By: Sabir Shah<\/p>\n
LAHORE: World media outlets give mixed reaction to attack on Paris weekly last week. <\/p>\n
BBC writes: \u201cThree million copies of Wednesday\u2019s edition are being printed. Normally only 60,000 are available each week.<\/p>\n
\u201d Prestigious international media houses like the Reuters, Bloomberg and Fox News etc have also reported that up to three million copies of Charlie Hebdo could hit newsstands today. US newspaper \u201cTheWashington Post\u201d has published the latest cover of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, despite criticism from conservative Muslims that such depictions were blasphemous and offensive. <\/p>\n
The \u201cWashington Post\u201d Executive EditorMartin Baron is said to have approved the controversial publication. <\/p>\n
Baron had said lastweek that the paper\u2019s policy was to avoid publication of material that was \u201cdeliberately\u201d offensive to religious groups but later said that the new Charlie Hebdo cartoon did not meet that criterion. <\/p>\n
Caroline Fourest, a former employee of the satirical French paper Charlie Hebdo had said: \u201cThere will be more cartoons. And we all decided, the journalists who did survive and the excolleagues of Charlie Hebdo we all decide together to publish together the new, the next Charlie Hebdo because there is no way even if they kill ten of us, there is noway that the newspaperwon\u2019t be out next week.<\/p>\n
\u201d While the Cable News Network (CNN) had decided not to exercise its freedom of expression on the issue of Charlie Hebdo shooting a week ago, various newspapers and television channels in theMuslimcountries like Egypt had demonstrated against the attacks. <\/p>\n
Apparently fearing Muslim wrath, CNN\u2019s Editorial Director Richard Griffith had sent an internal memo reading, \u201cWe are not at this time showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Prophet that have been considered offensive by many Muslims.<\/p>\n
\u201d In addition, while the Charlie Hebdo attack was still considered \u201cBreaking News,\u201d CNN\u2019s leading anchorperson Christiane Amanpour had actually called the murderers \u201cactivists.<\/p>\n
\u201d China\u2019s \u201cGlobal Times\u201d had argued in its own editorial: \u201cThe international community must jointly defend the magazine editors\u2019 rights to personal safety, but this doesn\u2019t mean they side with their controversial cartoons.<\/p>\n
\u201d Approximately 60 leading journalists and editors from Egypt\u2019s mainstream newspapers like the \u201cMasr Al-Arabiya\u201d and \u201cAl-Masry Al Youm\u201d etc had staged protests outside Cairo\u2019s Press Syndicate to express solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. On the contrary, some Turkish newspapers had blamed Charlie Hebdo for the shooting incident. <\/p>\n
\u2018Islamic slaughter it suffered\u2019 was the headline of a leading Turkish newspaper \u201cYeni Akit\u201d had read: \u201cAttack on the magazine that provoked Muslims.\u201d Meanwhile, the headline of another leading Turkish newspaper \u201cThe Turkiye Gazetesi\u201d had read: \u201cAttack on the magazine that published ugly cartoons of our Prophet.\u201d The first sentence of an article published by the \u201cTurkiye Gazetesi,\u201d had noted Charlie Hebdo\u2019s long history of publishing unflattering depictions against the Muslim faith. The Iranian government\u2019s official newspaper \u2014 named Iran, and which reflects Iranian President Hassan Rohani\u2019s government policies – had offered the most visible coverage, dedicating most of its front page to a large photo of the event, with the headline: \u201cBloody showof terrorists in Paris. However, another top Iranian newspaper the \u201cSharq\u201d had slated the French satiricalmagazine for publishing the blasphemous cartoons.<\/p>\n
This newspaper had stated: \u201cIt is not acceptable that the President of France defends the freedom of speech in his speech after the attacks. This popular journal had published an insulting illustration of the Prophet of Islam.<\/p>\n
\u201d Widely-circulated American newspaper \u201cWall Street Journal\u201d had asserted: \u201cThe satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was the conscious heir to a French intellectual tradition with a long history: radical anticlericalism. <\/p>\n
Before the Charlie Hebdo era (the magazine dates from the late 1960s), France\u2019s most influential anticlerical thinkers trained their fire on Catholicism-for centuries the country\u2019s state religion. As a rule, however, these individuals objected not so much to precise points of religious doctrine as to the fanaticism, ignorance and persecution that, in their view, tended to accompany \u201ctrue faith.<\/p>\n
