In France, laïcité, wrongly translated in English as “secularism,” is the equivalent of a religion – the religion of the Republic. For the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, religion was just another ideology, and they took aim at all three major monotheistic faiths (though perhaps with a greater emphasis on Islam, probably owing to its more visible fundamentalist face).
如今，考虑到此次袭击的性质，我暂且放弃这些保留态度，尽管我仍反对将受害者的纪念神圣化——这正是许多法国人正在做的。在法国，“世俗化”（laïcité）一词——在英语中，它被错误地译为“secularism”——是宗教的同义词，法兰西共和国的宗教。对《查理周刊》的卡通画家而言，宗教只不过是另一种意识形态，它们的目标对准了所有三大一神论信仰（但也许最着重于伊斯兰教，原因可能是伊斯兰教具有更鲜明的原教旨主义面目）。