French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on Wednesday, a decision criticized by the French authorities which sent riot police to protect the magazine's offices.The cover makes fun of the recent French movie hit, The Intouchables, and shows a Chassidic Jew pushing a wheelchair of a Muslim as they both say "Must not laugh!"
The magazine's front cover showed an Orthodox Jew pushing a turbaned figure in a wheelchair and several caricatures of the Prophet were included on its inside pages, including some of him naked.
The publication comes in the midst of widespread outrage over an anti-Muslim film posted on the Internet. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius criticized Charlie Hebdo's decision as a provocation and said he had ordered security beefed up at French diplomatic offices in the Muslim world.
Charlie Hebdo's Paris offices were fire bombed last November after it published a mocking caricature of Mohammad. In 2005, Danish cartoons of the Prophet sparked a wave of violent protests across the Muslim world that killed at least 50 people.
And here is the image that will probably get the offices of Charlie Hebdo firebombed, a spoof of Mohammed as Brigitte Bardot with the caption "The film that embraces the Muslim world:":
By the way, the Onion acidly satirized the Mohammed video kerfuffle with a pornographic cartoon that is way too explicit to be shown here, under the headline "No one murdered because of this image":
Following the publication of the image above, in which the most cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity, no one was murdered, beaten, or had their lives threatened, sources reported Thursday. The image of the Hebrew prophet Moses high-fiving Jesus Christ as both are [undergoing a sex act by] Ganesha, all while the Hindu deity [performs a sex act on] Buddha with his fist, reportedly went online at 6:45 p.m. EDT, after which not a single bomb threat was made against the organization responsible, nor did the person who created the cartoon go home fearing for his life in any way. Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day.
UPDATE: More cartoons from the issue.