The Muhammad Cartoons Go On Trial February 9, 2007

Voltaire must be spinning in his grave. Just down the Parisian hill from where the Enlightenment’s greatest satirist is interred, a noisy scrum of intolerance is drawing any public figure with an image to market, clamoring to deliver a sound bite before the row dies down and the cameras move on.

The contest pits the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France against the editors of the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, in a lawsuit citing anti-racism laws over the magazine’s February 2006 publication of those Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that caused a global uproar. The complaint describes the decision to reprint the drawings as “born of a simplistic Islamophobia and purely commercial interests”; as having “insulted people on the basis of religion”; and as a “provocation aimed against the Islamic community.”

The editors of Charlie Hebdo and their incensed backers depict the trial as an assault on free speech by religious intolerance. A paper that thrives on controversy and insult, Charlie Hebdo argues the drawings were published both to support the Danish editors who drew the ire of Muslims around the world, and to make the point that a fully equal and integrated Islam in secular European societies can’t expect to enjoy a deference not accorded to Christianity or Judaism. “The Pope is satirized, the Church is satirized, Christians are satirized and so are Jews — all in a well-established tradition of commentary and humor,” declared Reporters Without Borders general secretary Robert M�nard outside of the court as it opened Wednesday. “Muslims have to get used to the same treatment — and in reality, most have.”

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