This item was originally published on November 2, 2011, and is being re-posted after today’s murderous rampage at Charlie Hebdo in France:
Before the latest issue of the French humor magazine Charlie Hebdo could even hit newstands, its office was firebombed. Apparently some did not find the humorists’ depiction of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to be very funny and decided to say so by throwing a Molotov cocktail through the office windows early this morning.
The cover features a depiction of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (the issue’s supposed guest editor) with this tagline: “100 lashes if you are not dying of laughter.”
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“The edition of the paper published on Wednesday was called Charia Hebdo,” the BBC points out, “a play on the Islamic word sharia.”
Inside the issue are cartoons, including this ones:
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“Soft sharia allows homosexuality!” the speech bubble reads. “Gays just have to wear the veil . . .”
The New York Times reports, “Caustically ironic and vulgar, Charlie Hebdo prides itself on being offensive to virtually everyone. It has drawn the ire of Muslim activists before, including in 2006, after it republished cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.”
