How Charlie Hebdo became known for its anti-Islamic sentiment

“A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.” Albert Camus

By Alex P. Vidal

IT is sad that the massacre on Charlie Hebdo magazine in

Paris, France on January 8 that left 12 people (mostly magazine employees and two policemen) killed occurred a week before the scheduled visit of Pope Francis in the Philippines, thus the incident was not totally discussed in mainstream Philippine media right away.
Scores were killed in a rampage in Jewish grocery store and along the highway as the gunmen, French nationals of Algerian descent, fled before they were killed by elite police forces.

Six of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and staff members killed in yesterday's attack are pictured together in this photo, taken in 2000. Circled top from left is Philippe Honore, Georges Wolinski, Bernard Maris and Jean Cabut. Below them on the stairs, from left, is editor Stephane Charbonnier and cartoonist Bernard ‘Tignous’ Verlhac

Daily Mail reported that satirical Charlie Hebdo has become a byword for offensive statements in France after taking several highly provocative swipes at Islam.

In its report after the massacre, Daily Mail wrote:

The magazine once named Prophet Mohammed as its guest editor, published cartoons of the holy figure in the nude, and once renamed itself Sharia Hebdo with the cover slogan '100 lashes if you don't die of laughter'.

The controversy began in 2006 when the publication reprinted now-infamous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed by Danish artist Kurt Westergaard.

When the images originally appeared they lead to days of protests across the Middle East and in Western cities. The decision to reprint the images landed the then-editor in court under anti-terror laws, though he was later acquitted.

BURNED

The Hebdo offices were burned to the ground in 2011 when attackers used Molotov cocktails to start a blaze early in the morning of November 2.

Also among those killed was Jean Cabut, aka Cabu. Few other countries in the world have a cartoon culture as rich as France, with its insatiable appetite for comics, or Bandes dessinées, as they are called. It's a culture that expresses an incredible understanding of humor -- be its aim contemptuous or educational, exclusionary or inclusive. It was a constant process, one called the freedom of opinion.

There was nobody in the building at the time, and the target was instead thought to be the magazine's computer system, which was completely destroyed.

Riot police were forced to stand guard outside the building for days following the attack, as the editors took a defiant stance, choosing to reprint the cartoon images multiple times.

In 2012 they again printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as a deliberately provocative gesture while violent protests were taking place across the Middle East.

The following year the magazine's office again had to be surrounded by riot officers after they published a cartoon booklet depicting the Prophet naked as a baby and being pushed in a wheelchair.

On the final page of the booklet there was a note from the editor, Stephane Charbonnier, saying the images were 'halal' because Muslims had worked on them, and that they were factually accurate as they had been derived from descriptions in the Koran.

MIXTURE

The satirical publication, widely seen as France's answer to Private Eye, prides itself on a mixture of tongue-in-cheek reporting and investigative journalism.

Hebdo's current office building has no notices on the door to prevent a repeat of the attacks that have occurred in the past.

In an interview with De Volkskrant in January 2013, Mr. Charbonnier revealed he had been placed under constant police protection for four months after one of the cartoon issues was published.

He shrugged off criticism that he was only publishing the images to gain notoriety for Hebdo, and insisted that he was instead defending the right to free speech.

Mr. Charbonnier pointed out that the magazine had poked fun at feminism, nuclear energy and homeland security, but the Islam issues always attracted the most publicity. 
(Please read further: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/charlie-hebdo-attack-targets-democracy-and-the-west-a-1012072.html and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2901681/Hero-police-officer-executed-street-married-42-year-old-Muslim-assigned-patrol-Paris-neighbourhood-Charlie-Hebdo-offices-located.html)