Angles on 'Charlie Hebdo' that you may not have encountered

Guessing Christian readers wouldn't be too surprised to here that they've targetted Christians too but there are other interesting angles:

  1. 'Piss Christ' is back in the news:

    The Associated Press is among the numerous news outlets that have been self-censoring images of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that may have provoked Wednesday's deadly Paris attack. In a statement, the news organization said that such censorship is standard policy ... The conservative Washington Examiner publication then pointed out that the AP nonetheless continued to carry an image of Andres Serrano's 1987 "Piss Christ" photograph ... Some time after the Examiner's post, the AP appears to have taken the "Piss Christ" image off its website.

  2. Dan Savage on this subject (while calling AP's explanation for dropping the Piss Christ photos bogus):
    Here's what the AP should've said to Christian conservatives screaming about Piss Christ and double standards: "Yeah, we blurred out those Charlie Hebdo cartoons because we're afraid of them. We didn't do the same to Piss Christ because we're not afraid of you." The fact that cartoonists, publishers, editors, photographers, artists, comedians, and satirists aren't afraid of "you"—the fact that they're not afraid to mock Christ, Christians, Christianity—is something that Christians, conservative and otherwise, should be proud of.
  3. Also on the subject of double standards:

    The last lawsuit to be filed against Charlie Hebdo in 2014 was declared ineligible only because Islam doesn’t qualify for the special legal regime that criminalizes blasphemy against Christianity and Judaism in the Alsace region. And the British Muslims in 1989 wanted authorities to invoke British blaspehemy laws, not the shar’ia, to sanction Salman Rushdie’s novel – but there too Islam did not qualify for protection.

  4. Charlie Hebdo ran a campaign to try to get the National Front party banned which is seems a bit odd for a magazine supposedly devoted to absolutely no limits on free speech.
  5. #JeSuisAhmed: The Muslim Victim in the Paris Massacre is another interesting angle, but again one you're more likely already familiar with. The Atlantic picked a good example:
    I am not Charlie, I am Ahmed the dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so. #JesuisAhmed"

(HT: The Dish for pointing out at least a couple of these originally).