The Late Editor of ‘Charlie Hebdo’ Has Delivered a Posthumous Attack On Islamophobia

One week after France's human rights commission released a report highlighting an upsurge in racist incidents, Charlie Hebdo's late editor Stéphane Charbonnier — aka Charb — has published a provocative treatise on Islamophobia and intolerance in today's France.

In the 88-page essay — which was completed two days before the January 7 shooting in which Charb and 11 others were murdered — the satirical weekly's former editor argues that the fight against Islamophobia has overshadowed the struggle against racism.

In his Open Letter to the Fraudsters of Islamophobia Who Play Into the Hands of Racists, which hit the shelves Thursday, Charb posits that the concept of Islamophobia is misleading, and that it eclipses the real issue in France — racism.

Hopping from serious analysis to absurdist reasoningvia cartoonish examples of intolerance, the book also takes aim at Charlie's detractors, who have in the past accused the magazine of racism and Islamophobia.

Racism, not Islamophobia
In the book, Charb blames the media, politicians, and what he describes as "communitarian activists" for conflating racism and Islamophobia to serve their own political or financial interests.

In doing so, he argues, Muslims are "infantilized" and discriminated against. Politicians, he believes, "seeing Muslims where they should see citizens," use pro-Islam rhetoric to gain votes rather than out of a spirit of genuine concern for inequality.

Under the current, fabricated obsession with Islamophobia, he writes, victims of racism are undermined, as they are reduced to being victims of religious — rather than racial — hatred.

To strengthen his argument, Charb peppers the book with fictional examples — such as the case of "Mouloud and Gérard," two Muslim men looking to rent an apartment today in France. Mouloud is North African, and Gérard is of European descent. Gérard, writes Charb, is more likely to get the apartment, because, "They're not going to refuse to rent to a Muslim, but they will refuse to rent to an Arab."

Charb wonders why activists persist in using the word Islamophobia — which means "fear of Islam" — to denounce anti-Muslim hatred, rather than Muslimophobia, and challenges the concept of defending a religion over people.

Rant on religion
In true Charb form — he was often described as an "equal opportunist" when it comes to lambasting religion — the essay also includes a rant on all religions.

Sacred texts — or, as Charb describes them, "sleep-inducing novels" — are "only sacred for those who believe in them." On the subject of free speech, Charb ponders what allowances would be made if people considered cookbooks or Stephen King novels as sacred texts.

He also defends Charlie Hebdo's controversial 2011 reprinting of cartoons of the prophet, and subsequent cartoon depictions of religious extremism, which caused some to label the weekly Islamophobic.

But even before this posthumous essay, Charb had already defended his magazine against charges of racism and Islamophobia — including some from past Charlie collaborators.

In an open letter to the magazine's editorial team, published in 2013, Olivier Cyran, who worked at the weekly from 1992 to 2001, accused the publication of racism. In the letter, Cyran denounced the current editors' "disturbing fixation" with the "Arabic-Muslim world," with "beards, veiled women, and their imaginary accomplices."

Cyran was responding to an earlier article by Charb in French daily Le Monde, where the then editor argued that the magazine applied the same brand of mockery to all religions, sparing none.

In his posthumous book, Charb leaps once more to the defense of the magazine, arguing that, "When you draw a cartoon of an old man committing an act of pedophilia, we're not casting aspersions about all old men."

Blasphemy, he argues, should not be an offense — including what he refers to as "anti-republican blasphemy," crystallized by a 2010 law making it "a crime to desecrate the French national flag in a public place or in a public setting."

This week, the French mediasphere was abuzz with reactions to the book's publication, including French daily L'Obs, which published highlights from the book and called the work Charb's "testament." Writing in Rue 89, Daniel Schneidermann gave a less glowing review, and urged readers not to mistake the book for "an IKEA instruction manual," in reference to a passage from the text in which Charb urges believers not to "read the Koran or the Bible like one reads an IKEA instruction manual." Others, like Slate, have written positively about the book, which they described as "yet another public reckoning whose purpose it to disarm hot-heads."

Follow Matthieu Jublin @MatthieuJublin