If you’re a publisher, what do you do after your offices are firebombed and your Web site is hacked after you release an issue “guest edited” by the Prophet Muhammad?
You double down, of course!
The French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo hasn’t let last week’s firebombing keep them down. In fact, they didn’t even let it mess up their production deadline. Their next issue was released on schedule, and features a doozy of a cover drawn by the French cartoonist Luz showing the cartoon likeness of Charlie Hebdo publisher and cartoonist Charb engaged in a sloppy kiss with a bearded Muslim man. The headline reads L’Amour plus fort que la haine, which translates into “love is stronger than hate.”
Unlike last week’s edition, which featured the Prophet Muhammad on the cover saying, “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter”, there is nothing specifying that it’s Muhammad on their latest cover. Last week’s edition was also renamed Charia Hebdo (which is a play on the Islamic word sharia), and was intended to “celebrate” the victory of an Islamic party in last month’s Tunisian elections.
For his part, Luz refuses to condemn religious extremists for the attack, writing that people should be cautions before laying blame.
“There’s every reason to believe it’s the work of fundamentalists,” he wrote. “But it could just as well be the work of two drunks.”
