Icons vs satirical inversions: Islamic rule and the ‘death of the author’ – the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris

Abstract

The satirical inversions of the images of the Prophet Muhammad by the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists that brought the wrath of two gunmen to their authors, projected a world in which the reader is recognised as an autonomous subject. Consequent on this autonomy is the restricted power of the author who used to derive it from the re-enactment of sacred Truth. Multiple and diverse readers, on the other hand, owe their authority from the right of the individual to reason and judge independently, which places them at arm's length from the author. The inverted images drawn by the cartoonists represented a departure from the Prophet's traditional iconic images whose resemblance to the referent left little room for variation among their faithful viewers driven to identify with the Messenger of Allah either by desire to imitate or for fear of punishment. The fixed iconic ‘reading’ by the faithful was mediated by the homogeneous Muslim Community (Umma) whose members were unable to use words to objectify among an association of citizens their internal sense of injury as an excess. As a consequence, this injury caused by the readers operating outside the Community called for the use of force by its members in retaliation (qisas) for the infidels’ reading as sanctioned in the sacred text. The more entrenched the membership of the Umma, largely the product of reading the sacred text – where the author retains his traditional power – the more inclined were the members to resort to brutal force to restore the traditional power of the author.

Keywords:

• author
• icon
• satire
• Muslim Community
• authority
• citizen

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Pam for her helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The masked gunmen, who turned out to be brothers and French citizens of Algerian descent, burst into the magazine's editorial office in Paris on 7 January and after killing first the caretaker and the policeman assigned to protect the editor then asked for him and shot him calmly followed by four other cartoonists and three members of the editorial staff – including a woman – and a visitor. The gunmen did not, reportedly, fire in bursts but shot one bullet after another.

2. The ‘survivors' issue’ was published on 14 January. Some seven million copies of the weekly paper were sold against its normal 60,000 circulation. After resuming publication, the magazine's circulation increased 50 fold in a month. The number of subscribers reached 200,000 from 8,000.

3. Notwithstanding the claim that depicting the Prophet Muhammad is blasphemous in Islam it is not rare to find his iconic images displayed in the reception rooms of Muslim dwellings and on the walls of their business premises.

4. ‘Whoso judges not according to what God [Allah] has sent down – they are the evildoers’ (The Koran, 1982, Sura V, verse 49).

5. Although it officially condemned the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, the Islamic regime in Iran closed a daily newspaper for publishing a picture on its front page of George Clooney with the caption ‘I am Charlie, too’.