It was Raif Badawi’s birthday yesterday.

IN THE NOW @INTHENOWRT · Jan 13
World chants #JeSuisCharlie for #FreedomOfSpeech while Saudi blogger #RaifBadawi takes 1K lashes for discussing faith

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Clemens Wergen at Die Welt has some home truths for the American media on this matter of refusing to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, even the new cover cartoon.

Today the French newspaper Libération published the new cover of Charlie Hebdo which will be on the newsstands on Wednesday. Yes, it is Muhammad again. He is shedding a big tear and holding a poster like so many people did in these days that reads “I am Charlie”. The title of the cover says “All is forgiven”. I can only imagine what amount of self conquest the surviving members of the Charlie Hebdo team had to muster to come up with a cover of such melancholic sweetness after they have lost

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Sameer Rahim at Prospect points out that it’s not straightforwardly true that – as so many media outlets glibly assert – “Islam forbids depictions of the Prophet.”

Although it’s true there is a strong iconoclastic streak in the religion, there is also a significant alternative tradition of representing the Prophet in Islamic history books and devotional manuals—a tradition not especially well known in the West because Muslim clergy have often condemned or tried to suppress it.

Nothing in the Koran forbids image-making but it does worry about idol-worshipping. A century after the Prophet died in 632, around the time his first biography was being circulated, religious authorities tried to avoid replicating what they saw as the misguided Christian adoration of

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Another tragedy – the Tamil writer Perumal Murugan has decided to withdraw all his books and never write again after being bullied by Hindutva groups.

A week after the police advised Tamil writer Perumal Murugan to leave his home in Namakkal following protests by caste- and Hindutva organisations against his book Madhorubagan, the author has announced that he will withdraw his entire body of work from publication and will never write again.

The announcement came after four hours of negotiations with the groups that had objected to the book.

“Negotiations” forsooth! What is there to negotiate?!

Last month, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh burnt copies of his novel  in Tiruchengode in Tamil Nadu on Friday, The Hindu reported, saying

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If you haven’t seen enough rebarbative assholitude enough lately, there’s always Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke. The lovely man did an interview with a lovely site called The New Emangelization – see what they did there?

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke:  I think there has been a great confusion with regard to the specific vocation of men in marriage and of men in general in the Church during the past 50 years or so. It’s due to a number of factors, but the radical feminism which has assaulted the Church and society since the 1960s has left men very marginalized.

Unfortunately, the radical feminist movement strongly influenced the Church, leading the Church to constantly address women’s issues at the expense of

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Tina Nguyen at Medialite reports on the photographic obliteration of women who had the temerity to be visible in the Paris march on Sunday. These brazen hussies were merely the chancellor of Germany and the mayor of Paris and the EU foreign policy chief, so what the hell did they think they were doing out there with the grown-ups?

Yesterday’s historic march across Paris included over 40 world leaders expressing solidarity for France after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but if you read this Haredi newspaper, you’d believe that none of them were women.

The image that ran on the front page of the Israeli newspaper The Announcer edited two female world leaders out of the image, originally provided by wire

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Here’s the YouTube video of extracts from the Charlie Hebdo press conference.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyDIX-dNf5E… Read the rest

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The Telegraph has clips from a press conference in which the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Luz describes his thinking about the cover for the January 14th issue.

I invoked all the talents of the magazine, all those who were not there any more, all those were still there, I said to myself, we must do a drawing that above all makes us laugh, and not one on the emotional charge we are victims of.

I had the idea of drawing this character of Mohammed, as it’s my character, because he existed, at least in people’s hearts, and in any case he exists when I draw him.

He is a character that got our offices burned, and a character who at first

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Libération reports on Charlie Hebdo’s exile at Libération and the process of putting together the January 14 issue.

They were working in a rush in a new space and without most of their own equipment, not to mention all the emotional turmoil. There are a bunch of potential covers tacked up on the wall for consideration.

Une très bonne nouvelle, quand même : plusieurs dessins de Riss (touché dans la fusillade et hospitalisé) sont arrivés, avec un jugement esthétique en forme de diagnostic : «Ah ben, ça va, il tremble de moins en moins.»

One piece of very good news, all the same: several cartoons by Riss (wounded in the attack and hospitalized) arrived and got a verdict that was

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BuzzFeed has another (in addition to mine, I mean, she said modestly) useful collection of which media outlet did and which did not show the new cover of Charlie Hebdo.

1. Libération: Yes.

No surprise there, since Charlie is now working out of Libération’s office using Libération’s equipment.

