The cartoonist who drew the cover of the first issue of Charlie Hebdo published since 12 people were gunned down by terrorists in its Paris offices said Tuesday that he both “laughed” and “cried” through the emotional experience.
Rénald Luzier, known as Luz, drew an image of the Prophet Muhammad on the satirical newspaper’s latest cover. The publication’s caricatures of Muhammad, which are forbidden by Islam, enraged some members of the Muslim community over the last decade.
“I had Mohammed with ‘je suis charlie’ and he was crying,” Luzier said in a press conference announcing the new issue, as quoted by Buzzfeed. After a long pause, he added “And I wrote ‘all is forgiven’ above. And I cried. I cried but I also laughed.”
Luzier said that he didn’t hesitate to put Muhammad on the front page because “people who committed this attack were people who didn’t have a sense of humor,” according to Buzzfeed.
View the cover below:
“The publication’s caricatures of Muhammad, which are forbidden by Islam”
This is a simplification. See http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/10/1356695/-Images-of-Muhammad-in-Islam for a discussion of how “Islam” is not monolithic in this regard (as virtually no religion is monolithic in any regard).
There is no single voice that defines the specific parameters of what is and what isn’t forbidden by Islam, especially as it pertains to non-followers. Many Christians believe abortion is forbidden by Christianity, some to the extent that they would execute those who perform them. Would you write, “abortion, which is forbidden by Christianity…?”