The killing of the 47 year old teacher of history Samuel Patty near Paris on Friday the 16th of October provoked a lot of disgust, which is logic and understandable as a human reaction. Samuel Patty was beheaded by a young man from Chechnya. The motive was that Samuel Patty used cartoons about Mohammed to discuss the issue of freedom of speech.

For me, the central question is thereafter: how do you prevent a repetition of this madness? This is a question about the dynamics behind this violent behavior. It is a tough and necessary question.

I will begin by pointing out that growing up includes for young people finding an answer to the question of the meaning of their own existence. Religion plays a role in this as a framing of their life in a larger whole: you belong to a group.

Personality, dreams and ideals play a role in this. You look at examples around you like relatives, peers, friends or acquaintances and people in the past like Jesus and Mohammed as religious leaders. You look for possibilities to realize your dream. Some dreams cannot be realized for lack of talent. But what will happen, if you feel that others are blocking your ideals or making fun of your dream or ridiculous? Saying that ‘you just have to accept it’, doesn't work, because that ignores or even hurts your feelings.

This is the point. It leads to the source of the dynamic behind your behavior: how do you feel?. The negative attitude to you can lead to aggressive behavior as a possible response. It can be addressed to someone else or to yourself.

You don't always need to be aware of it, but it is about your feelings. This is the source of the dynamic behind your behavior.

Another issue is, what the West emphasizes: freedom of speech like by cartoons. In my opinion, a cartoon is a form of art that makes you smile. A recognizable aspect of someone is magnified.

Depicting Muhammad in a so-called cartoon as a terrorist does not smile, but suggests that Muslims identify them with a terrorist. In this way it is an attack on the faith of Muslims and on them personally, as if they choose to live as shown by a terrorist in stead of a religious leader. It's a form of aggression against Muslims. Violence breeds violence. But Mohammed is just a messenger of Allah. In an indirect way is such a cartoon that shows Mohammed as a terrorist, blaming God.

Further: Mohammed was an Arab. Arabs are Semites. Depicting Mohmmed as a terrorist without knowledge about who he was, is therefore an expression of anti-Semitism. Shouting that this is freedom of speech is nonsense. It is a kind of anti-Semitism.

There is more. When people raise the subject of abuses in a company or with the government, they are threatened in their existence. Therefore they need protection against people with more power in the company or in the government. An appeal to freedom of expression is a hollow phrase. I miss integrity here. I speak from double standard.

The importance of freedom of expression is that everyone is given the space and possibility to realize improvements in a company or in the government and thus for society without fear. It's about exposing wrongdoing.

Everything else is post-pubescent behavior and not freedom of speech. But can this be said in public without any problem?

What about people who justifies their violence with an appeal on their religion?

People who use religion as an alibi for their violence, are violent people. Nothing more. They are responsible for the violence they commit. No religion accept violence for whatever reason, either by deeds or by words.

Also structural violence has to be stopped. This violence is for instance visible, when children of poor families don’t get the chance to develop their talents in or-der to serve the society. Or when poor people can’t live a decent life.

Understanding someone’s violence is not a justification but a tool to find a way to change his or her violent behavior and heal the wounds. It is a societal responsibility to elaborate this tool in concrete situations. Also it can be helpful to prevent that young people derail in their life and become violent.

As society, we have to understand personal grievances and stop verbal aggression as the opposite of freedom of speech.

Conclusion is that freedom of speech is an expression of societal engagement. It deserves respect, which only by the other can be confirmed.

Finally, I will refer to a statement by Pope John XXIII in April 1963: no-one is by nature superior to another one. People who present themselves as superior, don’t show respect to others, but are aggressive.

NB: The emphasis on personal task to work for your own income as self-employed creates a mentality to be a self-employed terrorist, who doesn’t need meetings to organize an attack with a knife. Therefore intelligence can’t catch them before they commit a violent act.