Charlie Hebdo’s message after the attack on Salman Rushdie: “Nothing justifies a death sentence”

the French magazine Charlie Hebdowhich in 2015 suffered a bloody Islamist attack, he said “nothing justifies a fatwa, a death sentence”in the wake of the British writer’s stabbing on Friday Salman Rushdiewhich has been under threat for more than 30 years.

“We do not (yet) know the motives behind the attacker (…) on Salman Rushdie. Did he rebel against global warming, the decline in purchasing power or the ban on watering the pots for the heat? Wave? ” ironically Ris, editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo and one of the few survivors of the 2015 attack, in an article published on the newspaper’s website.

“We then risk saying that he is probably a believer, probably a Muslim, and that he committed his act even more likely in the name of the fatwa launched in 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini”, continues the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Khomeini motivated his fatwa in Rushdie’s book the satanic versesconsidering it blasphemous for Islam.

the publisher of Charlie Hebdo rejects the idea that “the fatwa against Salman Rushdie is all the more disgusting because what he wrote in his book, the satanic verses, he was in no way disrespectful of Islam“.

This is “a very perverted reasoning, because it leads to (think) that disrespectful statements against Islam would justify a fatwa and punishment, even death”.

“Well no, we will have to repeat over and over again that nothing, absolutely nothing justifies a fatwa, a death sentenceanyone, anything, ”Riss insists, lashing out at the “mediocre little spiritual leaders, intellectually inept and often culturally ignorant”.

In January 2015, Charlie Hebdo’s editorial office in Paris suffered an Islamist attack in which 12 people killedincluding cartoonists Charb, Cabu and Wolinski, after publishing the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

That attack provoked solidarity reactions across much of the world, including Rushdie himself, currently hospitalized and on assisted breathing in the United States, where he was stabbed.

“We will have to stop respecting the word ‘respect’ when it is misused and used to intimidate and justify an execution in the name of God,” says Riss, who continues to be threatened by radical Islamists.

“When you inspire respect, you don’t need to issue fatwas to be credible,” he says.

With information from AFP

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