelly of a plane was streaked, thus:

Mene, mene, tekel  upharsin

Omigosh!  Arabic writing!  Terrorists on the tarmac!  How did they get access to the airplane!!  At whom shall we point the finger of blame!!!

BLUF:  Bogus.  The streaks on the airplane are not writing of any sort, let alone a terrorist message in Arabic.  (Our post on the matter, and on the underlying problem of the semiotic ambiguity of abstract images, can be viewed  here.)

Later, someone imagined that, by tilting your head a certain way, a decorative swipe on a certain brand of sneakers looked rather like … you guessed it,  “Allah”.  Only this time, it hadn’t been placed there by jihadis;  rather, by Islamophobes, since shoes are well-known to be held in low esteem in circum-Mediterranean Islamic lands.  Hullabaloo on social media.  Fortunately that story died before it could become a staple of the jihadi media, else we might have faced further killings such as those that followed the Danish-cartoons scandal.
Here you can read about that episode:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/nike-to-trash-trainers-that-offended-islam-1257776.html

Again:  Bogus. Judge for yourself:

And now we are being told, by such gullible outlets as the BBC and the New York Times, that (in the words of the headline in National Geographic),

    Viking Funeral Clothes Reveal Surprising Arabic Lettering

Namely, once again, that ubiquitous "Allah".  Along with (as a bonus) "Ali", another simple graph that is little more than an extended swoop.
The proper response to such a claim (by a Swedish “textile archaeologist”, not a linguist) is to present the evidence, and weigh it.  But that would be merely one step in the arduous progress of empirical science.  Instead, to pump up their headlines, the media assume the truth of that unproven assertion, reporting the claims in factive mood, as “Why Are These Viking Burial Clothes Inscribed with Arabic Script? “(History) and “Why did Vikings have 'Allah' embroidered into funeral clothes?” (BBC).   At the same level:  Has Eric the Red stopped beating his wife?

What is really going on this that the clothing is decorated with an abstract geometrical blocky design, part of which reminded the textile specialist of something she’d seen somewhere in Arabic script -- specifically, the early variety known as Kufic script -- or rather, a decorative blocky variant of Kufic. 

Now, it is unquestionably the case that Arabic scripts have been used for calligraphy, typically depicting brief Koranic quotations.   Great ingenuity was devoted to some of these, so that the results  in some cases  resembled those Hispanic-American “tags” which only the initiated could make any sense of, or the similarly cryptic Hippie-era posters for San Francisco rock concerts.

Poster for a SF Shiite mosque
known as the “Fillmore West”.
Notice the “Allah” hidden in the picture.

The fabric pattern in question, however, is extremely simple, and likely merely generic.  Thus:

For an example of genuine Kufic-block-script-(influenced) design, cf. this:

And sure, if you select a bit here and a bit there, there is a sort of resemblance -- as there could hardly fail to be  in sketches so schematic.  Actually, even at that, the match is not close, so that the Swedes conceded that, to read the thing as “Allah”, you had to read it in a mirror.   Which would seem to be a sort of Black-Mass version of the holy name, like Satanists chanting the Credo backwards.  Hardly evidence of Islamic influence.

(For many examples of  subjectively-similar or suggestive designs, simply google-image "fret motifs".  You will find  to your surprise  that Islamic influence extended even to the Aztecs and the ancient Greeks!)

[Note btw, that that serious-looking graphic with the mirror and all, is by no means a photo of any part of the actual tattered garments.  Rather, it is an idealization of a piece of the garment, which then in turn is given subjective interpretation.  Thus, there are actually two layers of "Rorschach" here.]

Medieval Islamic abstract decorative designs, whether linguistic-influenced or not, are quite lovely, and have been influential in many sister cultures.    As to whether these Viking funeral garments were directly or indirectly influenced by these, I can have no opinion, not being an art historian.   

Certainly it is within the bounds of historical possibility that there was contact, since the Vikings were great seafarers, and the Arabs  great wayfarers; they intersected, in particular, during the time of the Moors in Spain.  (Raid on Seville, 844 A.D.)

