French government President François Hollande addressed media outlets at the scene of the shooting and called it "undoubtedly a terrorist attack", adding that "several [other] terrorist attacks were thwarted in recent weeks". He later described the shooting as a "terrorist attack of the most extreme barbarity", and declared a
day of national mourning on 8 January. At a rally in the
Place de la République in the wake of the shooting,
mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo said, "What we saw today was an attack on the values of our republic; Paris is a peaceful place. These cartoonists, writers and artists used their pens with a lot of humour to address sometimes awkward subjects and as such performed an essential function." She proposed that
Charlie Hebdo "be adopted as a citizen of honour" by Paris.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that his country was at war with terrorism, but not at war with Islam or Muslims.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said, "The terrorists' religion is not Islam, which they are betraying. It's barbarity."
Other countries The attack received immediate condemnation from dozens of governments worldwide. International leaders including
Barack Obama,
Vladimir Putin,
Stephen Harper,
Narendra Modi,
Benjamin Netanyahu,
Angela Merkel,
Matteo Renzi,
David Cameron,
Mark Rutte and
Tony Abbott offered statements of condolence and outrage.
Media Some English-language media outlets republished the cartoons on their websites in the hours following the shootings. Prominent examples included
Bloomberg News,
The Huffington Post,
The Daily Beast,
Gawker,
Vox, and
The Washington Free Beacon. Other news organisations covered the shootings without showing the drawings, such as
The New York Times,
New York Daily News,
CNN, and
Slate. The
BBC, which previously had guidelines against all depictions of Muhammad, showed a depiction of him on a
Charlie Hebdo cover and announced that they were reviewing these guidelines. Other media publications such as Germany's
Berliner Kurier and Poland's
Gazeta Wyborcza reprinted cartoons from
Charlie Hebdo the day after the attack; the former had a cover of Muhammad reading
Charlie Hebdo whilst bathing in blood. At least three Danish newspapers featured
Charlie Hebdo cartoons, and the tabloid
BT used one on its cover depicting Muhammad lamenting being loved by "idiots". In Russia,
LifeNews and
Komsomolskaya Pravda suggested that the US had carried out the attack. "We are Charlie Hebdo" appeared on the front page of
Novaya Gazeta. Russia's media supervision body,
Roskomnadzor, stated that publication of the cartoons could lead to criminal charges. Russian President
Vladimir Putin has sought to harness and direct Muslim anger over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons against the West. Putin is believed to have backed protests by Muslims in Russia against Charlie Hebdo and the West. In China, the state-run
Xinhua advocated limiting freedom of speech, while another state-run newspaper,
Global Times, said the attack was "payback" for what it characterised as Western colonialism. Media organisations carried out protests against the shootings.
Libération,
Le Monde,
Le Figaro, and other French media outlets used black banners carrying the slogan "
Je suis Charlie" across the tops of their websites. The front page of
Libérations printed version was a different black banner that stated,
"" ("We are all Charlie"), while
Paris Normandie renamed itself
Charlie Normandie for the day. The French and UK versions of
Google displayed a
black ribbon of mourning on the day of the attack.
Ian Hislop, editor of the British satirical magazine
Private Eye, stated, "I am appalled and shocked by this horrific attack – a murderous attack on free speech in the heart of Europe. ... Very little seems funny today." The editor of
Titanic, a German satirical magazine, declared, "[W]e are scared when we hear about such violence. However, as a satirist, we are beholden to the principle that every human being has the right to be parodied. This should not stop just because of some idiots who go around shooting". Many cartoonists from around the world responded to the attack on
Charlie Hebdo by posting cartoons relating to the shooting. Among them was
Albert Uderzo, who came out of retirement at age 87 to depict his character
Astérix supporting
Charlie Hebdo. In Australia, what was considered the iconic national cartoonist's reaction was a cartoon by
David Pope in the
Canberra Times, depicting a masked, black-clad figure with a smoking rifle standing poised over a slumped figure of a cartoonist in a pool of blood, with a speech balloon showing the gunman saying, "He drew first." In India,
Mint ran the photographs of copies of Charlie Hebdo on their cover, but later apologised after receiving complaints from the readers.
The Hindu also issued an apology after it printed a photograph of some people holding copies of Charlie Hebdo. The editor of the Urdu newspaper
Avadhnama,
Shireen Dalvi, which printed the cartoons faced several police complaints. She was arrested and released on bail. She began to wear the burqa for the first time in her life and went into hiding. Egyptian daily
Al-Masry Al-Youm featured drawings by young cartoonists signed with "Je suis Charlie" in solidarity with the victims.
