The French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo announced a few days ago that this week’s edition would be renamed Charia Hebdo (“Sharia Hebdo”) in honor of the “Arab Spring”. The prophet Mohammed was to be the guest editor for the week, and a cartoon of him was featured on the cover. Mohammed’s speech balloon says: “100 lashes if you don't die of laughter!”For articles about the advance publicity for Chief Editor Mohammed, see The Telegraph and the BBC.
Early this morning, before the newspaper hit the stands, the offices of Charlie Hebdo were firebombed and gutted by persons unknown. Here’s the report from France24:
France: Satirical Weekly Hit by Petrol Bomb Over ‘Sharia’ Issue
The offices of French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo, which published a special Arab Spring issue Wednesday with the prophet Mohammed as guest “editor”, were destroyed by a petrol bomb attack overnight, police said.
AFP — The offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published a special Arab Spring edition Wednesday with the prophet Mohammed as guest “editor”, were gutted in a petrol bomb attack overnight, police said.
The fire at the magazine started around 01.00 am (0200 GMT) and caused no injuries, a police source said.
Charlie Hebdo published a special edition Wednesday to mark the Arab Spring, renaming the magazine Charia (Sharia) Hebdo for the occasion.
The cover showed a cartoon of the prophet stating: “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter!”
The depiction of the prophet is strictly prohibited in Islam.
A witness at the scene, Patrick Pelloux, told AFP a molotov cocktail was hurled through the window and set fire to the computer system.
“Everything was destroyed,” he said.
The magazine’s publisher, known only as Charb, said he was convinced the fire was linked to the special edition.
“On Twitter, on Facebook, we received several letters of protest, threats, insults,” which had been forwarded to the police, he said.
On Wednesday, the weekly said it would publish a special edition to “celebrate” the Ennahda Islamist party’s election victory in Tunisia and the transitional Libyan executive’s statement that Islamic Sharia law would be the country’s main source of law.
It would feature the prophet Mohammed as guest “editor”, the magazine said.
Charb on Tuesday rejected accusations that he was trying to provoke.
“We feel we’re just doing our job as usual. The only difference is that this week, Mohammed is on the cover and that’s quite rare,” he told AFP.
Below is a French TV news report with voiceover English translation:
And a French-language report with English subtitles:
A transcript of the second video is below:
| 0:00 | 2/3rds of the rooms of Charlie Hebdo went up in smoke | |
| 0:04 | tonight images by one viewer ... | |
| 0:08 | of BFM-TV image sent tonight... | |
| 0:12 | Molotov Cocktails would have been thrown approximately ... | |
| 0:16 | 2:00 AM at the paper and their internet area | |
| 0:20 | ...of the satirical magazine... | |
| 0:24 | this morning, Patrick is a writer at Charlie Hebdo | |
| 0:28 | was telling us the magazine was victim of threats... | |
| 0:32 | in the last few days after the front page. this front page that comes out today.. | |
| 0:36 | there was pressures of all sorts but pressures we.. | |
| 0:40 | are used to. because all backgrounds integrationist and fundamentalist of religions.. | |
| 0:44 | write to us and insult us regularly so its... | |
| 0:48 | hard to point finger at a particular group. | |
| 0:52 | in the last few days because of the journal that is coming out today.. | |
| 0:56 | there were a lot of threats even at the international level because.. | |
| 1:00 | because of the social networks it comes from anywhere. |
Hat tips: For the image, J-PD; for the France24 story, C. Cantoni.
Many thanks to Bear for the video translation, and to Vlad Tepes for subtitling and uploading the videos.
6 comments:
Somebody! Send them a new printing press. We have to show the islamo-nazis that burning buildings doesn't work in the civlized world the same way that it does in afghanistan...
No, wait... Have them w4rite their stuff, and we can print it over here, and ship it over there.....
There has to be a tune in that somewhere...
There's a technique in psychotherapy called "flooding", where the feared object - in this case pictures of Muhammad - is presented to the sufferer in an exaggerated frequency and exposure. "Flooding is a psychotherapeutic method for overcoming phobias. This is a faster, yet less efficient and more traumatic, method of ridding fears when compared with systematic desensitization".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(psychology)
The best thing the western world can do right now is to "flood" the print media with caricatures of Muhammad, to the point where the "sufferers" of the 'Muhammad cartoon phobia' confront it as something inside themselves. Often, a person who has developed a phobia of a particular thing or situation will go to extreme lengths to avoid that situation. As long as they avoid exposure to the thing that they fear, they have no way of knowing that it can't hurt them, and this increases their reaction.
If something is only presented in dribs and drabs, their fear and reactions will increase. This is called High P.
"Charb on Tuesday rejected accusations that he was trying to provoke."
Of course, just as women & children 'provoke' a bully to beat them up, this man obviously wanted his business burnt!
I am daily provoked by people with umbrellas, who do not look where they are going, by rude people who push you out of the way to get a seat on the bus, by drunks and by people who insist in wearing masks in non-Halloween situations.
I have not incinerated any of their homes, offices or cars and I do not intend to.
These people were not 'provoked', they are just gangsters using the old 1930s intimidation scam.
Charb, the editor of Charlie-Hebdo, and Patrick Pelloux, one of its columnists, have perfected their credentials as hopelessly disingenuous leftists by the way they reacted to the attack.
Charb was asked why he did not get protection for his paper's premises, knowing he was publishing such a controversial issue. His answer : one does not need any protection in order to write about Islam.
He was filmed saying that in front of a heap of rubbish extracted from his previously blazing offices.
Pelloux pretended that since Charlie-Hebdo got hate mail from catholics as well as muslims, it was really not possible to say who firebombed them.
So we have the proof now. Grab two leftists, bang their heads against a wall, and they will still insist that there's no wall, that it's "a feeling of a wall" really, and that everything should be blamed on the far-right, fascists and Marine le Pen.
They are good for the loony bin.
We need to start Islamic 'Darwin Awards' for leftists as more of these examples arise.
Well, I am a teacher and I wanted to share this incident with my students to make them realize that how religion can be a issue in media. But Than I found out that truth is not that simple. Muslims are not the only group who do that. The people of France including their ruling party have religious bias. The new left is targeted by these no-facist racist people. Who have a narrow mind set towards the minority groups in their country. Check this out for example in the name of freedom of expression. Lets fight these fundamentalist together. Either you are Muslim or christian real enemy are the neo-cons.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/18/andres-serrano-piss-christ-destroyed-christian-protesters
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