 
But as a student of linguistic sociology, I detect a few clues as to why, despite but a slender stalk of empirical support, this story has legs.  By the same NY Times reporter  (though in this case, she is rather more guarded, having run her rough-draft past some skeptics)  came this recent article:

    A Female Viking Warrior? Tomb Study Yields Clues

[Note:  In the PC Guardian's  article,

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/13/viking-burial-clothes-woven-with-allah-unveiled-by-swedish-university

in a picture purporting to show a "re-enactment" of Viking combat, the only warrior with face visible is ... a woman.]

And, even more telling, this spin

   White Supremacists Flustered by Viking Discovery

(Someone bring Steve Bannon his smelling-salts.)

The pattern of journalistic dots, though as sketchy as those on the Viking garments, at least suggests why so empirically underbuttressed a claim  would be embraced for a comforting narrative.

[Footnote for the Arabic-literate]  Even with that mirror-image sleight of hand, there isn’t really a match.  The Viking design shows three horizontal strokes, all of them connected; whereas in Arabic, the initial alif is non-connecting.  And the blob that struck the Swedes as resembling the final hā’  of Allāh  would be upside-down.  So, if the design had been intended to spell Allah, it was a (double) misspelling, and thus blasphemous.

Seeing Allāh in that clothing  is like spotting Orion in a skyful of stars.   And from there to such gormless headlines as “Were some Vikings Muslim?” (National Post), and even speculations as to whether they were indeed Shiites (based upon another supposed sighting of the simple design for "Ali"), is like concluding that the skies proclaim the truth of the Olympic religion.

For a wide-ranging survey of Arabic language and stylistics, check out this:

The Semantics of Form in Arabic

[Footnote 19 October 2017]  A day or so after this post went up, another Arabist went up on Twitter to scoff at the Swedish claims, making some of the same points (e.g. about non-connecting alif), but adding a new one based on timelines.  For, whereas Kufic script is ancient, the subvariety of ‘square’ or blocky Kufic, supposedly postdates the Vikings’ floruit by centuries.

A nice idea, but there’s a hitch.  For, the design was constrained by medium in which it was worked (whether made by Vikings, or merely captured by them), a thin strip of stiff fabric:  the weave imposes its own rectilinear preferences.   Just as Babylonian clay tablets virtually dictated the geometry of cuneiform, so this hem would itself bring forth or invent `square Kufic’, pour les besoins de la cause, independent of any prior existence of the style  or imitation thereof.

[Sociopolitical footnote:  It is perhaps no accident that this fond fantasy was emitted out of Sweden.  As is well known, that nation has, in recent years, been wondering whether it has perhaps bitten off rather more than it can chew, so far as imported demographics.  However, it has long been politically impermissible in Sweden to remark publically on the elephant in the room.  So the sparring goes on  in code  and behind cover.] 

Who knew that Vikings were so controversial?  For a quite aggrieved-sounding feminist article from that same drearily reliable Guardian, try this:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/15/how-the-female-viking-warrior-was-written-out-of-history

That article's headline is conclusively proven by a passage in the Protocols of the Elders of Patriarchy, where historians of old were caught bwa-ha-ha'ing as they inked out all such records.

~

Appendix on Steganography

A genuine case of a name hidden in designs, is that of the stellar cartoonist Al Hirschfeld, who used to work-in the name of his daughter  NINA (all-caps), in drawing after drawing.  Here is one with the hidden items highlighted:

Notice that, as was the case with the Arabic spelling of Allah and `Ali, the ease with which the name Nina can be secreted away as part of a larger design, is dependent on its simple form;  if his daughter’s name had been Murgatroyd, Hirschfeld would have been out of luck.

After signing his name in a lower corner, he would usually append a small Arabic (Arabic!) numeral, showing the number of times the name was hidden in that particular drawing.  Here, for example, in a (rather cruel) portrait of Katherine Hepburn, we are challenged to find three occurrences:

 

And in this tour de force, the name “NINA” appears no fewer than thirteen thousand times.:

 

Can you spot them all?  Set aside the rest of your life, full-time, to accomplish this necessary task.

 

~

An earlier instance  of steganographic eisegesis:

Ancillary to the great Hollywood witch-hunt, a satellite inquisition in 1951  was mounted against ‘subversive modern art’ at the (old) County Museum in Exposition Park.

A group called Sanity in art  swore they detected maps of secret defense fortifications  sequestered in abstract paintings, and one painter … was accused … of incorporating propaganda in the form of a thinly disguised hammer-and-sickle within a seascape.

