As Trial Begins in Paris for Charlie Hebdo Attack, the Magazine Republishes Cartoons of Mohammed

under the heading “Tout ça pour ça” (All that for this), includes a caricature of the Prophet signed by the cartoonist Cabu, who was killed in the attack of 7 January 2015, and which was not published in the January 2015 issue of the magazine.

The editors explain that they wanted this week’s issue to have twelve caricatures, to mark the fact that twelve staff members were killed in the attack in January 2015.

The magazine’s editorial continues:

We have been asked many times since January 2015 to produce more caricatures of Muhammad. We have always refused to do so, not because it is prohibited — the law allows us to do so — but because there was a need for a good reason to do it, a reason that makes sense and brings something to the debate. Reproducing these cartoons this week of the opening [of the trial] of the January 2015 terrorist attacks seemed essential to us.

Charlie Hebdo’s decision to republish the cartoons on the day that the trial opens is not without its critics.

These cartoons, when published in Denmark in 2005, triggered violent demonstrations in several Muslim countries. When the French weekly, in 2015, decided to republish them, it immediately became a target of Islamist extremists.

The first reaction from a Muslim country to the French magazine’s decision to republish the caricatures came from Pakistan. On Tuesday evening, Pakistan condemned the republication in “the strongest terms possible”: “Such a deliberate act aimed at offending the feelings of billions of Muslims cannot be justified as an exercise of the freedom of the press or of the freedom of expression,” the spokesman of Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Twitter. “Such acts undermine global aspirations for peaceful coexistence as well as social and interfaith harmony,” he added.

The last caricature of Muhammad published by the magazine appeared on the front page of the issue following the 2015 massacre. It showed the Prophet carrying a sign “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) and titled “Tout est pardonné” (All is forgiven).

Mohammed Moussaoui, the president of the French Council of Muslim Worship called on Tuesday to “ignore” the cartoons of Mohammed republished in Charlie Hebdo. “The freedom to caricature is guaranteed for all; the freedom to like or not to like [these caricatures] is equally [guaranteed]. Nothing can justify violence,” he said.

He called for focusing on “the trial which begins” on Wednesday and which “must remind us of the victims of terrorism.” “This terrorism which struck in the name of our religion is our enemy,” Moussaoui said.

President Emmanuel Macron, who is in Lebanon on a state visit, was asked about the magazine’s decision. “A President of the Republic in France never has to qualify an editorial choice made by a journalist or an editorial staff, ever. Because there is a freedom of the press,” he said.

“In our country, since the beginning of the Third Republic (…), there is also in France a freedom to blaspheme, which is attached to the freedom of conscience. And so, from where I stand, I am there to protect all these freedoms.” He also said he wanted to remind the French people of “the duty not to engage in hate speech,” but he was quick to add: “The cartoon is not hate speech.”