The projections, which included cartoons of Mohammed, came as part of a French national tribute to teacher Samuel Paty which is taking place on Wednesday evening. Paty, a history teacher in the greater Paris area, was murdered on Friday by a Muslim immigrant terrorist because he showed the cartoons to his pupils as part of a lesson on freedom of expression.
Charlie Hebdo cartoons, including one of Mohammed, projected onto Montpellier government building. pic.twitter.com/pnhU0EXTsc
— Chris Tomlinson (@TomlinsonCJ) October 21, 2020
The images were projected onto two town halls in the Occitanie region — Montpellier and Toulouse — for four hours on Wednesday evening. Regional mayor Carole Delga was quoted by FranceBleu as saying of the decision to show the art: “there must be no weakness in the face of the enemies of democracy, facing those who transform religion into a weapon of war… those who intend to destroy the Republic.”
Cartoons of Mohammed, the Islamic prophet, have been used as justification by Islamist terrorists in several attacks, some deadly. The Offices of Charlie Hebdo were raided by Islamist gunmen in 2015, with many of the paper’s editorial staff killed. The court cases surrounding the killing finally being heard this year led to another attempted attack in September 2020, with a new would-be killer attempting to attack the now-vacated offices of the paper again.
The latest attack over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons took place last week when Samuel Paty was beheaded after showing the drawings in class. But the attacks pre-date Charlie Hebdo, with Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten the subject of several terror attack plots since it published an image of Mohammed wearing a bomb in his turban in 2005…
Continue Reading