The point is: -what to do if you are offended? To which I say simply ignore it happened.
-why offend someone in the first place?
How do we resolve this? The only solution is for at least one of us to ignore the offense caused by the other, or we cannot live together in society.
To this, there is a simple historical explanation: because that's, in practice, how France gained its freedom. Sure, there was the French Revolution, but it took more than one century before the Catholic Church stopped being the main power in France, before it became acceptable to be agnostic, atheist, protestant, muslim or jew in France. The main fight took place in the written press, largely through caricatures, by showing irreverence to the Catholic Church. It is only through this that France eventually became a non-religious republic, in 1905.
In other words, this kind of Free Speech and irreverence is deeply ingrained in French history, political correctness be damned. Charlie was created in part in defiance to the hero worship towards General De Gaulle, and has been irreverent towards every power figure ever since.
Why this insistence on feeling offended? The prophet is the one being mocked, not you.
You can't really offend that which does not currently exist. I can't offend Genghis Khan any more than I can offend the prophet or Jesus.
> The same way, someone would offend you by offending your family.
No, that's not the same way.
Maybe for those offended it might be? It can explain a lot of the anger.
But they fail to recognize that their religion, its rules and customs apply to them, the subscribers to that religion and not to the rest of the world.