Take that, al Qaeda
Surviving Charlie Hebdo staffers are thumbing their noses at their terrorist attackers – publishing a caricature on the cover of this Wednesday’s edition showing of a weeping Prophet Mohammed holding a sign reading “Je Suis Charlie.”
But the image is delivered with a generous does of magnanimity, appearing under the words ”Tout est pardonne,” or “All is Forgiven.”
And the paper vowed to continue lampooning the Prophet in future issues.
“Naturally. We will not give in otherwise all this won’t have meant anything,” Richard Malka, the paper’s lawyer, told France Info radio on Monday.
Wednesday’s edition – the first since eight journalists and four others were gunned down by a pair of homegrown jihadis in an assault on the paper’s Paris office – will have a million-copy print run, compared to a usual run of about 45,000 copies.
And all of the satirical weekly’s usual targets – Mohammed, Islam, al Qaeda and ISIS along with other religions and political figures – will be smack in the crosshairs of the remaining staffers and other journalists who have come to their aid to get the paper out.
Malka was among the first to call for the magazine to keep publishing after losing many of it’s top staffers – including cartoonists Cabu and Wolinski and its editor, Charb, who were gunned down last Wednesday by fanatical Islamists brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, The Telegraph reported.
“Humor without self-deprecation isn’t humor. We mock ourselves, politicians, religions, it’s a state of mind you need to have. The Charlie state of mind is the right to blaspheme,” he said, insisting the paper was an equal-opportunity offender.
“We have never criticized a Jew because he’s a Jew, a Muslim because he’s a Muslim or a Christian because he’s a Christian. But you can say anything you like, the worst horrors – and we do – about Christianity, Judaism and Islam, because behind the nice slogans, that’s the reality of Charlie Hebdo,” Malka said.