2. CNN: No.

3. CBS News: Yes.

4. The Guardian: Yes.

Yes but with a warning at the top. Many points deducted.

5. Wall Street Journal: Yes.

It’s annoying when the WSJ does better than the Guardian.

6. NBC News: No.

“Doubling down” “of course risks further enraging” – a pox on you, NBC.

7. Mashable: No.

8. The Daily Beast: Yes.

9. BBC: No.

On the website, they mean. … Read the rest

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The Beeb showed the new Charlie Hebdo cover on the air again, on BBC News 24 –

The Charlie Hebdo effect.

… Read the rest

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I’m out of time, but want to make sure I draw your attention to this great post by Yemisi: The Charlie Hebdo tragedy: The five crowds that are getting it wrong.

Gotta go.

See

you

tomorrow.… Read the rest

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A comment by Lady Mondegreen aka Stacy, originally a comment on a Facebook discussion and posted here with permish.

Ironic racism/sexism can be harmful even if the intent is good.

I think it can be–sometimes. And sometimes it can be harmful and also good.

I suspect that a young African American child reading Huckleberry Finn could suffer emotional pain reading all that raw racism. I would never dismiss that pain. Neither would I ever, ever stand with the people who think Huckleberry Finn shouldn’t be taught, should be taken off the library shelves, or should be bowlderized.

I would hope people hurt by Twain’s ironic racism (for example) would, if they don’t get the context, have it explained to them. … Read the rest

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Oh jeez – something I didn’t know – Caroline Fourest is a senior editor of Charlie Hebdo. NBC News talked to her.

A senior editor at Charlie Hebdo says she’s living a nightmare that she could never have prepared for despite years of threats against the magazine.

Caroline Fourest, who has contributed to the satirical magazine for years, told NBC News that she and the staff are working through their shock after the attack, and will show the world they will not be silenced.

…

Fourest told NBC News that the editorial staff had been debating cartoons to demonstrate the scope of racism against Muslims in France. That made the attack, an apparent act of revenge for insulting Islam,

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Other media are showing the new Charlie Hebdo cover though.

The Chicago Sun Times.

ABC (Australia).

This week’s publication, the first issue of the French satirical weekly since last Wednesday’s deadly attack in Paris, will be offered in 16 languages.

The surviving members of the magazine prepared the edition in the offices of French newspaper Liberation, which said three million copies would be printed.

“Charlie Hebdo will be in kiosks this Wednesday, January 14. Like it is every week,” Liberation said.

“The journalists of the weekly publication finished it at around 21.30 on Monday.”

Business Insider.

The first cover of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after a terrorist shooting at its Paris headquarters has been revealed. As

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So the cover of the next Charlie Hebdo appeared on Newsnight, but it doesn’t appear in the story on the BBC website. The story’s headline is “Charlie Hebdo’s latest edition to depict Prophet Muhammad” but the depiction itself is absent. No depiction for you.

The cover of the latest edition of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has been published in French media, and depicts the Prophet Muhammad.

The cover shows the Prophet holding a sign reading “I am Charlie”, below the words “all is forgiven”.

The magazine’s lawyer Richard Malka told French radio earlier that it was important to show that staff would “cede nothing” to extremists.

As always with these things…it doesn’t really “show the prophet” – it shows … Read the rest

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Newsnight showed the new Charlie Hebdo cover. Andrew Copson took a picture.

 … Read the rest

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Daily Kos has a great collection of cartoons by Cabu for Charlie Hebdo – anti-racism cartoons to be specific.

Below are cartoons drawn over the past several decades by Cabu, one of the most emblematic cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo (if not the most). Cabu was murdered along with his colleagues this past week. He was 75 years old.

Although no media outlet in the US will show you these images, they can all be found online with a simple Google search.

“No to racist identity checks.”

That’s Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Front National, saying “We want to be able to go out at night without being afraid!” He doesn’t mean without being afraid of white supremacist gangs armed with … Read the rest

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Charlie Klendjian has an eloquent blast of fury at all the what-abouttery and they-were-racistsism over the past five days.

Over the last five days I have listened patiently to the most extraordinarily confused and painful discussions on the rights and wrongs of murdering people who draw cartoons. What an odd response our public discourse has generated towards what is, to my mind at least, a moral issue of the most blinding clarity.

It is to me too, but it might not be. If Charlie Hebdo had been an unquestionably racist xenophobic immigrant-bashing magazine, affiliated with a far-right organization and running editorials demanding expulsions and closed borders – then the moral issue would not be so blindingly clear; not to me. … Read the rest

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