“Habemus a front page,” Gérard Biard, one of the paper’s top editors, said with a smile, emerging from the staff’s makeshift newsroom and deploying the phrase used to announce a new pope. To find the right image, he said: “We asked ourselves: ‘What do we want to say? What should we say? And in what way?’ About the subject, unfortunately, we had no doubt.”
—Charlie Hebdo’s New Issue Has Muhammad on the Cover, New York Times
For some reason I was touched by the use of the term “habemus”, it’s Latin for “we have”, and it’s most famous use is in the phrase “Habemus Papam!”, “We have a pope!” For me the editor’s use of the word is a powerful way of saying the magazine won’t be intimidated by fanatics, because something too important, too universal, too sacred is at stake.
The cover, (click here to see), shows Mohammad crying, holding a sign saying Je suis Charlie (I am Charlie). Above him are the words “All is forgiven.”
The staff members aren’t sure what the future holds, but this edition will be in the kiosks Wednesday, the usual distribution day, and they do indeed have a cover.
January 13, 2015
It is a hit and it has gone viral with worldwide reproduction on all possible media.
That’s great! Hopefully it will offset the efforts of the far right to foster more anti-immigration and Islamophobia.
bravo brave surviving members of charlie!
and what a perfect sentiment . . . and delivered with cachet!
as only the french do so well!
Yes! It gives one more faith in parts of human nature.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/world/europe/new-charlie-hebdo-has-muhammad-cartoon.html?emc=edit_th_20150114&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=53809129&_r=0
“All is forgiven” is a puzzling statement. Hard to see how they could forgive the brutal murder of 12 people for no good reason. I doubt if their spouses or friends feel at all forgiving.