PETALING JAYA, Jan 10 — The Charlie Hebdo attacks that left 20 people dead in Paris could be replicated in any country, a second Malaysian minister has warned today.

According to Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, this was because extremism and terrorism know neither borders nor boundaries.

“The combustibility of extremism can happen everywhere and extremism begets extremism.

“Extreme insults begets extreme reaction; it is not an excuse, extreme insults do not excuse murder but that was what happened in France,” he told reporters after launching the Asia Leadership Conference 2015 in Sunway University here.

Yesterday, Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein similarly warned that Malaysia was not isolated from the possibility of its own version of extremist attacks in the vein of the Paris massacre.

Khairy, who previously mocked the need to protect “racist, xenophobic, bigoted” satire such as contained in the French satirical weekly, today again stressed the need to be mindful when exercising free speech, particularly towards religion.

“Just because in some countries you have the freedom to speak, therefore to offend and insult, it does not mean that you have to exercise that freedom just because you can,” he said.

During his keynote speech, the Umno Youth chief noted that Malaysia has limitations to such freedoms, which he said is important to ensure its diversity in culture and religion will be an asset instead of a liability.

“We make no apologies for the fact that we sometimes criminalise hate speech just as Holocaust denial is criminalised in some countries in Europe, just as Europe rises today in defence of freedom of speech and yet sometimes they put curbs on that very same freedom that they profess to cherish,” he said.

Holocaust denial and anti-semitism for example are criminalised in some parts of Europe, Khairy pointed out.

Malaysia does not have laws that specifically criminalise hate speech, but has the Sedition Act 1948 that punishes speech that has an undefined “seditious tendency”, which includes the incitement of disaffection.

Khairy today again condemned both the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo as well as the Islamist gunmen who perpetrated the massacre in response.

“What happened in Paris, the murders, this of course is not Islam,” he said.

He also stressed while he is “offended” by the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, there is no excuse or justification to murder as a retaliation.

He also urged Muslims in Malaysia to react with “words and condemnation” if faced with such insults.

Three suspected Islamists descended on the office of satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo on January 7 and gunned down 12 people including the magazine’s staff and police officers over its provocative depictions of Prophet Muhammad.

Altogether 17 victims have died along with the three hostage-takers since Wednesday.