This week we will be picking up with the fallout of the offensive edition that featured 12 caricatures of Muhammad in 2006. We will be “ending” the story of Charlie Hebdo so that we can examine the Paris and Nice attacks next week.
400,000 copies were sold of an issue that featured 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. We will examine the significance of this number when we talk about the 2015 attacks. The Grand Mosquée de Paris, the UIOF (Union of Islamic Organisations in France) and the Muslim World League sued Charlie Hebdo in 2007 for the offensive material (check out the website’s timeline to see their joke about this issue), but the case was dismissed.
On November 2, 2011, violence broke out due to the insensitive cover, shown above with 110,000 copies sold, depicting Muhammad as the senior editor of the magazine saying, “100 lashes if you haven’t already died of laughter.” (This edition was published days after some major events in Africa dealing with Muslim leadership that were parts of the Arab Spring) Petrol bombs burned the offices to the ground during the night, and thankfully no one was harmed. The main faces of Charlie Hebdo were kept under police protection from then until the attacks in 2015, including Stéphane Charbonnier who was the director of publication and was known by the name Charb.
I will not be including the cover that sparked the 2015 attack for a few reasons. First, it goes against my personal beliefs of what should created in the name of freedom of speech. Second, it is really hard to find a picture of the cover. Lastly, I picture my best friend’s face every time I see the cover. She is a Muslim and has had to deal with so much adversity and hatred in the past couple of years and I just remember her reaction when she saw the cover. So, the cover depicted Muhammad being beheaded by a member of ISIS. As a non-Muslim, I am deeply disturbed by this cartoon. I can’t help to be because I am think of it in terms of seeing someone dear to me being the one with his/her throat to a knife.
I am not going into very deep detail about the attack itself. It occurred on January 7, 2015 by the Kouachi Brothers while an editorial meeting was going on in the office. Twelve people were killed and four were wounded (those working for Charlie who were not injured or killed were mostly out of the office). Among the dead were Frédéric Boisseau (maintenance worker and first to die), Charb and his bodyguard, Bernard Maris (an economist and columnist), and Elsa Cayat (psychoanalyst and only woman to be killed during the attack). Sigolène Vinson escaped unharmed after a gunman pointed at her but didn’t shoot because she was a woman. Please read the BBC article I will link at the bottom for the full story of the resulting manhunt. There are many moving parts and they did an amazing job breaking it down.
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/01/04/charlie-hebdo-documentary-je-suis-charlie-comes-to-netflix/
The response around the world was almost instantaneous with the use of modern technology. There were demonstrations for weeks after the attacking calling for freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Dignitaries from around the world were sent to Paris to stand with Charlie. The phrase “Je suis Charlie,” (“I am Charlie”) was plastered on the fronts of newspapers and magazines across the country. What did it all mean though? The world was standing by the right of Charlie to say whatever they wanted in respect to religion. The world ignored the cause and went straight to the effect. The massacre wasn’t right. Sixteen people died that day, but it could’ve been different. If the court case in 2011 hadn’t been dismissed, things might have been different. If we as humans didn’t focus on profit rather than the ethical decisions behind making the profit (numbers of magazines soared whenever a scandalous cover was released), things might have been different. As a world community, we asked how could something like this attack happen? The answer was right there on the front of a magazine.
We can say these things now with hindsight in our favor, but do we truly recognize what impact the past has on the future. Discrimination and hatred just breeds war and bloodshed. The world needs to recognize the problem at hand before it can be fixed. People choose to overlook the issues until death is the result, just look at the police violence in our own country.
Next week: The Paris and Nice attacks and The profile pictures seen around the world
Links:
BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30708237
Charlie Hebdo website: https://charliehebdo.fr/en/history/