Millennium Redux

The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders slammed Facebook Friday for threatening to terminate the account of a French weekly whose offices were firebombed after publishing images of the Prophet Muhammad. RSF noted with irony charlie Hebdo's staff could no longer edit comments on its Facebook "wall", including those inciting violence, while the "enemies of freedom of expression" could continue to post hate messages. Agence France-Presse

It's straight out of a tense, tightly-written novel. A sinister background of events on the world stage. Hoisted as it were, on its own petard by a mischievous online magazine, which then becomes a target for violence and is destroyed by malev0lent forces. The devil, of course, is in the details, and it's all those details that so enrapture the reading public, to keep them focused on the story as it unfolds.

A series of novels published after the death of the author, highlighting Sweden's corrupt security forces, its sexist society, and the life of an abused child who becomes a skilled vigilante presence in an online anarchy of impossibly skilled computer hackers, aided and abetted by the curiosity and justice-seeking investigations of a jaded reporter.

What this true-life story that unfolded in France has in common with the highly successful Millennium series is of course the online news media, heavy on satire, challenging a powerful religious ideology with a dark terror background, and a Molotov cocktail that is meant to destroy that little arrogant news weekly.

So Charlie Hebdo was fire-bombed - because it temporarily portrayed itself as Charia Hebdo - and its digital archives destroyed, the building it was housed in made inhabitable, its computers kaput. Just desserts as far as violent jihadists are concerned, for daring to mock the Prophet Muhammad, (blessed be His name).

And the paper's website was not ignored, for jihadists have mastered those infernal skills too, which enabled them to replace its welcome page with a photograph of pilgrim-crowded Mecca along with the message: "No god but Allah". Message received. Rather devastating, it was, too.

Obviously, violent fanatics have no sense of humour and do not appreciate their Prophet being used to make a point - paradoxically enough, that Muslims have no jolly streak, whatever.