\u201d The opponents of doctrinaire Catholicism used caricature, irony and humorous blasphemy- thus setting the tone for Charlie Hebdo\u2019s later fight with jihadist Islam.\u201d Israeli top newspaper \u201cThe Haaretz\u201dwrites in its January 13, 2015 edition: \u201cThe big question in the wake of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo is whether the slaughter will bring France out of its corner in the war on Islamist terror. <\/p>\n
France has seen some appalling crimes – including attacks against Jews – that could be linked, broadly, to the global war against Islamist terror. But the attack on the satirical weekly takes, by dint of its body count, things to a new level. It\u2019s hard to see howFrance, or any country, will be able to revert to the status quo ante. The magazine has been particularly unbridled in its mocking Islamists from a left-of-center perspective. It stood, courageously in the view of many, for the right of satire in thewake of the publication of the Danish cartoons.<\/p>\n
\u201d The headline of an \u201cAl- Jazeera\u201d report had read: \u201cWhy Charlie Hebdo attack is not about Islam?\u201d The report\u2019s catch line\/shoulder had stated: \u201cCharlie Hebdo massacre is rooted in generations of violence, hypocrisy and greed.<\/p>\n
\u201d The \u201cAl-Jazeera\u201d report had furthermaintained: \u201cTwelve people were massacred in Paris on Wednesday merely for expressing their opinion through art. Many might not like the art that prompted the carnage. Theymay consider it obscene and even an attack on their faith. But in the 21st, 15th or 57th century – whatever your religion, calendar, or country – there is no excuse or justification for responding to art with murder.<\/p>\n
\u201d The \u201cAl-Jazeera\u201d had gone on to air: \u201cBut there is a clear and frightening explanation for this violence, one that demands not merely outrage at the act itself, but at the system that has made it both predictable and inevitable. The problemis that this system is hundreds of years old, implicates most everyone, and has only become more entrenched in the last several decades as the world has become ever more globalised.\u201d Here follow some more reactions:\u2014 Dalil Boubakeur, Imamof a Paris Mosque: \u201cThis is a thunderous declaration of war. The times have changed. We\u2019re entering a new phase of this confrontation… we are horrified by the brutality and the savagery.<\/p>\n
\u201d \u2014A top Indian newspaper \u201cThe Hindu\u201d had published: \u201cCharlie Hebdo was brutally attacked for its dark sketches of humour; for apparently talking satire to power. Cartoonists in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo sketched the incongruity of a pencil and a gun. But what explains this incongruity?What is it about satirical humour that can invite such anger or can justify its protection, even through socalled \u201clegitimate\u201d state violence? Novelist Salman Rushdie, a victim\/perpetrator of such violence, calls this \u201cart of satire\u201d a \u201cforce of liberty against tyranny.\u201d \u2014\u201dThe Economist\u201d had viewed: \u201cIt seems that satire especially riles those most ripe for it. Those who murder in the name of God, or other high ideals, are monstrous, but also, somehow, ridiculous! In the gap between the true-believer\u2019s moralising self-righteousness and the vicious reality ofwhat he defends there is a fog of delusion. The satirist minds that gap, despises the fog and shines a merciless hot light on the nonsense. The wider the gap, the greater the sustaining delusion, and the more damaging, and dangerous, the satire will be felt to be.\u201d <\/p>\n
Othermedia houses that condemned the Charlie Hebdo incident included Britain\u2019s \u201cDaily Independent, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, the Times of India, the Indian Express, India\u2019s NDTV, American Fox Television, the Liberation (France), Le Monde (France) and Le Figaro (France) etc. Apart from heads of state of innumerable Western and Muslim nations, other organisations\/ individuals who deplored the Charlie Hebdo attack also included the Al-Azhar University of Cairo (a 1000-year old seat of religious learning respected by Muslims all over the world), Muslim Council of Britain, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, the Council on American- Islamic Relations (CAIR), the French Muslim Council, Union of Islamic Organizations of France, Arab League [a regional organization representing 22 Arab countries, all ofwhich have a majority Muslim population], the Muslim Advisory Council to the New York Police Department, the Islamic Cooperation Organization, the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the Canadian Council of Imams and Muslim Canadian Congress etc.<\/p>\n