Charlie Hebdo - a perspective

In 1969, at the end of my second year at university, I went off to France for my intercalary year.

I learned a lot, not always the easy way. Developing a taste for Cognac and Ricard required also some lessons in self-control. I also learned a lot about red wine, what was good, what wasn't.

And then I learned a lot about French humour.

Pierre, one of my newly acquired French friends, introduced me to a magazine called "Hara-Kiri". Actually it had two versions, the weekly (Hebdo), and the monthly (Mensuel).

The weekly edition was heavily into politics and current affairs. If we must use the awful phrases "left" and "right", it was very much on the "left", but used humour (with some great cartoonists like Wolinski and Reiser) to make its point. One article I recall to this day, and I have always attributed to the editor, François Cavanna - my apologies after all these years if I am wrong.

He wrote here about a new Fascist movement called "Ordre Nouveau" whose symbol, accompanied by some typical grafitti, he had seen on "un beau mur dans un beau quartier" ("a finely built wall in an upper-class neighbourhood"). The article was full of mock pieces of grafitti  ("Rejouez Stalingrad" - "Replay Stalingrad" for example), and he totally tore the whole idea of the movement to shreds with humorous logic that can scarcely have been matched elsewhere.

Irreverence can often win arguments, and if nothing else it was funny, even if France's conservative government of the time was no friend. Following the death of Charles de Gaulle in November 1970 it produced a typically humorous front cover (which was also by any standards in very bad taste) and was banned by the government as a result (so much for freedom of the press in France in 1970!).

From the ashes of "Hara-Kiri (Hebdo)" though arose "Charlie Hebdo" - exactly the same magazine with a different name.

It survived until 1981 and was reborn in 1992, and is still going strong - and living controversially. The writers have changed, the cartoonists have changed (as age requires), but the irreverence lives on.

France has had a history of defying religion and religious orthodoxy for generations. To its immense credit, it is no bad country in which to be either an atheist or an agnostic.

Charlie Hebdo steps straight out of this tradition. The phrase "nothing is sacred" may have developed non-religious connotations, but here it can also apply literally.

In the aftermath of the Danish cartoons furore in 2006, Charlie Hebdo not only reproduced the cartoons, but produced a whole new series of cartoons - mocking all religions! Freedom of speech (and note their political orientation has not changed, even if they are aligned with no party), and the attitude that you do not have to read the magazine, so go **** if you don't like it.

Getting any devout religious believers to laugh at themselves and their religion is not easy (maybe Buddhists manage that better than the others, but that is a personal bias). Getting fanatical Muslims to laugh at themselves and their religion? Good luck!

France has a large so-called Muslim population, although a survey by the Pew Global attitudes project a few years ago found that between 20 and 30 per cent of French Muslims were either non-practising, or had renounced their beliefs entirely. Even so there is there a fanatical element and some maniacs who will happily commit mayhem in the name of their (silly, antiquated) beliefs.

Last November after producing an edition called "Charia Hebdo", the magazine offices were fire-bombed by what the editor regarded as a fanatical fringe.

In the aftermath of the film that has appeared in the USA (which essentially might be seen as produced by a pro-Israeli anti-Muslim conservative - a strange bedfellow, to say the least), Charlie Hebdo has again this week produced more "satire" on the prophet Mohammad. So if they were to learn any lessons or live in fear, that certainly is not obvious in their response.

But you might wish that their timing had been better.

And you might also wish that they might realise that when a joke has been told once too often it ceases to be funny.