Fire attack on magazine over Prophet satire
The Paris offices of a magazine were destroyed by arsonists today hours after it named the Prophet Mohammed as its guest editor in a "Sharia edition", headlined "100 lashes if you don't die of laughter".
Two men were seen throwing a petrol bomb through the windows of Charlie Hebdo, a French version of Private Eye which prides itself on its mix of cutting satire and investigative journalism.
Fire tore through the building shortly after 1am. It was quickly put out but computer equipment and a large amount of material was destroyed.
The front page of this morning's edition carries a cartoon image of Mohammed - something considered blasphemous under Islamic law. The magazine was renamed "Sharia Hebdo".
Charlie Hedbo's editor-in-chief, a cartoonist known only as Charb, said: "We no longer have a newspaper. All our equipment has been destroyed or has melted. We could not put a paper together today, but we will do everything possible to produce one next week. Whatever happens, we'll do it. There is no question of giving up."
Armed police guarded the office which is close to a number of housing estates where the occupants are predominantly Muslim.
Many regularly complain about discrimination in a country where racial and religious tensions often boil to the surface in riots.
Six years ago, Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard provoked anger across the Islamic world when he published 12 satirical images of the Prophet in a Danish newspaper.
The then editor of Charlie Hebdo was prosecuted in France for "insulting Muslims" after he reproduced the Danish images but he was acquitted in 2007.
The special edition of Charlie Hebdo was appearing on newsstands this morning, complete with an editorial "by the Prophet" about halal drinks. There were also features on "soft Sharia", concentrating on the emergence of Islamic parties in Tunisia and Libya following the Arab Spring revolutions.
There is also a women's section called "Sharia Madame", which concentrates on Islamic veils, which were recently banned in France. The magazine said the edition was intended to celebrate the victory of an Islamist party in the Tunisian elections.
A police spokesman said there had so far been no arrests. There are six million Muslims living in France the largest group of its kind in Europe.
