Comedians and cartoonists around the world have come together to express support for Charlie Hebdo in the wake of Wednesday’s deadly attack.
As the French magazine sounded a defiant note, insisting its next edition would go ahead as planned, street artist Banksy and a host of other famed illustrators chimed in with their own poignant cartoons in response.
“I know very few people go into comedy... as an act of courage,” said Jon Stewart, host of satirical news review The Daily Show. “Mainly because it shouldn’t have to be that... It should be taken as established law.”
Times of Malta cartoonist Steve Bonello expressed his shock at the “barbaric assault on freedom of expression”.
Mr Bonello admitted that the French magazine – which has long been under pressure over its irreverent and provocative portrayals of political and religious authority figures – regularly pushed the limits of good taste but stressed that such a violent reaction could never be warranted.
“Satire has to be provocative. It needs to keep testing the limits and breaking taboos,” he said, adding that he feared the tragedy could lead more writers and artists to censor themselves and their work.
“Comedy and satire are very powerful tools and the bane of dictators and all sorts of people of ill-will around the world. As long as they are used to combat and mock power, entrenched ideas and taboos, I think the limits should be few, if any.”
Steve Hili, a writer and stand-up comedian who has written political satire for Bla Kondixin and The Comedy Knights, said that what the attack represented was both frightening and depressing.
Comedy and satire are very powerful tools and the bane of dictators and all sorts of people of ill-will around the world
The value of satire was in bringing across points that cannot otherwise be brought into focus, he insisted, making people think in a way other media sometimes failed to do.
Carmen Sammut, media specialist and lecturer at the University of Malta, said the attack struck not only at some of France’s top cartoonists but at cherished European values.
“Charlie Hebdo is a symbol of great irreverence towards social conventions,” she said.
“It published provocative satire that touched all religions. It did not succumb to self-censorship in spite of various threats and previous attacks on its offices.”
Dr Sammut referred to the attack as the culmination of a “brutal ideological struggle” and called for caution in the face of a rising tide of Islamophobia.
“Rushed scaremongering will backfire and give a misleading perception that the West is at war with Islam, when this is clearly not a homogeneous religion.
“Hatred threatens to erode the human rights legacy, which Europeans have been advocating for almost seven decades. The world needs leadership and dialogue rather than prejudice, division and further clashes.”
Artists defiant after killings
Cartoonists and writers defended freedom of expression after Wednesday’s attack on the satirical magazine in Paris but the reality for some artists accused of insulting Islam has been years in hiding, police protection and, for some, censorship.
Among the 12 dead at Charlie Hebdo, a weekly that lampoons Islam and other religions, were some of France’s top cartoonists. Others before them, such as Swedish artist Lars Vilks, have also drawn threats or actual violence. “When you take out one of the few bastions of freedom of expression we have, and it has been taken out, who dares to publish anything now?” said Vilks.
Vilks was put under police protection after his 2007 drawing portraying the Prophet Mohammad as a dog led to death threats and a $100,000 bounty put on his head by an Iraqi group linked to al-Qaeda.
“If you do a cartoon picture of Jesus or the Pope it can be published but the Prophet Mohammad is banned from every proper media. It is regulated by fear mixed with political correctness,” Vilks told Reuters.
In early 2014, an American woman who called herself Jihad Jane was sentenced to 10 years in prison for plotting to kill Vilks.
Vilks says his career has suffered due to security concerns about exhibiting even his work that is unrelated to Islam.
Artists across Europe spoke of fears that the Charlie Hebdo attack could lead to self-censorship over religious satire, especially with Islam. For Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous and caricatures or other characterisations have provoked protests across the Islamic world.
One major Danish newspaper, Politiken, has apologised in the past for running a cartoon that upset Muslims. “Politiken recognizes and deplores that our reprinting of the cartoon drawing offended Muslims in Denmark and in other countries around the world,” it said in a 2010 statement.
An Imam from a Paris suburb underlined the offence Charlie Hebdo had caused but rejected violence as a response for Muslims. “We don’t agree with Charlie Hebdo. Fight a drawing with a drawing, but not with blood, not with hate,” said Hassen Chalghoumi, the Imam of Drancy.
The Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Denmark, societies with reputations for tolerance, were at the centre of worldwide controversies in the last decade over depictions of Mohammad.
“‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion’,” said novelist Salman Rushdie in a statement. “Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect,” said Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses prompted late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa on him in 1989.
“Self-censorship is a plague,” warned William Nygaard, a publisher who survived an assassination attempt in 1993 when he was shot outside his home in Oslo after he published The Satanic Verses in Norway.