Los Angeles Times editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez called them “the pit bulls of journalism” while Professor Charlotte Templin has suggested that no one would be surprised if they are unfair to the figures they draw.  And according to Professor Colin Seymour-Ure they thrive in times of irreverence.

History has shown that a number of cartoonists paid the price of pushing the limits of both social norms and the state’s tolerance throughout history.

Scholars who focused their academic work on this area of communications would not have been surprised about what happened in the case of Charlie Hebdo. After all, throughout history there have been many instances where cartoonists have had to pay a high price for doing what they do best – drawing a cartoon. Admittedly, the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack paid a higher price, compounded as it was with the possible involvement of international terror organisations such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.

This attack has re-opened the discussion on whether freedom of expression has any limits. Personally, I feel that once you start messing about with such freedoms you are entering very dangerous grounds inundated with many grey areas. On what grounds should you censor a work of art, a book, or a play if the author intentionally uses strong and foul language, sex scenes or antisocial behaviour? Should you forbid the publication of a book or the staging of a play because it offends the morals of those who will be exposed to it? Does the reader or the spectator not have the right to read or watch that work of art irrespective of whether or not it is irreverent? Interestingly, this week Pope Francis said that there are limits to freedom of expression, especially when it insults or ridicules someone's faith. Although he defended freedom of speech, he did not hesitate to point out that if a person insults someone else, that person should expect a reaction.

I can understand that satire related to religious figures tends to elicit a bigger reaction with a higher dose of emotions. Christian figures including Jesus Christ have featured in numerous satirical publications, cartoons, films and other media. Although whenever this happened there have been reactions from some quarters, they were never accompanied by extreme violence as has happened recently in Paris and a few years ago in Denmark when the newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad associating him with violence and arms. I am sure this did not happen because Muslims do not have a sense of humour. However, I feel that culture is a factor that contributes to the kind of reaction. In the case of the Charles Hebdo attack, culture was also infused with a lethal dose of political issues that have been building up for the past two decades. The growth of Islamic terror groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS has meant that terrorists today are not restricted to some area in Central Africa or some other part of the world but are scattered all over the globe. Some of the most notorious terrorists have also been home bred in European countries such as the UK, complicating any semblance of a war against terror groups. These people are ready to jump on any bandwagon to instigate a war against the ‘infidels’.

Going back to the subject of this piece, cartoons – which, incidentally, was also the subject of a study I carried out a few years back in the wake of the Jyllands-Posten episode – I do not think that cartoonists all over the world will either shut up or shut down. In fact, the Paris episode has instigated many cartoonists to produce very pungent cartoons to show their anger and condemnation of the assassination of professional people whose only mistake was to use their right to freedom of expression. However, I still think that such episodes lead to an increase in self-censorship by a number of cartoonists and tighter gate-keeping by many editors.

Throughout history, cartoonists in Malta have generally been tame, although there have been a few instances where editors were either taken to court or worse still arrested for publishing a controversial cartoon. This happened to Dr Joseph Micallef Stafrace who, in 1958, was jailed for four days and fined £35 for publishing a cartoon depicting Governor Leycock with a bottle of gin in his hand being carried shoulder-high during the traditional march celebrating the feast of St Dominic in Valletta.

In my study of Maltese cartoons throughout history, I discovered a few interesting things, mainly that censorship and self-censorship of cartoons are, in fact, relatively frequent. I found cartoons published some 60 to 80 years ago somewhat more liberal than they are today. Mind you, in my research I did not encounter any cartoons ridiculing a revered religious figure such as God, Mohammed or Buddha, although more recently there were cartoons where the Pope (Benedict) was shown as a Rottweiler.

My conclusion was that religion, especially Christianity, has been handled with maximum care, even by editors who, in their writing, were not so kind to the Church and its leaders. As far as I know, the central figures of other religions have never featured in cartoons published locally, and as such I have no reason to believe they will any time soon.

Charlo Bonnici is a Nationalist Party Member of Parliament with a Master’s degree in Communications