FRANCE: The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo yesterday published 12 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad which have led to boycotts, rioting, and the deaths of at least a dozen people across the Muslim world.
Like France Soir newspaper, which published the cartoons a week earlier, the magazine claimed it was acting in defence of freedom of the press.
"When extremists extract concessions from democracies on points of principle, either by blackmail or terror, democracies do not have long left," Philippe Val wrote in an editorial.
The cover of Charlie Hebdo, drawn by its most famous cartoonist, Cabu, shows the Prophet gritting his teeth, burying his head in his hands and saying, "It's hard to be loved by assholes." The front-page headline is: "Muhammad Stressed out by Fundamentalists."
In 2002, when Muslims rioted in Nigeria where the Miss World contest was held, Cabu drew Muhammad as the mafioso organiser of the pageant, holding a glass of cognac and a cigar. The magazine was threatened.
Charlie Hebdo usually prints 140,000 copies. It sold out before 9am and extra print runs brought sales to 400,000. Vendors in predominantly Muslim areas of Paris like Belleville refused to sell it.
In its previous life, as Hara Kiri magazine, Charlie Hebdo was banned by president Charles de Gaulle. It simply changed names and appeared with the same cover the following week.
There is a certain irony in the police providing armed protection for the scourge of the French establishment. Journalists on the magazine said they received threatening phone calls yesterday.
President Chirac reacted angrily to the publication, telling a cabinet meeting: "I condemn all obvious provocations which could dangerously fuel passions.
"Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided. Freedom of expression should be exercised in a spirit of responsibility."
The Socialist deputy, Jean Glavany, accused Mr Chirac of "putting cartoonists who use their freedom of expression on the same level with those who issue fatwas in the name of fundamentalism and obscurantism." Satirists are "disrespectful by nature," Glavany said.
On Wednesday, three French Muslim groups and the mosques of Paris and Lyon failed to obtain a court injunction against the magazine. The same associations announced they will today initiate lawsuits against Charlie Hebdo and France Soir for incitement to racial hatred.
"We would have preferred that a desire to calm things down take precedent," said Fouad Alaoui, the head of the Union of French Islamic Organisations. "Charlie Hebdo wants to fan the flames. The Muslims of France say 'no'. We cannot allow insults to be encouraged in our societies."
French intellectuals are divided in their reaction to the cartoon crisis. On the opinion page of Le Figaro yesterday, the writer Max Gallo compared "appeasing" Islamic fundamentalists to Chamberlain and Daladier at Munich in 1938.
Frédéric Lenoir, the editor of Le Monde des religions, said he would never publish a drawing "which is not funny, delivers no message that makes you think and aims only to hurt or gratuitously insult a religious belief".
Writing in Libération, Swiss Muslim leader Tariq Ramadan called on Muslims to renounce "the obsession with apologies, appeals for boycotts, even threats of physical and armed reprisals."
Westerners, he said, must stop "invoking the 'right to freedom of expression' to give themselves the right to say anything, any way, against anyone."