Al-Masry al-Youm also displayed on their website a slide show of some
Charlie Hebdo cartoons, including controversial ones. This was seen by analyst Jonathan Guyer as a "surprising" and maybe "unprecedented" move, due to the pressure Arab artists can be subject to when depicting religious figures. In Los Angeles, the
Jewish Journal weekly changed its masthead that week to
Jewish Hebdo and published the offending Muhammad cartoons.
The Guardian reported that many Muslims and Muslim organisations criticised the attack while some Muslims support it and other Muslims stated they would only condemn it if France condemned the killings of Muslims worldwide". Zvi Bar'el argued in
Haaretz that believing the attackers represented Muslims was like believing that
Ratko Mladić represented Christians.
Al Jazeera English editor and executive producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr attacked
Charlie Hebdo as the work of
solipsists, and sent out a staff-wide e-mail where he argued: "Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile." The e-mail elicited different responses from within the organisation. The
Shia Islamic journal
Ya lasarat Al-Hussein, founded by
Ansar-e Hezbollah, praised the shooting, saying, "[the cartoonists] met their legitimate justice, and congratulations to all Muslims" and "according to
fiqh of Islam, punishment of
insulting of Muhammad is death penalty".
Activist organisations Reporters Without Borders criticised the presence of leaders from Egypt, Russia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, saying, "On what grounds are representatives of regimes that are predators of press freedom coming to Paris to pay tribute to
Charlie Hebdo, a publication that has always defended the most radical concept of freedom of expression?"
Hacktivist group
Anonymous released a statement in which they offered condolences to the families of the victims and denounced the attack as an "inhuman assault" on freedom of expression. They addressed the terrorists: "[a] message for al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists – we are declaring war against you, the terrorists." As such, Anonymous plans to target jihadist websites and social media accounts linked to supporting
Islamic terrorism with the aim of disrupting them and shutting them down.
Muslim reactions Condemning the attack Lebanon,
Iran,
Saudi Arabia,
Jordan,
Bahrain,
Morocco,
Algeria, and
Qatar all denounced the incident, as did Egypt's
Al-Azhar University, the leading Sunni institution of the
Muslim world. The
Union of Islamic Organisations of France released a statement condemning the attack, and Imam
Hassen Chalghoumi stated that those behind the attack "have sold their soul to hell". The
Council on American–Islamic Relations condemned the attacks and defended the right to
freedom of speech, "even speech that mocks faiths and religious figures". The vice president of the US
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community condemned the attack, saying, "The culprits behind this atrocity have violated every Islamic tenet of compassion, justice, and peace." The
National Council of Canadian Muslims also condemned the attacks. The
League of Arab States released a collective condemnation of the attack.
Al-Azhar University released a statement denouncing the attack, stating that violence was never appropriate regardless of "offence committed against sacred Muslim sentiments". The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation condemned the attack, saying that it went against Islam's principles and values. Both the
Palestine Liberation Organization and the
Hamas government of the
Gaza Strip stated that "differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder". The leader of
Hezbollah,
Hassan Nasrallah declared that "
takfiri terrorist groups" had insulted Islam more than "even those who have attacked the Prophet". Malek Merabet, the brother of Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim police officer killed in the shooting, condemned the terrorists who killed his brother: "My brother was Muslim and he was killed by two terrorists, by two false Muslims". Just hours after the shootings, the
mayor of Rotterdam,
Ahmed Aboutaleb, a Muslim born in Morocco, condemned Islamist extremists living in the West who "turn against freedom" and told them to "fuck off".
Supporting the attack Saudi-Australian Islamic preacher
Junaid Thorne said: "If you want to enjoy 'freedom of speech' with no limits, expect others to exercise 'freedom of action'."
Anjem Choudary, a radical British Islamist, wrote an editorial in
USA Today in which he professes justification from the words of Muhammad that those who insult the prophets of Islam should face death, and that Muhammad should be protected to prevent further violence.
Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia said that "as a result, it is assumed necessary in all cases to ensure that the pressure does not exceed the red lines, which will then ultimately lead to irreversible problems".
Bahujan Samaj Party leader
Yaqub Qureishi, a Muslim MLA and former minister from
Uttar Pradesh in India, offered a reward of 510 million (US$8 million) to the perpetrators of the
Charlie Hebdo shootings. On 14 January, about 1,500 Filipino Muslims held a rally in Muslim-majority
Marawi in support of the attacks. The massacre was praised by various militant and
terrorist groups, including
al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula,
Al-Shabaab,
Boko Haram, and
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Two Islamist newspapers in Turkey ran headlines that were criticised on social media as justifying the attack. The
Yeni Akit ran an article entitled "Attack on the magazine that provoked Muslims", and
Türkiye ran an article entitled "Attack on the magazine that insulted our Prophet". Reuters reported a rally in support of the shootings in southern Afghanistan, where the demonstrators called the gunmen "heroes" who meted out punishment for the disrespectful cartoons. The demonstrators also protested Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's swift condemnation of the shootings. Around 40 to 60 people gathered in
Peshawar, Pakistan, to praise the killers, with a local cleric holding a funeral for the killers, lionising them as "heroes of Islam."