-- Mike Davis, City of Quartz (1990), p. 63

NORAD installation, Cheyenne Mountain (artist’s impression)

For more along these lines, try
=> Rorschach Morphology

 

[Update] XXX-clusive!

Tomb find indicates prehistoric dinosaur may have been Jewish

 [Update 25 II 2018] The latest example   of seeing something that isn't there, and getting the world spun-up:
http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article201604224.html


 

Depiction and Desecration

Some logical-theological observations, amid all the Charlie Hebdo brouhaha:

It is not so much satirical caricature of the Prophet Muhammad that traditional Muslims object to (though of course that does add insult to injury), but the mere visual depiction.   Such a mode of thought is familiar to Jews and Christians: “Thou shalt make no graven images”, and the Iconoclasts.  Theologically, if you were to depict the Prophet looking like Charles Atlas, it would still be an offense.

The idea behind it has a couple of strands  -- on their own terms, both quite sound:

  (1) Do not attempt to compete with the Creator, in the ‘creation’ (depiction) of rational beings.

  (2) Do not deify  that which is not divine.

As a further application of (1), the Saudi authorities discourage even simple drawings of imaginary human beings.   I have seen KSA schoolbooks which -- necessarily depicting people in the course of instructing the very young -- yet conscientiously slice-away a jagged section of the neck, so as to spoil any alleged perfection, and not to infringe on the monopoly of God.  Again,  the idea is familiar from the Bible:  Man is made “in His image”.   To interpret that injunction as pictorial rather than (actually) functorial,  is primitive, but -- To Each, According to his Understanding.  

(We have ourselves diffidently put forth a subtler interpretation of “image” here:  Man as the homomorphic image of the ultimate, via a morphism in the sense of Universal Algebra -- a “quotient space” of the Creator:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/04/internal-external-universal.html )

The ban indeed goes beyond human depiction; a hadith transmitted by al-Bukhari and by Muslim  states:  “Angels do not enter a house which contains dogs or pictures.”

Point (2)  is the principle bone of contention between Islam and Christianity:  Muslims are down with Jesus (upon whom be peace), they just don’t think he’s God.  And within Islam itself, (2) has also become quite contentious of late, with Salafists skewering Shiites (sometimes literally) for exalting the Prophet (who, in the orthodox view, was purely and merely human) and `Ali ibn Abi-Tâleb, beyond their human due.   Thus, Yemeni al-Qaeda recently slaughtered a bunch of Huthis (including numerous schoolchildren) who had gathered to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday.   Salafists consider that idolatrous, like Christmas.

(As a kind of compromise, we ourselves celebrate Meinong’sbirthday.)

~

Taking the thought-stream up a notch:  

It is characteristic of Sunni Islam, to make a very sharp distinction between Man (whether prophets or street-vendors) and God (there’s just One of Him, mind).  And, further, in the culture in general, rather to deprecate images of any sort (even acoustic ones).   By contrast -- somewhat like Presbyterians, or the Gospel of St John -- Muslim theologians do truly exalt The Word.

Which means, in particular, with relevance to the present political context:

The amateurish drawings of the Jyllands-Posten or of Charlie Hebdo, snarky and uninsightful, do not really go deeply towards scratching the Islamic skin (though the populace, excitable and of limited understanding, may of course react violently).  The appropriate response of a Muslim of culture and understanding would be to take no notice, or to give a frown of distaste, as at the vulgarities of urchins in the street.   But the Word -- ah, that is quite another matter.

And in fact there have been such desecrations, which you can view on the Web if you know where to look, besides which  the sniggerings of the Charlies  pale:  provocations that -- the mirror-image of the ISIL beheading videos -- go out of their way to be the nec plus ultra of Vile.

(I have alluded to these indirectly, in earlier essays, but in the current climate, shall say no more.  Else literally, heads might roll.)

[Update 13 January 2015]  The post-attack cover of Charlie Hebdo  is actually quite affecting;  we reproduce it here  in all reverence.   As a Christian -- and one who sees the tale of Jean Valjean and the Bishop, as the pinnacle of world literature -- I bow my head -- nay, almost kneel -- before this highly unexpected headline,  “All is forgiven.”

