Last week’s firebombing of its offices hasn’t stopped satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo from releasing its latest edition – which features a caricature of the editor and a Muslim character in a slobbery make-out kiss. Had the Muslim character been drawn with a turban I’m sure it would be inferred as the Prophet Mohammad (Gawker thinks the character is Mohammad). Maybe the magazine did make a show of restraint.
Or they decided to run the Mohammad stuff on the inside pages.
Reuters reports that the edition features several other Mohammad cartoons.
The supplement included several new drawings by Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. In one, a prophet-like figure tries to restrain his billowing robes in a pose reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe as a draft blows up from Charlie Hebdo newspapers below him. Another shows an airborne fire-bomb with a face in the flames and the caption, “So, is this how you see the prophet?”
In other news related to the firebombing and its aftermath:
A blog on The New York Times reports that in the aftermath of the bombing, there’s been a gathered coalition of support from politicians and even other media outlets.
In an uncommon show of unanimity, politicians from across the ideological spectrum were up in arms last week, pledging to defend the “freedom of expression” of a publication with which their relations are generally strained. Newspapers, magazines, unions and at least one leftist political party quickly offered to provide work space to Charlie Hebdo, which is now operating out of the offices of the daily Lib’eration.
The magazine is also upset with Facebook for not allowing it to remove what it views as a barrage of threats on its Facebook account. From RFI:
Charlie Hebdo’s Facebook page has been swamped with 13,000 messages, many of them threats and insults, since the publication of this week’s issue retitled Charia Hebdo and featuring a cartoon of Mohammed on its front cover.
But its moderator cannot remove them, the blog says, “under the pretext – surprise! surprise! – that Charlie Hebdo is not a ‘real’ person”…