Charlie Hebdo: “Nothing justifies a death sentence”

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The French satirical newspaper hosts on its website, a scathing commentary on the recent attack on the writer Salman Rushdie. The commentary is signed by Rees, the paper’s editor-in-chief and one of the few survivors of the 2015 attack.

“Nothing justifies a fatwa, a death sentence,” French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo — which was decimated by an Islamist attack in 2015 — wrote in outrage after the attack on writer Salman Rushdie, a 30-time target and now years of an Iranian fatwa.

“At the time of writing, we don’t know the motives of the attacker of the knife attack against Salman Rushdie. Was he rebelling against global warming, against the decline in purchasing power, or against the ban on watering pots because of the heat?” writes ironically Rees, editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo and one of the few survivors of the 2015 attack, in a post on the newspaper’s website.

“So let’s take the risk of saying that this is probably a believer, who is also very likely a Muslim and who committed his act even more likely in the name of the fatwa issued in 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini against Salman Rushdie, which condemned him to death”.

“Freedom of thought, reflection and expression has no value for God and his servants. And in Islam, whose history has often been written in violence and subjugation, these values ​​have no place simply because they are so threats against his influence,” Rees argues.

The cartoonist rejects the idea that “the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was all the more outrageous because what he had written in his book, ‘The Satanic Verses,’ was not at all disrespectful to Islam.”

In January 2015, Charlie Hebdo was the victim of an Islamist attack that killed 12 people, including cartoonists Charb, Cabu and Wolinski, after they published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The attack had caused a global sensation and Salman Rushdie had then expressed his “solidarity with Charlie Hebdo”.

“I hoped that by ceasing to hide as he had decided in 2002, Salman Rushdie would live a normal life again. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to live like everyone else when he is subject to a fatwa,” Rees told the Journal du dimanche. (JDD).

Rees, who still lives under the threat of Islamists, believes that “one must always keep in mind that an attack is possible, and always think that it could happen again.”

“For these kinds of people, years don’t count. They force us to consider their religious madness, to understand it so that we can better predict it. This is where the fatwa tries: it forces us into their minds that have been unblocked by religion “, he emphasizes.

RES-EMP

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