Lacrimae mundi 

For that, compare the second-finest lines in all literature, from Faust:

   “Ist gerichtet.”

   -- “Ist gerettet !!!”

~

And yet and yet … alas, the point of our post is only too incisively verified.   This genuine olive-branch of a cover, since it does involve an image,  threatens to evoke yet further violence:

http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2015/01/12/mahomet-en-une-du-charlie-hebdo-de-mercredi_1179193

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/world/europe/new-charlie-hebdo-has-muhammad-cartoon.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2015/01/13/01003-20150113ARTFIG00349-le-grand-mufti-d-egypte-juge-raciste-la-une-de-charlie-hebdo.php

 Miserere nobis, domine.

[Update 14 January 2015]  Judiciously treading a fine line:

In Muslim-majority Turkey, the police stopped trucks of a pro-secular Turkish newspaper, Cumhuriyet, after it decided to follow the lead of a number of global newspapers and republish images from the new edition of Charlie Hebdo.

Turkish authorities finally allowed distribution, according to the Associated Press, after verifying it had not printed the newspaper's cover.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/parisians-line-for-blocks-for-new-charlie-hebdo-authorities-detain-comedian/2015/01/14/5a25ad74-9bc8-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html

Oof, and this:

Frosty fatwa: Saudi cleric declares snowman building strictly prohibited

Ch’suis moi Charlie
(Banned in KSA)

The best American analogy to the horror of satirical depiction of the Prophet, is the matter of flag-burning.  At one point there was a serious effort to amend the Constitution to outlaw it.

[Update 11 March 2015]

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/03/10/muslim-action-forum-seeks-to-brand-depictions-of-the-prophet-mohammed-as-hate-speech/

Forensic Linguists Save the Day !!

See how a crack team of ninja linguists brought down the notorious Split-Infinitive Killer !

Learn how clandestine Wonderlinguists  cracked the “Dangling-Participle Strangler” case !!

Read  about the language superheroes who serve the nation  every day !!!

A typical linguist on the job

All in a day's work !!

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/08/linguists-crack-case-expanded-update.html

So, check out the following article.  Especially interesting is the portrait of Rob Leonard, former vocalist for Sha Na Na, and now a "Sam Spade of semantics".

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/23/120723fa_fact_hitt

Words on Trial

Can linguists solve crimes that stump the police?

by Jack Hit

ABSTRACT: DEPT. OF LINGUISTICS about forensic linguistics. These days, the word “forensic” conjures an image of a technician on a “C.S.I.” show who delicately retrieves a hair or a paint chip from a crime scene, surmises the unlikeliest facts, and presents them to the authorities as incontrovertible evidence. If “forensic linguist” brings to mind a verbal specialist who plucks slivers of meaning from old letters and stray audiotape before announcing that the perpetrator is, say, a middle-aged insurance salesman from Philadelphia, that’s not far from the truth. Tells about the testimony of forensic linguist Robert Leonard in the 2011 murder trial of Chris Coleman. Discusses the work of James Fitzgerald, a retired F.B.I. forensic linguist who brought the field to prominence in 1996 with his work in the case of the Unabomber. Fitzgerald had successfully urged the FBI to publish the Unabomber’s “manifesto.” Many people called in to say they recognized the writing style. By analyzing syntax and other linguistic patterns, Fitzgerald narrowed down the possible authors and finally linked the manifesto to the writings of Ted Kaczynski, a reclusive former mathematician. Fitzgerald went on to formalize some of the tools used in forensic linguistics, including starting the Communicated Threat Assessment Database. The CTAD is the most comprehensive collection of linguistic patterns in written threats, containing some four thousand “criminally oriented communications” and more than a million words. The pioneer of forensic linguistics is widely considered to be Roger Shuy, a Georgetown University professor and the author of such fundamental textbooks as “Language Crimes: The Use and Abuse of Language Evidence in the Courtroom.” The field’s more recent origins might be traced to an airplane flight in 1979, when Shuy found himself talking to the lawyer sitting next to him. By the end of the flight, Shuy had a recommendation as an expert witness in his first murder case. Since then, he’s been involved in numerous cases in which forensic analysis revealed how meaning had been distorted by the process of writing or recording. In recent years, following Shuy’s lead, a growing number of linguists have applied their techniques in regular criminal cases, such Chris Coleman’s, and even certain commercial lawsuits. Mentions a suit between Apple and Microsoft over the use of the phrase “app store.” Writer visits Robert Leonard at Hofstra University and describes some of his cases, including the investigation of the murder of Natalee Holloway in Aruba. Mentions Carole Chaski, the executive director of the Institute for Linguistic Evidence and the president of Alias Technology, which markets linguistic software. Chaski has been working to perfect a computer algorithm that identifies patterns hidden in syntax.

