The editor-in-chief of French magazine Charlie Hebdo on Sunday slammed media outlets who didn’t show the Muhammed cartoons following the Paris attack.
“This cartoon is not just a little figure, a little Muhammad drawn by Luz. It’s a symbol. It’s the symbol of freedom of speech, of freedom of conscience, of democracy, and secularism,” Editor-In-Chief Gerard Birard said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It is this symbol that these newspapers refuse to publish, this is what they must understand. When they refuse to publish this cartoon, when they blur it out, when they decline to publish it, they blur out democracy, secularism, freedom of conscience, and they insult the citizenship.”
Birard said that he did not blame papers in countries with totalitarian regimes for not publishing the cartoon, but he said the free press should have published Charlie Hebdo’s latest cover.
Birard said that by drawing the controversial cartoons depicting Muhammed, the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo defend religious freedom.
“Every time that we draw a cartoon of Mohammed, every time that we draw a cartoon of a prophet, every time that we draw a cartoon of God, we defend the freedom of conscience. We declare that God must not be a political or public figure,” he said. “Religion should not be a political argument.”
Watch the full interview via NBC:
