Jan 11, 2015

Slain Charlie Hebdo Editor: ‘I Prefer To Die Standing’

Charlie Hebdo’s wisecracking cartoonists knew the dangers of taking on radical Islam, but they refused to let death threats stop them from speaking out for what they believed in.

The French satirical paper — where 12 people were slaughtered by Muslim terrorists Wednesday — never stopped mocking the hate and hypocrisy of Islamic fanaticism, even after their Paris offices were firebombed in 2011.

Just this week they sent a mocking tweet to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and ran a front-page story about a new novel called “Submission” that imagined France under a Muslim president.

Editor Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier also ran a cartoon taunting jihadis. Titled “Still No Attacks in France,” it had a caricature of a Muslim fighter saying, “Just wait — we have until the end of January to present our New Year’s wishes.”

Charbonnier was aware that such satire put the publication in the radicals’ cross hairs — and he said he didn’t care.

“I am not afraid of retaliation,” he told French reporters in 2012. “I have no kids, no wife, no car, no credit. It perhaps sounds a bit pompous, but I prefer to die standing than living on my knees.”

He did just that. The 47-year-old Charbonnier was among the eight Charlie Hebdo staffers shot dead by terrorists in their Paris office, along with four others, including two policemen.

Charbonnier said he believed satirists had a duty to take on any subject — Charlie Hebdo had run more than one cover tweaking the pope — and that included Islam.

“If we can poke fun at everything in France, if we can talk about anything in France apart from Islam or the consequences of Islamism, that is annoying,” he said.

The magazine was so bold that they continued to mock Islamists just a week after a firebomb was thrown at their offices in 2011 in retaliation for a cover showing the Prophet Muhammad.

The cover that week showed a male Charlie Hebdo cartoonist passionately kissing a bearded Muslim man in front of the charred aftermath of the bombing, The Guardian reported.

The headline, in French, read: “Love Is Stronger Than Hate.”

Charlie Hebdo debuted in 1970 after another publication, called Hara-Kiri, was banned for mocking the death of former French President Charles de Gaulle, Time reported.

Many of the banned paper’s staff joined the new satirical paper, which was named “Charlie Weekly” after the “Peanuts” character Charlie Brown.

The paper never sold many copies but gained notoriety by skewering everyone from right-wing politicians to the Virgin Mary, publishing a cartoon of her last month with her legs spread, giving birth to the baby Jesus.

The paper shut down after it ran out of money in 1981 but reopened in 1992. The controversy over the publication’s treatment of Islam first erupted in 2006, when the paper reprinted the infamous caricatures of Muhammad by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, which had led to deadly riots across the Muslim world.

The reprints led to a jump in sales on the newsstand but drew fierce criticism from many Muslim groups and politicians who condemned them as overly provocative and insensitive to France’s Muslim population, the largest in Western Europe.

Then-French President Jacques Chirac criticized the paper as irresponsible.

“Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided,” he said. “Freedom of expression should be exercised in a spirit of responsibility.”

The paper responded by thumbing its nose at its critics, publishing a letter, signed by intellectuals including “Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie, who had been the subject of death threats himself.

“We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all,” it read in part.

Two French Muslim associations, the Great Mosque of Paris and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, later filed suit against the paper for reprinting the Danish cartoons, Time reported. But a French court tossed the case, arguing that the decision to publish the images did not incite religious hatred.

In 2012, Charlie Hebdo again printed cartoons of Muhammad while new violent protests raged across the Middle East.

At the time, they even drew flak from the White House, which criticized their “judgment,” according to the Daily Mail.

“We are aware that a French magazine published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the Prophet Muhammad, and obviously we have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this,” then-press secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

A year later, riot police had to protect the building after the paper printed a cartoon depicting the Prophet as a naked baby.

Other images that enraged radical Islamists showed Muhammad being pushed in a wheelchair — by an Orthodox Jew, The Guardian said.

The French government begged the editors not to publish the image and shut down embassies, cultural centers and schools in about 20 countries because it feared revenge attacks — but the paper published it anyway.

In an interview in 2013, Charbonnier revealed he had been under police protection after one of the cartoon issues was published.

His police bodyguard was among those killed Wednesday.

The BBC reported that Charlie Hebdo was “part of a venerable tradition in French journalism going back to the scandal sheets that denounced Marie Antoinette in the run-up to the French Revolution.” -NY Post

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