TCD students cheer islamist Asghar Bukhari and his defence of the Charlie Hebdo k

I witnessed something genuinely disturbing at Trinity College Dublin last night: trendy, middle-class, liberal students cheering and whooping a man who had just given the closest thing I have yet heard to a justification for the massacre at Charlie Hebdo.
It was as part of a debate on the right to offend. I was on the side of people having the right to say whatever the hell they want, no matter whose panties it bunches. The man on the other side who implied that Charlie Hebdo got what it deserved, and that the right to offend is a poisonous, dangerous notion, was one Asghar Bukhari of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee.
Bukhari defamed Charlie Hebdo as racist, the same dim-witted claim made by every Charliephobe who has clearly never seen an issue of this magazine that rails against the far right and prejudiced politicians.
He then offered us a potted history of French imperialism and brutality in Algeria. Why? As an explanation for why the murderers of Charlie Hebdo’s staff — who were of Algerian descent — did what they did.

But the audience at last night’s debate was not part of any cynical, self-styled community group. They were young. They were mainly liberals. They were pretty cool. Some were painfully PC. And yet some of them — a significant chunk of them — cheered Bukhari’s explanation for the Charlie killers’ actions, and applauded his suggestion that my question must have been motivated by racism.
During my speech, students had hollered ‘Shame! Shame!’ when I suggested that Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ should not be banned on campuses. And yet they listened intently, with soft, understanding, patronising liberal smiles on their faces, as Bukhari implied that Charlie Hebdo brought its massacre on itself. This is how screwed-up the culture on Western campuses has become: I was jeered for suggesting we shouldn’t ban pop songs; Bukhari was cheered for suggesting journalists who mock Muhammad cannot be surprised if someone later blows their heads off.
It provided a glimpse into the inhumanity of political correctness. The PC gang always claim they’re just being nice; it’s just ‘institutionalised politeness’, they say. Yet at Trinity last night I saw where today’s intolerance of offence and obsession with Safe Spacing minorities from difficult ideas can lead: to an agreeable nod of the head when it is suggested that it’s understandable when poor, victimised Muslims murder those who offended them.