Charlie Hebdo reprints offensive Prophet Mohammad cartoons
Saeed Pourreza
Press TV, London
13 men and one woman charged in connection with brutal attacks that left 17 people dead in and around Paris in 2015.
On January 7, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo, and opened fire killing 10 staff-members. They were eventually hunted down and killed by police. The remaining seven people were killed elsewhere. The third attacker was also shot dead by police.
The murders quickly turned into a debate about freedom of speech. Journalists in France are legally protected to do their job with their sharpened and at times poisonous pens. And from journalists to politicians, all weighed in to defend the right to blasphemy.
And with that kind of support, the magazine doesn’t fail to offend and provoke. Today, it has published offensive cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad yet again.
Some have argued that Charlie Hebdo goes after just about everybody equally. But that argument has since been challenged. Look back at its cover stories from the years past and you’ll see a disproportionate number about Muslims, who make up about seven percent of the French population.
One prominent example came in 2016 when Charlie Hebdo published a caricature depicting the drowned Syrian toddler, Aylan Kurdi, growing up to be a sexual abuser.
An example from 2010 also proves that it’s not ‘’anything goes’’ at the publication. When Charlie Hebdo writer, the late Maurice Sine, wrote something anti-Semitic about the son of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the magazine fired him immediately, using a moral compass that doesn’t seem to extend to the Muslim community.
What happened in France in 2015 and again on September first, experts say, is a conflict between a relative few who use their mighty pens to incite and defend, and a few others who use violence to murder and silence, a conflict between an uncivilized few.
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