[AlAhram] French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo
... A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...
, the target of a jihadist attack in 2015, said Friday that its latest edition reprinting controversial caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed had sold out in just one day.
Wednesday's issue featured a dozen cartoons mocking the prophet of Islam, including images that sparked huge protests when first published, to mark the start of the trial this week of alleged accomplices to the massacre.
Charlie Hebdo distributed three times its normal print run on Wednesday, but eager readers pounced on the paper and many intending to grab their copy later in the day were left frustrated.
A new batch of 200,000 copies is currently being printed and will hit French newstands from Saturday.
"It shows that we are supported, that freedom of expression, secularism and the right to blasphemy
...the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred objects, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable. Some religions consider it to be a crime. In Pakistain you can commit blasphemy by looking cross-eyed at a Koran...
are not obsolete values, and that they are supported by the French public who chose to buy the issue," a Charlie cartoonist who goes by the pen name "Juin" told AFP.
Twelve people, including some of La Belle France's most celebrated cartoonists, were killed on January 7, 2015, when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi went on a gun rampage at the paper's offices in Gay Paree.
"We will never lie down. We will never give up," director Laurent "Riss" Sourisseau wrote in an accompanying editorial to Wednesday's issue, which was headlined: "All of this, just for that."
The decision to reprint the cartoons sparked angry condemnations from Pakistain, Iran
 ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
as well as Egypt's highest Moslem authority al-Azhar.
On Friday, thousands rallied in anti-La Belle France demonstrations across Pakistain, with protestors calling for boycotts and the French ambassador's expulsion.
But Charlie Hebdo defended its decision in the editorial, arguing that republishing the cartoons was "essential."
"We worked on the principle that some people don't know the cartoons, some weren't even born when they were published by Charlie in 2006, and they need to understand why the attacks happened," Juin said.
"The right to blasphemy and freedom of speech exist if we use it. For us, it was justifiable to reprint the cartoons because it shows that these rights still exist and allows us to defend them," he added.
Macron decries 'Islamic separatism,' defends blasphemy
[AlAhram] Macron defended satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo
, which published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that helped inspire two French-born Islamic murderous Moslems to mount a deadly January 2015 attack on the paper's newsroom.
French President Emmanuel Macron criticized Friday what he called "Islamic separatism" in his country and those who seek French citizenship without accepting La Belle France's "right to commit blasphemy
...the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred objects, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable. Some religions consider it to be a crime. In Pakistain you can commit blasphemy by looking cross-eyed at a Koran...
Macron defended satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that helped inspire two French-born Islamic murderous Moslems to mount a deadly January 2015 attack on the paper's newsroom.
The weekly republished the images this week as the trial began of 14 people over the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket.
Speaking at a ceremony Friday celebrating La Belle France's democratic history and naturalizing new citizens, the French president said, "You don't choose one part of La Belle France. You choose La Belle France....The Republic will never allow any separatist adventure."
Freedom in La Belle France, Macron said, includes "the freedom to believe or not to believe. But this is inseparable from the freedom of expression up to the right to blasphemy.''
Noting the trial that opened Wednesday, he said, "To be French is to defend the right to make people laugh, to criticize, to mock, to caricature.''
The 2015 attacks killed 17 people and marked the beginning of a wave of violence by the Islamic State
 ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group in Europe.
Macron's centrist government has promised a law in the coming months against "Islamic separatism" but it is not clear yet exactly what it would police. Some critics fear it could unfairly stigmatize La Belle France's largely moderate Moslem population, the largest in western Europe. 
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