Charlie Hebdo editor's final book: 'Letter to the Islamophobia Frauds Who Play to Racists'

[Surya Gayatri]

It was the last testament of Charb, as the satirist Stéphane Charbonnier was known: two days before he was murdered, the editor of 'Charlie Hebdo' completed a short book. Published in France last week, it is now, for the first time, excerpted at length in translation.


On 5 January, Stéphane Charbonnier, 47, editor of Charlie Hebdo, finished writing a short book: Lettre aux escrocs de l'islamophobie qui font le jeu des racistes (Letter to the Islamophobia Frauds Who Play into the Hands of Racists).

Two days later he was dead, writes John Lichfield, murdered by the Kouachi brothers when they attacked the offices of the satirical magazine in eastern Paris. The Kouachis asked for him by name when they burst into his offices to "avenge the Prophet". They shot him before turning their automatic weapons on other members of the magazine staff, a police bodyguard and visitors.

A total of 12 people were killed in an attack which shocked the Western world. Five other people were killed in the next three days by Amédy Coulibaly, an associate of Chérif and Said Kouachi. All three gunmen were killed in police sieges on Friday 10 January.

Stéphane Charbonnier was a cartoonist and writer. He was a supporter of the French Communist Party. And while, under his editorship, Charlie Hebdo aggressively poked fun at Catholicism and Judaism as well as radical Islam, his book – published in France last week – is a passionate rejection of the allegations that, under his editorship, Charlie Hebdo was "racist" or "Islamophobic".

In France, racist language was set free by Sarkozy and his debate on national identity. When the most senior authority in the state speaks to the cretins and swine and says, "Let it all hang out, guys", what do you think the cretins and swine do? They start saying in public what previously they had only roared at the end of drunken family meals.

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Charb answers his detractors from the grave. THIS WAS NO RACIST!

Great read here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/charlie-hebdo-editors-final-book-letter-to-the-islamophobia-frauds-who-play-into-the-hands-of-racists-10193565.html