Leading caricaturists across the Middle East question the meaning of free speech while attacking Israel and Arab leaders
Arab cartoonists are hitting back over the Charlie Hebdo affair with satirical works of their own questioning the meaning of free speech in the west while attacking Israel and the perceived double standards that are applied to Muslims.
Leading caricaturists across the Middle East condemned last week’s killings in Paris but the magazine’s publication of another image of the Prophet Muhammad has been criticised in several countries which denounced the murders. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Turkey have all now banned the new issue of the magazine.
In one cartoon on a popular Arabic-language news website a European-looking man has a viper emerging from his mouth under the heading: “anti-Muslim”. In the adjacent image, entitled “anti-semitism”, the same man’s mouth is closed by a padlock bearing a Star of David.
Attacks on Israel often feature prominently in Arab cartoons and this episode has prompted a flurry of them. Emad Hajjaj, a popular Jordanian cartoonist, drew an elderly, haggard Palestinian woman by her sagging UN tent saying — in an untranslatable pun on the words “Charlie” and the colloquial Arabic “I have been” – that she had lived as a refugee for the 67 years since the creation of Israel in 1948.
“Shame on you” declares an Egyptian peasant in Hisham al-Shamaly’s cartoon about last weekend’s Paris solidarity rally, with Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the front row of marching world leaders. Another caricaturist portrayed Netanyahu heading for the event with angling gear, saying he was planning an outing to “fish in muddy waters”.
A Turkish cartoonist showed Netanyahu spreading out a red carpet to welcome French Jews to emigrate to an embattled, fortress-like Israel.
Arab leaders are also in the frame over their responses. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been shown laying a wreath on the graves of the Charlie Hebdo victims but ignoring the unknown “martyrs” of last summer’s Gaza war.
Al-Jazeera Arabic on Thursday ran a cartoon by Ahmed Rahma (pictured above) showing an Arab ruler heading for the French capital carrying an “I am Charlie” placard while behind him journalists and photographers languish in a cage, a corpse at their feet.
The king of Jordan and the foreign ministers of Egypt, Algeria and Turkey all participated in the Paris march, as did a minister from Saudi Arabia. Morocco said it had declined to take part.
But the new Charlie Hebdo depiction of the Prophet Muhammad – shedding a tear and saying “all is forgiven” – has prompted fresh criticism. Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta, which is responsible for issuing religious edicts, denounced it as “an act unjustifiably provocative to the feelings of a billion and a half Muslims worldwide who love and respect the prophet”. Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world’s leading centre of Islamic learning, called on Muslims to “ignore the nasty frivolity” of the latest edition. In the Gulf state of Qatar Al-Arab’s latest cartoon was captioned: “Journalism is not a crime and I am not Charlie.”
In Algeria, al-Shorouk printed a cartoon of a man carrying an “I am Charlie” placard next to a tank that has run over signs for Palestine, Mali, Gaza, Iraq and Syria. It was captioned: “We are all Muhammad.”
In Jordan, the minister of Muslim endowments and Islamic affairs said he had been misquoted in a report claiming that he had called on all Arab and Muslim countries to boycott French products, explaining that there were many peaceful ways to denounce the cartoons.
