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Charlie Hebdo Editor Seeks to Distance Newspaper From Anti-Islam Causes

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The top editor at Charlie Hebdo, the satirical Paris newspaper that was attacked four months ago by militant gunmen over its cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, sought on Tuesday to reject attempts by right-wing activists to exploit that attack for their own agendas.
In an interview with members of the editorial board of The New York Times, the editor, Gérard Biard, disputed any analogies drawn between the Charlie Hebdo attack and the assault on Sunday against an art contest in Texas organized by Pamela Geller, a conservative activist and blogger.
“We have nothing to do with Pamela Geller’s work,” Mr. Biard said. “When Islam or the Prophet Muhammad jump out of the news, we comment on it, we mock it, maybe. But we are not obsessed about it.”
Mr. Biard also criticized Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Front, whose popularity has risen in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack on Jan. 7.
Although the assailants in both attacks were heavily armed, endorsed by Islamist militant groups abroad and seeking to avenge perceived insults to Islam, Mr. Biard sought to differentiate the episodes. He emphasized what he described as the wide range of satirical cartoons used in Charlie Hebdo’s cover illustrations.
“Out of 500 covers in the past 10 years, only seven were made about Islam,” he said. “So it’s not our obsession. We’re dealing with politics, we’re dealing with other religions.”
Ms. Geller has called the attack in Garland, Tex., in which both assailants were killed, a defeat for “the enemies of freedom” that validated the art contest — which she said had been held in part to honor Charlie Hebdo.
Asked how the Charlie Hebdo attack may have influenced a right-wing surge in French politics, Mr. Biard criticized Ms. Le Pen for portraying herself and her supporters as defenders of free speech.
“Marine Le Pen has a political agenda,” he said. “Her goal is to be elected in two years, to become president. She’s doing what every political leader does. She’s used an event and tried to transform this event into something for her own purpose.”
“The thing is, Marine Le Pen is not credible on that issue, because she is an extreme-right politician,” Mr. Biard said. “She runs an extreme-right party, with religious extremists in there. So when she attacks Islam, she in fact attacks Arab people.”
By contrast, Mr. Biard said, “when we mock a religion, we don’t knock believers, we don’t mock people. We mock institutions. We mock ideas.”
Mr. Biard was in New York to receive an award on Tuesday for “freedom of expression courage” at a literary gala sponsored by PEN American Center, a prominent literary organization that defends writers around the world.
The choice of Charlie Hebdo to receive the award has incited angry contention within the organization. More than 200 of its approximately 4,000 members have signed a letter protesting what they called Charlie Hebdo’s violation of acceptable expression, asserting that the newspaper’s cartoons have promoted anti-Muslim bigotry.
Mr. Biard, who has been the editor in chief of Charlie Hebdo for the past 10 years, said that the PEN protesters were entitled to their opinion but that he rejected their criticism.
“We have always been anti-racist, and we fight against all discrimination,” he said.
Mr. Biard also said that the newspaper, which derives its revenue exclusively from subscriptions, had gone from fewer than 10,000 before the January assault to more than 250,000 today.
In addition, he said, many people around the world had sent financial contributions, which have all been deposited into a fund for families of the 17 victims in a three-day spree of attacks that included 12 people killed at Charlie Hebdo’s offices. Mr. Biard said that he did not know the total amount, but that “it’s quite a lot.”