The latest edition of Charlie Hebdo, featuring all 12 Danish drawings together with several new religious cartoons by its own contributors, went on sale today after a Paris court rejected a legal bid by French Muslim organisations to prevent publication.
Charlie Hebdo’s cover shows Muhammad covering his eyes with his hands, saying: “It’s hard to be loved by idiots”. The illustration is by the magazine’s in-house cartoonist, Cabu, and the headline reads: “Muhammad overwhelmed by fundamentalists.”
Several Muslim organisations, including the French Council of the Muslim Faith and the mosques of Paris and Lyon, had initiated court proceedings against Charlie Hebdo for alleged “racial and religious insult”.
They asked a Paris court to stop the weekly’s publication and its accompanying advertising campaign. But the court yesterday rejected their demands on a technicality, saying there were problems with the way the complaint was made.
“We would have liked that the wish for appeasement had prevailed,” said the vice-president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, Fouad Alaoui.
“Charlie Hebdo wants to inflame the situation, French Muslims are saying ‘no’. One cannot allow that our societies encourage insults,” he said.