Open Letter Quotes

“Blasphemy is just the fanatic's name for criticism. Charb writes wisely:

'A believer can blaspheme only to the extent that the idea of blasphemy holds any meaning to him. A non-believer, no matter how hard he tries, 'cannot' blaspheme. God is sacred only to those who believe in him. If you wish to insult or offend God, you have to be sure that he exists. The strategy used by minority group activists masquerading as anti-racists is to pass off blasphemy as Islamophobia and Islamophobia as racism.'

The crucial distinction we must defend is between acts of imagination and acts of violence....Faith is not the enemy. Fanaticism is the enemy. It always is. But only a fool would deny that faith has been the seedbed of fanaticism in mankind's long and sorry struggle for the light. As much as at times we need to seek "solidarity" among unlike groups, we also need to "desolidarize," to "unsolidarize"—to put the people we know before the abstract categories we imagine. Come to think of it, making people, with all their flaws, fully visible while leaving generalized types alone is exactly what the caricaturist has always done for us. It's his special form of bravery.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“If “atheophobia” denotes the violent criticism of atheism, I invite my Bible-thumping friends to sign up without fear for their safety. Don’t reserve your insults to Reason for the privacy of those tombs of thought you call temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques! Publish newspapers and blogs, stage plays and puppet shows, to mock what you see as the absurdity of life without God, of life without your Supreme Blankie!”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“God is sacred only to those who believe in him. If you wish to insult or offend God, you have to be sure that he exists.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“In caving to an extremist minority that represents no one but itself, you acknowledge its power.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“Blasphemy is just the fanatic’s name for criticism.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“criticizing an ideology, including a religious ideology, however vociferously, is different from inducing hatred of a people or persons.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“If we suggest that it is okay to make fun of everything except certain aspects of Islam because Muslims are much more sensitive than the rest of the population, isn’t that discrimination? Shouldn’t we treat the second largest religion in France exactly as we treat the first? It’s time to put an end to the revolting paternalism of the white, middle-class, “leftist” intellectual trying to coexist with these “poor, subliterate wretches.” “'I’m educated; obviously I get that 'Charlie Hebdo' is a humor newspaper because, first, I’m very intelligent, and second, it’s my culture. But you—well, you haven’t quite mastered nuanced thinking yet, so I’ll express my solidarity by fulminating against Islamaphobic cartoons and pretending not to understand them. I will lower myself to your level to show you that I like you. And if I need to convert to Islam to get even closer to you, I’ll do it!” These pathetic demagogues just have a ravenous need for recognition and a formidable domination fantasy to fulfill.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“According to the dictionary, “Islam” means “submission” in Arabic. A Muslim is someone who is submissive to God. Why does he submit? Because his God is the best, the brawniest, the nattiest, but most of all because, if he says anything to the contrary, he will burn in hell until well after the end of the world. The believer is thus encouraged not to screw around with God under penalty of something worse than death for all eternity.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“There’s nothing surprising about a Catholic being Islamophobic or a Muslim being Cathophobic—that is precisely what their religious shepherds ask them to be. Disapproval of the other guy’s religion is the daily bread of clerics of all creeds, and nobody seems to be bothered by it. Priests, imams, and rabbis have the right to be Islamophobic, Judeophobic, or Cathophobic without reprimand.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“Being afraid of Islam is no doubt moronic, absurd, and plenty of other things as well, but it’s not a crime.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“Charlie Hebdo has been sued a good dozen times by the General Alliance against Racism and for Respect of French and Christian Identity (AGRIF), an organization of Catholic fundamentalists who long maintained close ties with the National Front.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“If tomorrow the Muslims of France were to convert to Catholicism or renounce all religion, it wouldn’t make the least bit of difference to the racists—they would continue to hold these foreigners or French citizens of foreign descent responsible for every affliction.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“The people who start howling the minute Charlie Hebdo publishes a drawing of a self-styled Islamic terrorist toe a particular line. They suggest that by caricaturing an Islamic terrorist, the cartoonist is really symbolizing all Muslims. So long as the terrorist is identifiable as a Muslim, the cartoonist must be mocking all Islam. If you draw a jihadist doing what jihadists do, you are dragging the billions of faithful through the mud. If you draw Muhammad denouncing the extremists among his followers, you're insulting all Muslims. The terrorist must be stripped of any element that could identify him as a Muslim, while it is quite simply forbidden to represent Muhammad at all. If portraying an Islamist terrorist as grotesque is Islamophobic, that's the same as saying that all Muslims are terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists.”
― Charb, Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression

“Il serait temps d'en finir avec ce paternalisme dégueulasse de l'intellectuel blanc «de gauche» qui cherche à exister auprès de «pauvres malheureux sous-éduqués». Moi, qui suis éduqué, évidemment, je comprends que Charlie Hebdo fait de l'humour, puisque, d'une part, je suis très intelligent et, d'autre part, c'est ma culture. Mais, par respect pour vous, qui n'avez pas encore découvert le second degré, je fustigerai solidairement ces dessins islamophobes que je ferai semblant de ne pas comprendre. Je me mettrai à votre niveau pour vous montrer que je vous aime… Et s'il faut que je me convertisse à l'Islam pour être encore plus proche de vous, je le ferai! Ces démagogues ridicules ont juste un énorme besoin de reconnaissance et un formidable fantasme de domination à assouvir.”
― Charb, Lettre aux escrocs de l'islamophobie qui font le jeu des racistes

“Ceux qui accusent les dessinateurs de Charlie Hebdo d'islamophobie chaque fois qu'un personnage porte une barbe ne sont pas seulement malhonnête ou de mauvaise foi gratuitement, ils montrent leur soutien à l'islam dit radical. Lorsqu'on dessine un vieux qui commet un acte pédophile, on ne jette pas l'opprobre sur tous les vieux, on ne laisse pas entendre que tous les vieux sont pédophiles (ni l'inverse).”
― Charb, Lettre aux escrocs de l'islamophobie qui font le jeu des racistes

“Le grand projet des pourfendeurs de l’islamophobie, c’est de placer sur le même plan l’antisémitisme et la critique à l’encontre de personnes se réclamant de l’islam. Se moquer d’un terroriste islamiste serait la même chose qu’affirmer que les Juifs seraient des êtres inférieurs ou nuisibles. […] Il n’y a pas de correspondance entre le racisme ou l’antisémitisme et la critique d’extrémistes religieux. Mais rien n’y fait, les inventeurs de l’islamophobie veulent absolument que l’islamophobie soit considérée comme un racisme antimusulmans équivalent à l’antisémitisme, ce racisme antijuifs.”
― Charb, Lettre aux escrocs de l'islamophobie qui font le jeu des racistes