I've read two responses to these events that nicely cover this question from what amount to opposite sides, although the distance between them is small: 1) Ros

I've read two responses to these events that nicely cover this question from what amount to opposite sides, although the distance between them is small: 1) Ross Douthat in the NYT, saying "In this sense, many of the Western voices criticizing the editors of Hebdo have had things exactly backward: Whether it’s the Obama White House or Time Magazine in the past or the Financial Times and (God help us) the Catholic League today, they’ve criticized the paper for provoking violence by being needlessly offensive and 'inflammatory' (Jay Carney’s phrase), when the reality is that it’s precisely the violence that justifies the inflammatory content." http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/the-blasphemy-we-need/ http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/the-blasphemy-we... 2) This piece by Juan Cole: "Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination." http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_wonk http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-sa... While I appreciate what Cole is saying, I come down on Douthat's side. When people are being murdered for having an opinion the question of whether or not that opinion is in good taste or presented in a well-mannered way is... secondary. So I personally think that "escalating" by making more fun of murderous nutjobs is a pretty good move to make, even if it will be offensive to some less murderous people, because making fun of and belittling hateful murderers is more important to me just now than not giving offense: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1704 http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=1704 That said, I'm just as happy for Google to stay on the side of good taste. There are sound business reasons for doing so, and they have absolutely no obligation to piss off 20% of the world's population, even granted that almost 100% of that 20% are as peaceful as anyone else. It shouldn't be fear that stops them, but good business sense.