The horrendous attack Wednesday in Paris has been condemned internationally as an assault on the inalienable right of free speech.

Such condemnations are profoundly accurate. Masked gunman shouting “Allahu akbar” — God is great — burst into the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people and wounding several more. As they made their escape, the terrorists said they were avenging the prophet Muhammad, a frequent butt of Charlie Hebdo’s provocative cartoons and articles.

The French tabloid routinely published material spoofing Islamic religious leaders along with other religious and political leaders of every stripe. One recent cartoon reportedly showed the prophet Mohammed in a wheelchair being pushed by an Orthodox Jew.

Condemnation of the attack is necessary. Around the globe, journalists, political cartoonists in particular, took to social medial with the battle cry: “Je suis Charlie Hebdo” — I am Charlie Hebdo — in defiance of the killers and the Sharia extremism they espouse.

In an editorial published Thursday, the Los Angeles Times wrote that the assailants “were aiming not only at individuals but at an idea: that freedom of expression includes the right to criticize and, yes, ridicule the cherished beliefs of others. Charlie Hebdo certainly had done that in publishing cartoons lampooning Muhammad and mocking Islam.”

The Chicago Tribune carried a similar sentiment: “The killers meant to silence the magazine ... they cannot succeed. That is, the rest of us cannot allow them to succeed.”

And in Washington, President Barack Obama defended the First Amendment principle of free speech: “The one thing that I’m very confident about is that the values that we share with the French people, a belief — a universal belief in the freedom of expression — is something that can’t be silenced because of the senseless violence of the few.”

Repudiation of such attacks should be universal. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights leaves no doubt: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Across the western world, political satire has been a mainstay — an oblique expression of protest against authorities that gets across its point without direct confrontation.

Satire can be risky business — and the staff of Charlie Hebdo knew it. Editor Stephane Charbonnie has had a personal bodyguard ever since the office was firebombed in 2007. The bodyguard was first to die; Charbonnie died second.

Mark Bassley Youssef knows it’s risky business, too. Youssef was the producer of “Innocence of Muslims,” the satirical movie that took the blame for a fatal Sept 11, 2012, attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Youssef’s amateurish movie became a political football after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed it was the impetus for the Benghazi uprising. President Obama adhered to Clinton’s story line, particularly during presidential debates with Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

The evidence later caused the Obama administration — Clinton’s State Department included — to back away from its blame of “Innocence of Muslims” as a Benghazi factor. In 2013, Youssef pleaded guilty to using false names and lying to a probation officer. He served a year in prison. Some of Youssef’s defenders contend the conviction was a trumped-up attempt to discredit him and his production.

If Youssef’s movie had received the rigorous defense of free expression being given now to a French magazine, would it have changed the outcome of the 2012 election? Probably not. Still, the inconsistency is puzzling.