For true-life stories of heroic Navy linguists -- click here!!
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/08/navy-linguists-save-day-updated.html

Top-flight cryptolinguists   are few and far between

Note:   Those misrenderings on the part of the Red Rascal might be other than random;  Trudeau may well have consulted a linguist to guide his choices.   Thus, that apparently undesireable “path which is asphalt”.   That is obscure to our hearing;  a paved road beats a dirt one, and there are plenty in Afghanistan which aren’t paved, or weren’t until the U.S. came in and had them paved.   But in Arabic dialects, the term zift, literally ‘asphalt, pitch’,  is used in a metaphorical negative sense.  Thus, Egyptian zayy al-zift ‘lousy’, Yemeni azfat (an elative) ‘worse’.  Perhaps Pashto has something similar.

[Update 3 March 2015]   There is more to intel than just connecting the dots.  In SIGINT, the individual dots themselves can be problematic:


A Pakistani man used a code in which women's names substituted for bomb materials when he would email with al Qaeda about a plot to kill hundreds of people in England in 2009, a U.S. prosecutor said on Monday.
Abid Naseer sent an al Qaeda operative emails with stilted language about women and a wedding, but the emails were actually about a planned car bombing, prosecutor Zainab Ahmad told jurors at the close of a federal trial in Brooklyn, New York.
The emails contained women's names like Huma and Nadia in place of bomb making materials starting with the same letter, such as hydrogen peroxide and nitrate, she said.
    "They're so coded that they're half gibberish," yet they reflected Nasser's intent to carry out an attack on al Qaeda's behalf, Ahmad said in her closing argument.
Naseer, representing himself, insisted in his closing argument that he was innocent, He said he had been "chasing women on the Internet" and planning a wedding.

[Update 5 March 2015]  This just in:

Inside the debate over whether our language choices are as distinctive as our DNA.

In an episode of the CBS show “Criminal Minds” that aired last year , an FBI team is on a frantic hunt for a missing 4-year-old. The team soon realizes that the girl has been given away by a relative, Sue, and that there’s no way Sue is going to reveal her whereabouts.

A crucial break comes when FBI profiler Alex Blake puts her “word wisdom” to work. Blake, who is also a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, notices that Sue uses an unusual turn of phrase during an interview and in a written statement: “I put the light bug on.”

The FBI team launches an Internet search and soon discovers the same misuse of “light bug” for “light bulb” in an underground adoption forum: “I’ll switch the light bug off in the car so no one will see.”

A groundbreaking murder case in Britain was decided after a linguistic analysis suggested that text messages sent from a young woman’s phone after she went missing were more likely to have been written by her killer than by her. And in Johnson County, Tenn., the outcome of the April “Facebook murders” trial may well hang, according to Assistant District Attorney General Dennis D. Brooks, on whether a linguist can convince jurors of the authorship of a slew of e-mails soliciting murder that were written, he says, under a fictitious name.

Stacey Castor, now doing time in Bedford Hills, N.Y., for murdering her husband in 2005 and attempting to murder her daughter two years later, helped give herself away, according to Fitzgerald, by misspelling — and mispronouncing — “antifreeze” as “antifree.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/should-texts-e-mail-tweets-and-facebook-posts-the-be-new-fingerprints-in-court/2015/02/19/a5ec2bf6-6f32-11e4-8808-afaa1e3a33ef_story.html

See too the article “The Whole Haystrack” in The New Yorker for 26 Jan 2015.  Concerning the prosecution of a Somali-American for nefarious acts related to the terror group al-Shabaab, part of the evidence was “a Somali proverb repeatedly cited by the prosecution as evidence that he was part of the conspiracy”.

