Charlie Hebdo caricatures Iran’s top leader 8 years after magazine hack

Coinciding with the Islamist attack that decimated its editorial staff, this Wednesday the satirical magazine is publishing a special issue containing the cartoons selected from an international competition entitled #MullahsGetOut (“Mullah, get out”), in support of demonstrations against the Iranian regime.

Eight years after the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo editorial office, the magazine he has not lost his wits or his courage.

This Wednesday publishes a special issue “January 7” (date of attack) with the results of a cartoon contest Released on December 8th.

The slogan is to give “a beating of the mullahs” (religious in Islam) at a time when protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish girl who died in September after being arrested by morality police for violating the country’s strict dress code.

The context

One of the instructions given by Charlie Hebdo to see his selected cartoon was to draw the most “funny and mischievous” cartoon. supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, the ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Cartoonists do the duty to support the struggle of the Iranians who fight for their freedom, ridiculing this obsolete religious leader Y sending it to landfill of history,” the magazine states in its invitation.

For Charlie Hebdo, this contest is “a way to show our support for the Iranian people, who life is played to defend his freedom against the theocracy that has oppressed him since 1979.

It was also a way to remind people why Charlie’s artists and editors were killed eight years ago. unfortunately they are still current today”.

Charlie Hebdo selected 35 designs of the 300 received, sent from countries such as Iran, the United States, Turkey, Sweden or Australia. The magazine did not designate a winner for “not taking away from others,” adding that the prize is something priceless, “Freedom, simply.”

The cartoons show women with loose hair taunting or attacking a cleric.

“What is often portrayed is the rebellion of womenwith designs that reverse the roles: women do to the mullahs what they do to them,” explains Riss, editor of Charlie Hebdo in statements to Libération.

“Some are graphically interesting, others are fun, like the one we see a woman pissing on a mullah. It’s simple, direct. You can feel that it’s really a liberating design,” he says.

As to whether the magazine fear retaliation, Riss replies to the FranceInfo chain: “No, because it is not the first time that caricatures have been drawn on the ayatollahs. It’s not even blasphemy. we still have the right to draw what we want.”

He added: “You might not like it, but it doesn’t matter. In the days that followed we had cyberattacks trying to block the site. Charlie Hebdo usually gets attacked when there are things like this, It’s not new”.

Iran calls contest ‘offensive’

The reaction of the Islamic Republic was not long in coming, calling the initiative of ‘Charlie Hebdo’ an “insult”.

“The abusive and indecent act of a French publication on the caricatures of religious and political authority nor you will be left without an effective and decisive answer“Threatened Iranian Foreign Minister Hosein Amirabdolahian in a message on his Twitter account.

“We won’t allow it the French government crosses the line. They have definitely gone the wrong way,” he said, quoted by Europapress.

Alejo Shapire, RFI

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