Charlie Hebdo and the new racist cartoon

I will be very surprised if anybody will be amused by the recent cartoon published by Charlie Hebdo

Whenever anybody mentioned satirical journals, the periodicals that immediately sprang to mind were the two British publications, Punch (1841-1992) which had delightful cartoons, Private Eye (started in 1961) which was a thorn in the side of the British establishment and lampooned public figures it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency, corruption, pomposity or self-importance; and of course, the funniest of the lot, Mad Magazine which was American, for its hilarious comments on all aspects of life and popular culture.

But I don’t think any of them have ever stooped as low as Charlie Hebdo, the outrageous French satirical journal that isn’t satirical at all, but inflammatory and racist. This vile publication regularly attacks different religions and of late has been targeting Islam and immigrants. I’ve always believed the basic purpose behind satire is to make some kind of moral or political statement in an entertaining way. However, I would be very surprised if anybody, unless he is totally demented or a sadist, would be amused by the recent cartoon published by Charlie Hebdo, which shows, in addition to the two men, who are made to look like monkeys, tongues hanging out and arms outstretched, chasing two women with large derrieres, includes another crude sketch 0f Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian toddler who was washed up face down on a beach.

And the caption in French reads, “What would Aylan have become if he’d grown up? An ass groper in Germany?” Sick, isn’t it? Who can ever forget that photograph of the drowned boy which was flashed across the globe and which still leaves a permanent catch in the throat?



It is quite obvious that the implication here is that immigrants, especially those who come from Syria and Iraq, are sex-starved ruffians who go around molesting and raping European women. There has been a lot of criticism from people of various religions over the offensive cartoon. Some critics pointed out that the sex offenders were from North Africa and not the Middle East. But then, how do you open a closed mind that takes shelter in a country that believes that freedom of speech and expression allows you to say and write just what you want? A relative of the boy, who was rescued from drowning and who lives in Canada, described the caption and drawing as “disgusting”. As indeed it was. About the only member of royalty that I know of who made a public comment was Queen Rania of Jordan, who, incidentally, along with her husband, King Abdullah II, had taken part in the huge peace march in Paris in January 2015, which followed the attack on the magazine’s offices by gunmen who killed 16 staff members.

This is not the Paris that I once knew as a student, the Paris of Sartre and Camus, a Paris of lazy boat rides under the bridges of the Seine, where wayfarers nibbled at ham sandwiches and drank cheap red wine and listened to the songs of Lucienne Boyer and Edith Piaf. It was the Paris of Sidney Bechet, Henry Miller and the Olympia Press that published James Joyce’s Ulysses. It was a city that once warmly embraced a black American jazz singer from St Louis, Missouri, called Josephine Baker, who faced discrimination in her own country, and who after her performance at the Folies Bergere became the toast of Paris overnight. It is now the Paris of right-wing presidents, one of whom chucked out 30,000 members of the Roma tribe, while another went one better and sent 40,000 gypsies back to Bulgaria and Romania. Soon it will be the turn of the Muslims.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2016.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.