~

For further true-life linguistic adventures, click here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/linguistics

[Update 18 Aug 2015]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/11810752/David-Cameron-urged-to-give-asylum-to-Afghan-interpreters.html

Je (ne) suis (pas) Charlie

The phrase-of-the-day,  “Je suis Charlie”, expressing solidarity with the victims of the recent massacre, is just the latest of a series of such slogans, in the face of violent provocation;  we alluded to some of them here:

   «Nous sommes aussi de “sales Français”»

Yet somehow, despite my opposition to the terrorists (which is more than words; NFI),  when it comes to this latest  catch-phrase, I feel disinclined to chant along-with.

Partly this is because of the jejune and witlessly provocative nature of the original cartoons, whose eventual dreadful effect we predicted a couple of years ago here.   Nor is that Mad-Magazine-level material  by any means the worst.  (Weiteres zum Thema hier, wenn Sie sich dazu wagen.)   And partly because of the all-too-comfortable, all-too-familiar role of sympathy -- empathy -- endopathy with Victims, characteristic of the socialos and the associations, coupled with a refusal to acknowledge certain obvious public dysfunctions, or to take the necessary steps.  (The one French political party that has candidly discussed the problems, has been excluded from tomorrow's feel-good march.)

Salut depuis le califat -- et depuis vos banlieues !

Europe is worse than America in that respect;  but in our own way, we share the syndrome. This morning’s contrarian column by David Brooks  puts it trenchantly:

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.

Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/opinion/david-brooks-i-am-not-charlie-hebdo.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

Pour préciser:   The provocateurs of Charlie Hebdo have been presented as the shining symbol of Western civilization;  that is far from the case.   The attack on the artists was an atrocity, but was not qualitatively worse than would be the similar murder of a dozen grocers, or plumbers, or what have you.

~

[Update Saturday, 10 January 2015]

Another bothersome point… Tomorrow’s march is being led by the panderer and ransom-payer-in-chief François Hollande, who is giving matters his own spin:

“Je vous appelle aussi à l’unité  … D’abord, être implacable à l’égard du racisme. …

Nous ne devons faire aucun amalgame.  Ces fanatiques n’ont rien à voir avec la religion musulmane.”

Mais … si.  Et en voici la preuve:

Saudi blogger Badawi 'flogged for Islam insult'

Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail, was flogged 50 times. The flogging will be carried out weekly.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30744693

Thus, coeval with the jihad against dâr al-Harb being enforced, so to speak, informally, freelance, in Paris, these actions were carried out formally, officially, publically, in KSA.

C’est *moi * Charlie !

As for the injunction not to “faire aucun amalgame” (‘no profiling’), a certain dissent is in order:

Terrorisme islamiste: cette guerre qui commence était hélas prévisible!

Pour le philosophe tunisien Mezri Haddad le rejet des amalgames ne doit pas empêcher la remise en cause de la dogmatique ambiante. L'intégration de l'islam dans les pays européens a échoué et a laissé place au développement de l'intégrisme.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/societe/2015/01/09/31003-20150109ARTFIG00339-terrorisme-islamiste-cette-guerre-qui-commence-etait-helas-previsible.php?a1=DOL-761204&a3=77-7043883&a4=DOL-761204-77-7043883

And:

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-france-paris-attacks-praise-20150109-story.html#navtype=outfit

~

Meanwhile, the reliably Care-Bears NPR  attempts to second the spin.   After repeating that the fanatics are a “tiny minority” (true enough for the actual trigger-men; but they grew in a petri-dish of anti-Western culture in the heart of France), the station did then manage to address the common-sense question:  “Can’t they take a joke?”  And the answer was:  Su-u-ure … they can, just like you & me!  And to prove their point, they trotted out the shining example of al-Jāḥiẓ, a humorous belletrist of … the ninth century A.D.    You had to reach back that far to find a poster-boy?

Then they update to the inspiring case of Ali Ferzat, a cartoonist in Syria -- a cartoonist!  in Syria! -- who, however (um, er, never-mind) had his hands mangled by government goons in appreciation of his satire.

Moi aussi, je suis Charlie !

    http://fr.euronews.com/2014/09/24/plantu-la-caricature-au-service-de-la-democratie/

And then they served up the case of a stand-up comedian who, however, is Indian not Arab, and who performs in the safety of the United States.

Nice try.
("Support for NPR comes from...")

