«The desire to laugh will never disappear!” assures the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo10 years after the jihadist attack which decimated part of its editorial staff, in a special issue focusing in particular on “laughter at God” through some 40 caricatures.
In this issue, which AFP was able to find on newsstands on Monday, the weekly calls itself “indestructible”, with, in a drawing on the front page, a reader sitting on an assault rifle, reading, delighted, what Charlie “history” of 32 pages.
“Satire has a virtue that has helped us get through these tragic years: optimism. If we want to laugh, it’s because we want to live. Laughter, irony, caricature are manifestations of optimism. Whatever happens, whether dramatic or happy, the desire to laugh will never disappear,” underlines its director, Riss, in the editorial which looks back on the last 10 years marked, according to him, by a “geopolitical situation” which has “worsened”.
“Today, the values of Charlie Hebdolike humor, satire, freedom of expression, ecology, secularism, feminism, to name but a few, have never been so questioned […] Perhaps because it is democracy itself which finds itself threatened by renewed obscurantist forces,” he asserts.
On January 7, 2015, 12 people were killed in the attack carried out by the Kouachi brothers, two French people who had pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda.
Among them, eight members of the editorial staff: the designers Cabu, Charb, Honoré, Tignous and Wolinski, the psychoanalyst Elsa Cayat, the economist Bernard Maris and the proofreader Mustapha Ourrad.
“I am Charlie”
Charlie was the target of jihadist threats since the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006.
The attack caused worldwide emotion and gave rise to a slogan of support: “Je suis Charlie”.
On January 11, 2015, demonstrations brought together nearly four million people across France, with many foreign heads of state and government in the Parisian procession.
On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the attack, President Emmanuel Macron called on Monday to continue the fight against terrorism without “respite”. He stressed that the risk “remains significant in our societies”, which “implies that there is no relaxation and collective vigilance”.
The commemorations will take place on Tuesday in the presence of Mr. Macron, several ministers and the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.
They will start at 11:30 a.m. (10:30 a.m. GMT) in the XIe district of Paris, where Charlie Hebdo had its premises in 2015, and will continue on Boulevard Richard Lenoir, where police officer Ahmed Merabet was shot dead. They will end at 1:10 p.m. (12:10 p.m. GMT) with a tribute to the victims of the Hyper Cacher store, Porte de Vincennes: four people of Jewish faith were killed there on January 9, 2015.
Drawing your “anger”
In its special issue, Charlie Hebdo publishes a series of caricatures on the theme #LaughingatGod. The weekly, whose anticlerical line has never varied, launched an international competition for press cartoonists at the end of 2024, inviting them to “draw[r] your anger against the influence of all religions on your freedoms.
Among 350 drawings received, nearly 40, “the most effective and accomplished,” were published.
Among them, one represents a Christ on the cross filming himself with a telephone, with a subtitle warning that “the little bird is going to come out”; another shows a mother and her child in a landscape of ruins saying to themselves that “one god, it’s okay, three, hello damage”; and in a third, a designer wonders if drawing “a guy who draws a guy who draws Mohammed, is that okay?”
The newspaper also publishes the results of a study by the Ifop institute for the Jean-Jaurès Foundation carried out in June 2024 indicating that 76% of French people believe that “freedom of expression is a fundamental right” and that “the freedom of caricature is one of them. Furthermore, 62% of respondents said they were in favor of “the right to outrageously criticize a belief, a symbol or a religious dogma”.
Monday, the trial of the man who attacked two people with a chopper in September 2020 in front of the former premises of Charlie Hebdo as well as five of his relatives, suspected of having motivated and supported him, opened before the special assize court for minors in Paris.
Zaheer Mahmood thought he was attacking employees of Charlie Hebdounaware that the newspaper had left its premises after the 2015 attack. The six accused all come from the same rural region of Pakistan.
