I

love cartoons. It goes back to my childhood, but I confess, even as an adult, when I read the newspaper in the morning, I go straight for the cartoons. After I read the headlines, of course!

I admire the way political cartoonists can combine artistic skills, hyperbole and satire to engage in social critique, shake up rigid beliefs, debunk political taboos, channel dissent and lampoon authority figures '€” all in one image. Political humor of any sort is not just good, but essential for democracy.

If I could draw, I'€™d probably be a cartoonist. But since I can'€™t, I'€™m happy to be a columnist, as I also do what political cartoonists do, but with words.

So when I heard of the shocking news of the slaughter of 12 people '€” several cartoonists and journalists from the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo and two police officers '€” I felt sick to the stomach. Obviously you don'€™t have to be a columnist to feel deeply pained and outraged by the tragedy.

Indeed, reactions of grief and support for the victims and condemnation for the attack came in from ordinary citizens around the world.

The terrorists claim they murdered the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists to avenge the prophet Muhammad, because the cartoonists depicted him '€” prohibited in Islam '€” which is, in fact, considered blasphemous.

I wonder how Muhammad himself would have reacted. I reckon he would have done ['€¦] nothing. He would just have dismissed the cartoonists as being ignorant and gone on his way.

In principle, that'€™s what a mature person does: Simply not respond to insults or perceived insults. Obviously you cannot rely on terrorists to be mature.

But never mind terrorists '€” many of us, the general public, and even our political leaders are often immature.

By reacting in such an extreme fashion, the terrorists achieved the opposite of what they wanted to do.

They may have killed the cartoonists, but they did not kill the cartoons, nor the spirit of dissent and political critique in a democracy that lies behind the work of Charlie Hebdo.

Quite honestly, I didn'€™t know of Charlie Hebdo until the tragic incident and now it is famous worldwide and its staff are feted as intellectual heroes. Their satire was very French and their jokes more like inside jokes '€” hard for outsiders to comprehend.

Hence their being labeled racist and right wing, when in fact they were very left wing. They could have fooled me, and in fact they did, until a French Facebook friend sent me a piece by Olivier Tonneau called '€œCharlie Hebdo: a letter to my British friends'€, which made me understand better their style and the French context.

On Sunday in France, thousands of people marched against terrorism, joined by world leaders, including French President Francois Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and an unlikely duo: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There were several tweets about the hypocrisy of some world leaders with questionable human rights record beeing present at the rally, including officials from Saudi Arabia.

In fact, they came just after Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was publicly flogged for the first time on Jan. 9. He was sentenced last year in May to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for purportedly insulting Islam in a liberal blog he founded.

We have cases like that in Indonesia too. A recent one was that of Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, editor-in-chief of the paper you are reading, who was accused of blasphemy by the Jakarta Muslim Preachers Corps. They filed a letter of complaint to the police. If deemed guilty, Meidyatama could face up to five years in jail.

The Jakarta Post had published a cartoon in its July 3, 2014 edition of a man raising the Islamic State (IS) movement'€™s flag with '€œThere is no God but Allah'€ in Arabic script, over a picture of a skull and crossbones.

This was considered blasphemous? Talk about getting the wrong end of the stick. It was a critique of IS terrorism, not of Islam, for heaven'€™s sake!

In Meidyatama'€™s case he apologized and his case has been handed over to the Press Council and likely to be dropped.

The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists didn'€™t even get a chance to apologize '€” they wouldn'€™t have anyway. They paid for their commitment to their calling with their lives.

In varying degrees, we all have to pay a price for our democratic rights. Increasingly the tension between democratic principles like free speech versus religious fundamentalism and terrorism is being fought out in various arenas around the world.

The brutal massacre of schoolchildren in Peshawar on Dec. 16 is another case in point.

Every time a tragedy like this occurs, there'€™s a big public outcry and emotional displays of support or/and anger. But what happens next? France now wants to wage a war on terrorism. Oh, like the US did after 9/11?

In a very lucid and insightful essay entitled '€œThe Pendulum and the President'€ (Foreign Policy, Oct. 29, 2014) David Rothkopf wrote about how misguided American foreign policy became because of an overly emotional and fearful response to the terrorist attack, which affected the entire world. Let'€™s hope France responds in a wiser way and does not inadvertently stoke the flames of Islamophobia that already exist in the country '€” and in the West.

As Amy Davidson wrote in the New Yorker on the day of the attacks, '€œThis is a dangerous moment for France ['€¦] because the decisions that a nation makes at a time of terror are not always the best ones, for anybody.'€

Terrorism is a global problem that has nothing to do with religion, but hijacks religion for its own sick purposes. Many of us are facing this problem.

In this respect, nous sommes tous la France (we are all France).