Eight years after deadly attacks, Charlie Hebdo back in the headlines for angering Tehran

Today, the irreverent, militantly atheist publication operates from a secret location with round-the-clock police protection to protect its staff, eight years after it was attacked by Islamist gunmen.

Charlie Hebdo continues to mock politicians, public figures and cultural icons from across the spectrum, often with vulgar caricatures.

In an act of defiance, Charlie Hebdo has repeatedly published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, acts seen as blasphemous by many Muslims and which were used as justification by the architects of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo’s offices on January 7, 2015.

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In the first issue released after the attacks, Charlie Hebdo’s cover proclaimed: “They have weapons. Screw them, we have champagne.”

“There is nothing to regret,” Charlie Hebdo’s director Laurent Sourisseau, known as “Riss”, told a French court in 2020 during a trial of the gunmen’s accomplices.

“What I regret is to see how little people fight to defend freedom. If we don’t fight for our freedom, we live like a slave and we promote a deadly ideology,” added the cartoonist, who was himself injured in the attack.

The murders sparked a global outpouring of solidarity with France and renewed support for freedom of speech, with many picking up the “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) slogan.

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But the publication also makes many people queasy, including in France.

Critics see it as being needlessly provocative and even Islamophobic, even though it has frequently offended other religious groups including Catholics, with its crude depictions of the pope, nuns, Jesus and God.

A ‘way to show support’ for Iranians

Riss was behind the latest publication that has incensed the Iranian government, which appeared on French newsstands on Wednesday.

Cartoonists were invited to depict Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the context of the ongoing demonstrations against his theocratic regime, by women in particular, in response to the death in custody of Mahsa Amini. 

The cover sought to highlight the fight for women’s rights, while others were sexually explicit and insulting towards Khamenei and his fellow clerics.

Many cartoons criticised the authorities’ use of capital punishment as a tactic to quell the protests, with another two men executed on Saturday.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian on Wednesday vowed a “decisive and effective response” to the publication of the cartoons, which he said had insulted Iran’s religious and political authorities. The same day, Iran summoned the French ambassador to complain about the cartoons.

The shuttered research institute in Tehran, which is connected to the French foreign ministry, was created in 1983 through the merger of an archaeological delegation dating back to the late 19th century and an institute of Iranian studies.

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Iran has been gripped by nationwide protests for nearly four months following the death in mid-September of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who had been detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code by improperly wearing the mandatory hijab.

Women have taken the lead in the protests, with many stripping off the compulsory headscarf in public or cutting their hair. The protesters have called for the overthrow of Iran’s ruling clerics in one of the biggest challenges to their rule since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought them to power.

‘Bad politics’

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna accused Iran of following “bad politics”. Iran is “not only practicing violence against its own people but is also practicing a policy of keeping people hostage, which is particularly shocking,” she told LCI television on Thursday.

“In France, not only does freedom of the press exist – unlike what happens in Iran – it is also exercised under the control of judges and an independent justice system, which is something that Iran undoubtedly knows little about. Also in French law we do not have the notion of blasphemy,” Colonna continued.

Colonna did not respond directly to the ambassador being summoned on Wednesday or expressly defend Charlie Hebdo.

Hate speech versus blasphemy

Charlie Hebdo has repeatedly caused diplomatic problems for the French government, which has no links with the publication but is blamed by some people for its support of freedom of expression.

France has strict hate speech laws that criminalise discriminatory comments or those inciting violence against racial or religious groups, but it does not have “blasphemy” laws that impose limits on what can be said – or drawn – about religions or religious figures.

>> Looking back at France’s long tradition of caricature

This constitutionally protected freedom is rooted in the country’s own centuries-long struggle against the previously overarching power of the Catholic Church.

Likewise, political leaders and public figures are offered protection from falsehoods by libel and defamation laws, but not from mockery or criticism.

Anti-France demonstrations and calls to boycott French goods swept through many Muslim-majority countries in 2020 after Macron defended the right of cartoonists to be blasphemous.

In October 2020, the Turkish government accused Charlie Hebdo of “cultural racism” and serving French President Emmanuel Macron’s supposedly “anti-Muslim agenda” after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was depicted on the front page depicted in a T-shirt and underpants, drinking a can of beer while lifting up the skirt of a woman wearing a hijab.

The same month, French school teacher Samuel Paty was attacked and beheaded for showing cartoons of the prophet in his class as part of a discussion about freedom of speech – a gruesome murder that shocked France. Paty showed the images to his civics class while emphasising that students could choose not to look at them if they were offended.

For his part, Macron has criticised “a confusion that has been fed by many media – and sometimes political and religious leaders – that these caricatures are in some way a project or creation of the French government or the president”.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)