What is difficult about articulating thoughts for a predominately non-Muslim audience is the realisation that my voice will be taken as representative: the one that will be quoted and assumed to be a truth of the Muslim community universally. It is ironic that this is also the trend that consistently worries the Muslim community in the aftermath of attacks like the one which spurned the Je Suis Charlie hashtag: they will think it's all of us. They'll ascribe the name of Islam to this form of extremism; a dilution of principles and a skewering of morality which results in an aftermath which does not hurt just one body. It hurts us all. But pain differs.

Ideologically, the casualties of the Charlie Hebdo attack are many and diverse. Yes, free speech is one of these. But the reputation of a religion is too. So too is question of satire and the answer to whether there is a definitive line between irony and defiance, and the future of racist caricatures not only of sacred figures, but of ethnic minorities and immigrants. If we delve below the surface into the context of this attack; France's history of colonial pursuit in Africa, the banning of the Muslim face-veil in 2010, the line of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia which runs rife in the country speak volumes, we come to see the complexity of the situation out of which it arose. This is not to excuse the murder of journalists in the offices of Charlie Hebdo: it simply tracks the history of a country which exerts certain pressures on certain groups of its inhabitants constantly. It is a way to start making sense of what is impossible to make sense of. 

For the Muslims I know, this is the terrorism that we are already so familiar with across the Middle East, which we hear about almost every day. Non-white extremists hijacking the name of Islam and not its values. The difference is that now it was against white people, and it is because of this we feel a guilt which should not be felt. This is obviously something which I condemn, but I don't see why it is something I ought to be pressured into condemning more than the next Cambridge student. Pressure for me to condemn it attempts to make something that is separate from me, connected to me, a dangerous link forged in the Western view of my religion.

As a Muslim, the last week for me has been dotted with the hypocrisy of free speech fundamentalists, a rising number of attacks on Muslims and mosques on a global scale, and we have heard a hashtag which provides solidarity for some, not all. There are significances which cannot be ignored: for instance, Ahmed Merabat, the Muslim policeman who not only died defending a magazine's right to mock his religion and culture, but whose sacrifice cements the distinction between a religion which does not stand for the same thing for everyone.

With being asked to stand for anything, however, comes a simplification of the situation. Charlie Hebdo is not a black and white issue: it is grey and murky. It is accepting free speech but defending the right to respect sacredness, not blindly rallying behind it, and opposing fundamentalists both religious and secularly orientated. It is attacks on not only the name of a religion but its members. It is policemen and journalists and terms like 'victim' not being reserved for one singular group and hashtags which cannot accommodate us all... Truths which you may not want to hear, but which remain truths nonetheless.