[Update 11 January 2015]  And now this, highlighting the hypocrisy of the socialos placing themselves at the head of a march defending free speech:

The biggest threat to French free speech isn’t terrorism. It’s the government.

The murders at Charlie Hebdo, while tragic, aren’t the problem.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-it-means-to-stand-with-charlie-hebdo/2015/01/08/ab416214-96e8-11e4-aabd-d0b93ff613d5_story.html

Et moi, je ne serais pas Charlie ?

The moreso, as the associalos have been quite selective about whom they protect:  Witness the impunity with which the Femen gang has vilely desecrated Christian churches;  Hollande went so far as to reward them by placing a portrait of their ringleader on a postage stamp.

~

Americans tend to view French difficulties with its Muslim population  from behind a complacent scotoma of mauvaise foi, failing to see that the pot is as swart as the kettle.   French cities are girdled by a violent and criminal subpopulation, which the authorities are terrified of provoking.  (Asked by an interviewer whether the Kouachi brothers, in view of the relative professionalism of their attack, must have received weapons training abroad, the former head of the DGSE scoffed that such training is freely available in the banlieues, and is often implemented in perfectly executed non-political crimes.)  Chez nous  de même, though with a change of dramatis personae.  Just so did the bien-pensants of Europe view us, back in the days of An American Dilemma.

This stateside hemeralopia reached a comic nadir this morning in a headline in the New York Times  Review section (a reliable source of such tags) which asked, disingenuously,

     Could a cartoon alarm anyone in the U.S.?

Umm…. Definitely.   There is just one Tintin book that you cannot buy in the United States, Tintin au Congo;  and the books of Mary Poppins or Doctor Dolittle are no longer available with their original artwork.  Here, no-one would dare publish cartoons like those of Charlie Hebdo, were they to target, not Arabs, but [redacted], or [redacted], let alone [don't even think about it].

[Update 12 January 2015] Further party-pooping opinions:

“Glad so many world leaders could take time off jailing and torturing journalists and dissidents to march for free expression in France.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/01/11/the-free-speech-hypocrisy-of-some-world-leaders-marching-in-paris/?tid=hpModule_04941f10-8a79-11e2-98d9-3012c1cd8d1e

Willem persiste et signe : "nous vomissons sur tous ces gens qui, subitement, disent être nos amis".

http://www.lindependant.fr/2015/01/11/les-dessinateurs-de-charlie-hebdo-luz-et-willem-font-une-mise-au-point-dans-la-veine-de-leur-journal,1977925.php

At the march itself, critique of Hollande, from a pigeon:
http://tvmag.lefigaro.fr/le-scan-tele/actu-tele/2015/01/12/28001-20150112ARTFIG00141-le-fou-rire-de-charlie-hebdo-face-a-francois-hollande.php

Minor sidenote:  At the same hour that Angela Merkel was marching in Paris, the authorities in Leipzig were forbidding the organizers  of the Lepida march Monday, from displaying any drawings of Mohammad.    Which is fine -- the organizers themselves have called for no symbols other than the German and the Saxon flags, they don’t want a riot;  but no, Nous ne sommes pas tous Charlie.

[Update 13 January 2015]   The surviving staff of Charlie Hebdo  have come up with a remarkably thoughtful and solid response to the events, discussed here.

We must concur with the Charlie staffer’s comment:  “Notre Mahomet à nous, il est vachement plus sympa.”

[Update 14 January 2015]

French Muslim community argues: We are not Charlie

Many of France's 5 million Muslims are revolted by the idea that they should defend Charlie Hebdo.

GENNEVILLIERS, France — Rather than fall quiet as requested during a national minute of silence last week, three boys in Hamid Abdelaali’s high school class in this heavily Muslim suburb of Paris staged an informal protest, speaking loudly through all 60 seconds.

Across France, they were not alone. In one school in Normandy, some Muslim students yelled “God is great!” in Arabic during that same moment. In a Paris middle school, another group of young Muslims politely asked not to respect the minute, arguing to their teacher, “You reap what you sow.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/they-are-not-charlie/2015/01/13/7c9d6998-9aae-11e4-86a3-1b56f64925f6_story.html

[Update 18 January 2015]

Muss die Losung „Je suis Charlie“ nun von „Wir sind Pegida“ abgelöst werden?

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/kommentar-wir-sind-dresden-13377540.html