Charlie Hebdo allegedly remains a symbol of “the everyday humiliation of Muslims in France”.

SourcE: huffingtonpost.com

A man leaves after buying Charlie Hebdo newspapers as people queue at a newsstand in Paris, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015. | ASSOCIATED PRESS

In the wake of the terrorist attack that shook France last week, the surviving editors of Charlie Hebdo are back with a new edition that is as defiant as ever.

The latest edition of the satirical newspaper features a caricature of the prophet Muhammad on the front cover. This time, the cover shows the prophet weeping and holding a “Je Suis Charlie” sign with the caption, “All is forgiven.”

Charlie Hebdo put out 3 million copies of the print paper in multiple languages — more than 50 times its typical circulation, AP reports. Parisiens waited in line to snap up the copies and the paper plans to print more in the future.

The cartoonist who drew the image, Luz, explained his work in an interview translated by Slate:

With this cover, we wanted to show that at any given moment, we have the right to do anything, to redo anything, and to use our characters the way we want to. Mohammed has become a character, in spite of himself, a character in the news, because there are people who speak on his behalf. This is a cover aimed at intelligent people, who are much more numerous than you think, whether they’re atheists, Catholics, Muslims…

The Quran doesn’t explicitly forbid images of the prophet and some Muslim majority countries have long traditions of creating beautiful, devotional images of the prophet. However, prohibition of these images is mentioned in the Hadith, a secondary text. The majority of Muslims today have come to the consensus that the images of the prophet aren’t acceptable. The fear is that people will come to… read more at huffingtonpost.com