.... Charlie Hebdo, for all its faults, showed courage like no other publication. Yes, its decision to print a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad can be seen as questionable and inflammatory. But, as the veteran journalist Mark Colvin remarked this morning, Charlie Hebdo is an absolute equal-opportunity offender of satire: everything and everyone was fair game, starting with the pope (for whom they reserved special sardonic treatment) and all other religious leaders.
.... Charlie Hebdo partly shaped my political views as a teenager. I especially remember the delight I felt when it called for a huge mobilisation in my hometown, Tours, before Jean Paul II’s visit, damning the Catholic church for its position on condom use. I remember the grace and humanism of a column it gave to Patrick Pelloux, an ER doctor working in a poor suburb, detailing how the healthcare system was failing the poorest among us. I remember its tireless commitment to defending women, especially to the right to have an abortion and the right to have a sex life without shame.
[TOP RATED COMMENT 387 votes] Good to see The Guardian showing courage and solidarity with Charlie by illustrating this article with a cover of the magazine mocking the Pope.
Just when I thought this "newspaper" couldn't sink any lower.
Truly, truly despicable.
[SECOND 381] Charlie Hebdo is one of the most gloriously offensive, derogatory magazines in the world and it should be defended at all costs. If the Enlightenment gave us anything, it's the right to speak truth to power without fear of reprisal.
No ifs.
No buts.
No 'they're offensive!'.
They have the right to say as they please within the confines of the law. They never called for murder or threatened anyone. They pointed at you and laughed and God bless them for that.
[THIRD 381] if the Muhammad cartoons are to be described as "questionable and inflammatory" what then are the cartoons of the pope or anyone else?
why are they ok and "fair game", but anything blasphemous against Islam is not?
I can only think its because people are petrified of offending muslims because of precisely what happened to today. That's cowardice, pure and simple, and Charlie Hebdo were brave enough to publish what most of us already feel.
Which makes today all the more tragic .... I hope the rest of the media think long and hard about this before they dismiss Charlie Hebdo's work as "questionable and inflammatory"
[FOURTH 322] "Yes, its decision to print a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad can be seen as questionable and inflammatory."
In other words, be very afraid or politically correct and don't publish such cartoons.
They are winning
[FIFTH 273] Charlie Hebdo was alone in reprinting the Danish cartoons. The rest of Europe's media including The Guardian did not stand by their journalistic code of freedom of the press, they in effect left the Danish cartoonists and Charlie Hebdo out in the cold through their cowardice.
If all of the media had reprinted that cartoon of Muhammed then Charlie Hebdo would not have been a target.
[SIXTH 223] Yes the Guardian really has got its knickers in a twist on this issue. Desperate to be "the worlds leading liberal voice" yet even more desperate not to appear to offend anyone, even zealots. [7 Jan. Guardian Cif, Jessica Reed, 525 comments] Read more