Public figures The
Head of the Chechen Republic,
Ramzan Kadyrov, said "we will not allow anyone to insult the prophet, even if it costs us our lives."
Salman Rushdie, who is on the al-Qaeda hit list and
received death threats over his novel
The Satanic Verses, said, "I stand with
Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity ... religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today." Swedish artist
Lars Vilks, also on the al-Qaeda hit list and that the attack "expose[s] the world we live in today". American journalist
David Brooks wrote an article titled "I Am Not Charlie Hebdo" in
The New York Times, arguing that the magazine's humour was childish, but necessary as a voice of satire. He also criticised many of those in America who were ostensibly voicing support for free speech, noting that were the cartoons to be published in an American university newspaper, the editors would be accused of "hate speech" and the university would "have cut financing and shut them down." He called on the attacks to be an impetus toward tearing down speech codes. American linguist and philosopher
Noam Chomsky views the popularisation of the
Je suis Charlie slogan by politicians and media in the West as hypocritical, comparing the situation to the
NATO bombing of the Radio Television of Serbia headquarters in 1999, when 16 employees were killed. "There were no demonstrations or cries of outrage, no chants of 'We are RTV'," he noted. Chomsky also mentioned other incidents where US military forces have caused higher civilian death tolls, without leading to intensive reactions such as those that followed the
2015 Paris attacks. German politician
Sahra Wagenknecht, the deputy leader of the party
Die Linke in the German Parliament, has compared the US drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen with the terrorist attacks in Paris. ″If a drone controlled by the West extinguishes an innocent Arab or Afghan family, which is just a despicable crime as the attacks in Paris, and it should fill us with the same sadness and the same horror". We should not operate a double standard. Through the drone attacks had been "murdered thousands of innocent people", in the concerned countries, this created helplessness, rage and hatred: "Thereby we prepare the ground for the terror, we officially want to fight." The politician stressed that this war is also waged from German ground. Regarding the Afghanistan war with German participation for years, she said: "Even the
Bundeswehr is responsible for the deaths of innocent people in Afghanistan." As the most important consequence of the terrorist attacks in Paris, Wagenknecht demanded the end of all military operations of the West in the Middle East. Cartoonist-journalist
Joe Sacco expressed grief for the victims in a comic strip, and wrote but ... tweaking the noses of Muslims ... has never struck me as anything other than a
vapid way to use the pen ... I affirm our right to "
take the piss" ... but we can try to think why the world is the way it is ... and [retaliating with violence against Muslims] is going to be far easier than sorting out how we fit in each other's world. Japanese film director
Hayao Miyazaki criticised the magazine's decision to publish the content cited as the trigger for the incident. He said, "I think it's a mistake to caricaturise the figures venerated by another culture. You shouldn't do it." He asserted, "Instead of doing something like that, you should first make caricatures of your own country's politicians."
Charlie Hebdo had already published numerous caricatures of European public officials in the years prior to the attack. Political scientist
Norman Finkelstein criticised the Western response to the shooting, comparing Charlie Hebdo to
Julius Streicher, saying "So two despairing and desperate young men act out their despair and desperation against this political pornography no different than
Der Stürmer, who in the midst of all of this death and destruction decide it's somehow noble to degrade, demean, humiliate and insult the people. I'm sorry, maybe it is very politically incorrect. I have no sympathy for [the staff of Charlie Hebdo]. Should they have been killed? Of course not. But of course, Streicher shouldn't have been hung. I don't hear that from many people."
Social media French Minister of the Interior
Bernard Cazeneuve declared that by the morning of 9 January 2015, a total of 3,721 messages "condoning the attacks" had already been documented through the French government
Pharos system. In an open letter titled "
To the Youth in Europe and North America",
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged young people in Europe and North America not to judge Islam by the attacks, but to seek their own understanding of the religion.
Holly Dagres of
Al-Monitor wrote that Khamenei's followers "actively spammed Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+ and even Tumblr with links" to the letter with the aim of garnering the attention of people in the West. On social media, the
hashtag "#JeSuisAhmed" trended, a tribute to the Muslim policeman Ahmed Merabet, along with the quote "I am not Charlie, I am Ahmed the dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so."
The Economist compared this to a quote commonly misattributed to
Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
Other Students at multiple schools in France rejected or disrupted the government-mandated minute of silence devoted to it, sometimes expressing support for the attack; this included a vocational school in Senlis, a fourth-grade student, a student at the l'Arc à Orange high school, a girl at a grade school in
Grenoble, and students at a
Seine-Saint-Denis primary school. The majority of students at Saint-Denis, however, condemned the attack. == See also ==