RFI’s Paul Marshall recently wrote a piece for ReligionUnplugged recounting the details and implications of a case about “a lone and gentle teacher falsely accused of blasphemy and beheaded” in France back in 2020. Marshall writes:

Much of France is focused on the trial of eight people stemming from the 2020 beheading of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty by Abdoullah Anzorov, an 18-year-old Muslim immigrant from Chechnya.

Anzorov himself is not on trial since he was shot dead by police minutes after his butchery. The focus now is on those who encouraged and enabled him. Seven men and one woman are appearing in Paris’ special criminal court. They include friends accused of helping buy weapons for the attack and spreading false information about Paty, which prosecutors argue contributed to a climate of hatred that led to the killing. This raises difficult questions about legal limits on speech, especially where religion is concerned.

There have been very much larger assaults by Islamist extremists in France, including repeated attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the 2015 Bataclan massacre, which claimed 130 lives.

Read the full article: “Samuel Paty’s Beheading: The Limits Of Speech and Religion.”