blaspheme. God is only sacred to those who believe in God. To insult God, you have to believe that God exists. The strategy of the multiculturalists disguised as anti-racists is to muddle blasphemy and Islamophobia, Islamophobia and racism. Still, the word "Islamophobia" would not have enjoyed its glittering success without the complicity – often the stupid complicity – of the mainstream media. Why have they grabbed hold of it so quickly? From laziness, from love of the new and for commercial gain. They have no anti-racist motives in popularising the word "Islamophobia". On the contrary.
To put it simply, any shock-horror story with the word "Islam" in its headline is a good seller. And ever since 9/11, the media have loved to shove on the stage that fascinating and terrifying character, the Islamist terrorist. Why? Because fear sells. The fear of Islam sells. And the Islam which scares people is the only Islam which the mass public sees.
Often, what the mass media present as news about Islam is just a caricature. But then, there are few protests from the organisations dedicated to hunting down Islamophobia. On the other hand, if radical Islam is actually caricatured – and openly caricatured – the Islamophobe-hunters shriek with anger. To get your name into the media, it is less risky to attack a little player like Charlie Hebdo than to criticise the big TV channels or news magazines.
Charlie Hebdo published caricatures of Mohamed long before the scandal of the Danish cartoons (in 2006) and, ever since then, its illustrators have been described as caricaturists. But please note that the illustrators of Charlie Hebdo had previously been described – and described themselves – as "journalistic illustrators". Caricature is one way of commenting on the news but there are other ways of illustrating events. There is nothing shameful about caricature but the obsession with this word show how the mass public was led to view the work of Charlie Hebdo.
As I said, Charlie Hebdo drew the Muslim prophet long before the scandal of the Danish cartoons. No organisation or journalist expressed their horror. A few individuals sent complaining letters.
That's all. No demonstration, no death threats, no terrorist attacks. It was only after the denunciation and exploitation of the Danish cartoons by a group of Muslim extremists that caricaturing the Prophet began to detonate hysterical crises in the media and among Muslims (though the media came first).
So when Charlie Hebdo re-stated the right of a cartoonist to comment on religious terrorism by republishing the Danish cartoons, the media spotlight turned on to our satirical magazine. Charlie Hebdo was declared also to be a potential target of the religious loonies. The media decided that republishing the cartoons would provoke Muslim fury – and therefore provoked the fury of a few Muslim groups. But it was fake anger in some cases. When the microphone was shoved in their faces, the spokesmen had to react. They had to show the more excitable members of their flock that they were true defenders of the faith.
The drawing that showed Mohamed with a turban in the shape of a bomb became the best known. Not everybody interpreted it in the same way, but everyone could read it because there was no caption. Its critics decided that it was an insult to all Muslims: to put a bomb on the Prophet's head was to say that all believers were terrorists. But there was another interpretation that did not interest the mass media. (It was not scandalous and it did not sell newspapers.) To show Mohamed wearing a bomb on his head could be an attack on terrorists for exploiting religion. In this scenario, the drawing said: "Look at what the terrorists are doing to Islam; look how terrorists who claim to be followers of Mohamed see the prophet."
What's more, just because people say Islam is the second most practised religion in France, that doesn't mean all immigrants from Muslim countries are Muslims: remember that in 2010, a study by the INED (Institut national d'études démographiques) showed 2.1 million people in France considered themselves to be practising Muslims, but these figures are never cited by the multiculturalists who continue to speak, according to their mood, about six, eight, 10 or even 13 million Muslims in France! Religion is not transmitted genetically as the multi-culturalists – and the far right – would have us believe.