View the full Charlie Hebdo cover via the New York Post here.
The latest edition of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo went on sale today with a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad holding a “Je suis Charlie” sign on its front cover.
While the magazine had initially hoped for a print run of one million copies, global sales are expected to reach five million – with many newspaper outlets already sold out.
It is first edition that has been published since last week’s attack on the magazine’s Paris offices that left 12 people dead, and is accompanied by the headline “All is forgiven”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Zineb El Rhazoui, a surviving columnist at the magazine, said the cover was a call to forgive those who murdered her colleagues.
“We don’t feel any hate to [killers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi]. We know that the struggle is not with them as people, but the struggle is with an ideology,” she said.
Famed for its controversial left-wing take on politics and current affairs, the magazine first came under attack in 2011 when its office was fire-bombed and its website hacked. Both the 2011 and 2015 attacks have been linked to the magazine’s publishing of a cartoon featuring the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.
Charlie Hebdo’s current weekly circulation is estimated at about 60,000; however, a record five million copies are to be printed this week in 16 different languages.
According to Libération, the newspaper that offered Charlie Hebdo staff working space following the attack, the eight-page edition went to press on Monday night.
“We feel that we have to forgive what happened,” El Rhazoui added. “I think those who have been killed, if they would have been able to have a coffee today with the terrorists and just talk to ask them why have they done this…we feel at the Charlie Hebdo team that we need to forgive.”
Many news services around the world have showed Wednesday’s cover, particularly in France and America. In the UK, the BBC’s Newsnight showed it briefly during a review of newspapers, with the Guardian and Independent publishing it on their websites along with BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post. The Daily Telegraph and the Mail Online, at the time of publishing, had chosen not to show the images.
The Times, after angry comments from readers, has since published the front cover image in its original article on the story.
Among the victims from last week were the magazine’s editor, Stephane Charbonnier, cartoonists Jean Cabut, Bernard Verlhac, Philippe Honore and Georges Wolinski, and economist Bernard Maris.
Charbonnier, known as Charbs, had always been fearless in his stance on the magazine’s satire, despite facing criticism and previous threats. He told France’s Le Monde newspaper: “I don’t have kids, no wife, no car, no credit.
“Maybe it’s a little pompous to say, but I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.”
A total of 17 people were killed in three days of attacks in the French capital last week, prompting mass rallies in defence of free speech.
