German Newspaper Fire Bombed After Running Cover With Charlie Hebdo Cartoons

Hamburger Morgenpost was reportedly fire bombed today in Hamburg after the German newspaper that reprinted cartoons of Islamic prophet Mohammed from the French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo.

Charlie Hebdo was the scene of the massacre this last week after publishing its own cover with the mocking cartoons of Mohammad.

The paper has put the cartoon on its front page with the headline “This much freedom must be possible!”.

Notably, despite the obvious news value of readers seeing the cartoons in question, U.S. media has largely refused to reprint the cartoons — as opposed to many in France. It is an act of self-censorship that is troubling and is reminiscent of the disgraceful decision of Yale University Press a few years ago. Yale University Press published Jytte Klausen’s “The Cartoons That Shook the World” (on the cartoons that led to riots and over 200 killed in protests worldwide). However, Yale removed the the 12 cartoons from the book so not to insult Muslims. Thus, you could read the book but not actually see the cartoons themselves. It was a decision by Yale University Press that is still discussed as anti-intellectual and cowardly in academic circles.

The New York Daily News even blurred out a picture of an editor holding up a newspaper with one of the cartoons.

Here is a link to the cartoons beyond the one shown above on the cover of Charlie Hebdo: The Charlie Hebdo Cartoons.