The great turmoil created by the Charlie Hebdo massacre and ensuing terrorist attacks has left deep scars. Since the end of World War II, Paris has not seen such an immense manifestation of support by the population. There was a large consensus in condemning the killing of innocent and unarmed people. There was also a great acceptance that the slaughter of people by terrorists proclaiming to act on behalf of Islam was greatly flawed and that Islam should not be held responsible in any way for what was happening.The motto "Je suis Charlie" has been widely accepted and used by hundreds of thousands of individuals not only in France, but also in most democratic countries, not least in Turkey. The surprising fact, however, is out of a tiny population of French society, nobody is Charlie Hebdo. The journal, born in the aftermath of May 1968, has always been extremely irreverent and flippant, targeting all existing beliefs, institutions and public personalities. Its existence had a highly symbolic role, revealing exactly how far "freedom of expression" could go. Their professed disrespect for any authority or belief was still very visible following the attack. One of its designers said he would "vomit against everyone's hypocrisy." That is definitely hard to swallow, but Charlie was altogether hard to swallow. The Catholic Church in France tried to have them condemned at least a dozen times and it has not been successful so far.No, with a circulation of around 60,000, Charlie did not represent many people in France or elsewhere. It did, on the other hand, certainly represent one of the major achievements of the May 1968 uprisings and revolts: "It is forbidden to forbid."The terrorist attacks targeted Charlie Hebdo, with its outstanding artists Wolinski and Cabu, monuments of the French Bande Dessinée, but Amedy Coulibaly also took the lives of four more innocent customers in a kosher supermarket, and a fourth mysterious man also shot a jogger who survived. A young policewoman was shot dead by the same Coulibaly, and two police officers were killed in action. The sheer evil of the attack is so profoundly shocking that a huge number of people wanted to show their support for democracy, freedom and the right to be extremely and very inconveniently disrespectful.As a matter of fact, what is at stake is not the disrespect shown for Islamic belief. The real rupture, the true break, is about a very simple issue: Can violence resulting in death be explained, and for some, justified in our modern democratic societies? There are people who still believe in the deterrent effects of the death penalty. Europe, together with Turkey, has gone far beyond this. Dismantling and forbidding the death sentence was first put forward as a political demand by Victor Hugo during the ephemeral revolutionary parliament of 1848 in Paris. Hugo, the greatest French poet and writer possibly of all times, declared in a famous speech that the 19th century should get rid of the death penalty, as the 18th century abolished institutionalized torture as a means of investigation.Hugo said: "Look, examine, think. You hold capital punishment up as an example. Why? Because of what it teaches. And just what is it that you wish to teach by means of this example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach that 'thou shalt not kill?' By killing.I have examined the death penalty under each of its two aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is [sadly] called 'justice' when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed."Hugo was rejecting, in 1848, the legitimacy of the death penalty. He also said: "What is the penalty of death? It is the especial and eternal mark of barbarism. Wherever the penalty is, death is common, barbarism dominates; wherever the penalty of death is rare, civilization reigns supreme. You have just acknowledged the principle that a man's private dwelling should be inviolate; we ask you now to acknowledge a principle much higher and more sacred still - the inviolability of human life. The 19th century will abolish the penalty of death. You will not do away with it, perhaps, at once; but be assured, either you or your successors will abolish it. I vote for the abolition, pure, simple, and definitive, of the penalty of death."Terrorism committed in the name of Islam, or whatever belief, invokes a similar legitimacy as the one denounced by Hugo: Some sacred issues should not be touched, even virtually. Transgressing such a line is punishable by death. In modern times, the most famous death sentence in absentia was pronounced in a fatwa by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against the author Salman Rushdie. Albeit fortunately never implemented, this move has "legitimized" a number of deadly terror attacks in the name of Islam all over the world ever since.Hugo's wish, the abolition of the death penalty, came to pass 135 years later in France after Hugo's passionate pleading at the Constitutional Assembly. We do not have that much time to denounce and condemn the act of barbarism committed in the name of Islam. A religion cannot be held responsible for the deeds of a minority, but a religion is the sum of all its believers. In that sense, there are no "inherently peaceful" religions, so long as mankind does not remain "inherently peaceful."There are people all over the world who have been slaughtered and who are being slaughtered not because they have made fun of Prophet Muhammad, but because their way of worshipping the prophet does not please other Muslims. Sometimes, people from different beliefs do kill each other in the name of different gods. Most of the time, their deaths do not make it to the international news desks. The inviolability of their lives is no less than any other human being.So where does one draw the line? With all its intricacies it is, in fact, a simple issue: It is refusing to say, "I condemn the terror but ..." There are no "buts" or "howevers" for killing, deadly attacks or indiscriminate murders. The break is between people of all faiths, obedience or with no faiths who condemn imperatively, and without hesitation, all forms of terrorism, and the others.We cannot argue about the "nature" of religions, we cannot even argue regarding the truth about one, almighty God, so long as almost a third of the world population believes in multiple deities and are very happy about it. We cannot hold responsible an entire population of Muslims to respond to the attacks, it is repugnant.We can, on the other hand, condemn and ask for condemnation of all recourse to violence, verbally or physically, against people on the grounds of religious belief or attitude pertaining to religion. This sounds easy and very shallow, but its implementation will neither be easy nor shallow, whenever we attempt to carry it out.