“On Wednesday, as two gunmen fled the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, where they had murdered much of the staff, they encountered a police office named Ahmed Merabet in the street. The gunmen shot Merabet before he could respond, hitting him in the groin. As he fell to the ground and held his arm out in self-defense, one of the attackers asked, “Do you want to kill us?” Merabet, whose final words were caught on camera, answered, “No, it’s okay friend.” One of gunmen jogged over and, standing above the policeman, shot him in the head.

Merabet’s death soon took on special significance. He was of Algerian heritage and, like eight to ten percent of France’s population, Muslim. So were his killers, who ostensibly killed on behalf of Islamist extremism and in retaliation for Charlie Hebdo cartoons lampooning Islam. The attacks provoked debate within France and the Western world, as they were perhaps intended to, over the compatibility of Islam with Western values, aggravated preexisting hostility to Muslim immigrants and to Islam, and provoked a series of “reprisal” attacks on French mosques and Muslims.”* The Young Turks hosts Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

*Read more here:
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/11/7527697/ahmed-malek-merabet-eulogy-charlie-hebdo